Belleville-St Clair Starcom Freqs on RR

[K1IF]

Can someone verify this for me... On Radio Reference there is a Starcom 21 site called Belleville-St Clair with control freqs of 866.8625, 867.3875 & 867.9125 I loaded this system into my scanner and there is no signal I hear nothing. I live in Swansea which is between E belleville and W belleville. I. Are these frequencies in use? or is the tower off air ?


There is another site called St Clair County Simulcast which has 851.5625, 852.1625 & 851.225 I loaded these and it works.

I assume Belleville-St Clair freqs are incorrect but would like someone to verify this. I am new to all this sorry. If there are some freqs that are good what are they?

Thanks
John - K1IF

 

[dakota91]

The 866.xxxx & 867.xxxx frequencies are the old frequencies. When they rebanded about 3 months ago they switched to the frequencies you now hear.

If you're new then you may notice that the voice sometimes becomes garbled even though you have a strong signal. This is due to the simulcast system St. Clair uses in which they broadcast on the same frequency from multiple towers. The problems associated with simulcast aren't as bad when you're inside the broadcast area so it may not be as noticeable to you as it is for people outside the county.

There are also other towers you can monitor such as Belleville, Mascoutah, and those in Madison county if you're interested in monitoring more state police traffic and Madison county agencies.

 

[K1IF]

thank you for that answer

If the Belleville-St Clair frequencies are incorrect they should remove them! This was driving me crazy for 3 days now. So are there new control freqs that are different from the ones for St Clair Simulcast or is that the same site? Sorry I am new to this and still a little confused.

 

[dakota91]

Much of the database is a Wiki project in that the information is gathered by the RR community and posted as it is discovered from monitoring or through searching public records. It is a work in-progress and gets better all the time, but the systems we monitor are also undergoing continuous changes as the system is fielded so there will continue to be inaccuracies for quite some time. The rebanding is a government mandate so over the next couple of years you will continue to see changes to the frequencies. Since St. Clair has already switched, then you shouldn't be impacted much more.

Members can post any information they discover and can report inaccuracies. The "they" you refer to is all of us since this is a group project. Although the RR database is a good source of information, the scan feature on your scanner is another tool you should be using. Use it to search from 765 MHz to 867 MHz and see if you find any new or unknown control channels. That's how the database gets built.

The control channel you are currently monitoring is primarily St. Clair units since that is who owns the system. The State of Illinois operates the Starcom21 system and maintains separate towers. Although the St. Clair system operates with Starcom21, you will rarely hear St. Clair units on the true Starcom21 towers.

You also need to program both the primary control channels (shown in red in the RR database) and the secondary channels (shown in blue) since sites can sometimes switch between them.

 

[Starcom21]

Belleville Tower 305 is correct as listed in the database.
866.8625 is the current control channel

This is an ISP tower, not part of the St Clair Simulcast system.

I pick it up all the time in the Glen Carbon/Collinsville areas.

There is a Mascoutah Tower and 2 East St Louis towers that have ISP systems too.

Also, all these towers share T359 with them, on the 850mhz freqs.

 

[fmon]

John, I'd like to hijack your thread to verify travel information.

We travel through the area heading to central KS for a reunion in late May and back and stay at a motel in Collinsville going both directions.

I just checked my Win500 file for last years trip and it has 28 StarCom 21 frequencies using I-64. This includes five 774 MHz frequencies but I do not have Terry's 775.3475 nor 867.1125 so will plug them in.
Last year at the motel I recall quite a bit of traffic on StarCom and it was likely using Control 866.8625.

Also, should I stick with St Louis 800 Motorola or P25 or both?

 

[Starcom21]

St Louis City
Police ONLY are on P25
Fire, EMS all other city agencies still on Motorola Type II

Terry

 

[fmon]

Thanks Terry, I'll set it up using both.

 

[dakota91]

John,

My mistake on the Belleville tower. When K11F said he couldn't hear the control channels on the 866.xxxx, I misread the message and assumed he meant the old 866.22500 frequency, which has since moved to 851.22500. When I went back and read the original message, I realized that 866.8625 was specifically mentioned and it is still very active and is one that I normally monitor in Clinton county. I also listen to State on the Mascoutah tower at 775.34375 which comes in very well at my house. I'm actually expecting Clinton county to start operating on Starcom21 soon since they've been putting the 800 MHz antennas on all of their vehicles and I hope to hear them from the Mascoutah tower.

To K11F, when I first bought my scanner I sometimes loaded control channels and couldn't hear anything. I finally figured out that this is a multi-step process. You not only have to program the control channels, but also the correct system type and what it is you want to monitor. Using the wildcard will help you received the talkgroups assigned to that control channel. Getting one of the programming applications and a subscription to RR so that I could use my computer to download the groups I wanted and automatically load them into my scanner helped me a lot when I first started using one of these scanners.

Jeff

 

[1099-J2]

Illinois Munies and Starcom Freqs

Does someone have a condensed list of the frequncies that the munies in St Clair, Randolph, Monroe, Madison, and ISP are now using. I've tried to program several control channels into a bank and I am hearing some conversations but don't think I'm plugged into all the frequencies that are being used. Do I need to enter all the alternate channels listed in the reference pages to hear them? Thanks for any updated listings.

 

[MarcInIllinois]

I also am really lost on the rebanding issue. In order to get 'correct' with the rebanded channels, does one need to simply redownload that agency into their software/scanner after rebanding is done, or does it require one to get their hands more dirty with it?

 

[dakota91]

When St. Clair County rebanded, the only thing I had to do was to change the control channel frequency that I monitored (15 Mhz lower than the original frequency). Once I started monitoring the new CC, my scanner automatically switched to the new correct voice frequencies. Very easy process that took less than a minute to change the CC frequency in my scanner.

As far as the previous post regarding ISP traffic, I monitor both the Mascoutah tower 3-001 and Belleville (3-005) and I seem to pick up most of their traffic, although I also pick up a lot of District 13 (Duquoin) traffic as well on the Mascoutah tower, especially their ISPERN broadcasts.

 

[1099-J2]

Programming the sites

How do you program the talk groups? I have the control channels and seem to be picking up various agencies. I cross reference them to the charts and alpha tag them as I hear them. Is there a menu option that will let me manually put in the TGID"s for the sysytem. I have a BCD 996T Uniden. I haven't found a "layman's" guide yet on doing this the simple way. Any info is appreciated.

 

[FireResQ11]

help please

does anyone have a list of the 800mhz frquencies for st clair county illiois police and fire departments

 

[fmon]

does anyone have a list of the 800mhz frquencies for st clair county illiois police and fire departments

I travel through on I-64 frequently so recently updated my TSYS for StarCom21 sites. These three controls/alts are in the database update for the county.
Site 3-059 St Clair 800: 851.22500c 851.56250a 852.16250a
These 700 MHz controls/alts are also available for St Clair in site 3-053 774.28125c 774.59375a 774.81875a

 

[FireResQ11]

I travel through on I-64 frequently so recently updated my TSYS for StarCom21 sites. These three controls/alts are in the database update for the county.
Site 3-059 St Clair 800: 851.22500c 851.56250a 852.16250a
These 700 MHz controls/alts are also available for St Clair in site 3-053 774.28125c 774.59375a 774.81875a[/QUOTE


Thank you i will try those.
i am new to this so do i just put these freqs in my scanned and it will start picking people up right away or is there more?

 

[fmon]

i am new to this so do i just put these freqs in my scanned and it will start picking people up right away or is there more?

What scanner do you use?

 

[FireResQ11]

What scanner do you use?

Radio Shack Pro 197

 

[fmon]

Radio Shack Pro 197

Program the two sites in my above. You may want to program the 3 E St Louis freqs from site 3-023. Set TSYS to P25 Auto, enter the 9 frequencies in any order.

Keep in mind, 023 has not rebanded yet but will do so soon. When it happens, edit the three freqs and reduce each by 15 MHz.

 

[FireResQ11]

Program the two sites in my above. You may want to program the 3 E St Louis freqs from site 3-023. Set TSYS to P25 Auto, enter the 9 frequencies in any order.

Keep in mind, 023 has not rebanded yet but will do so soon. When it happens, edit the three freqs and reduce each by 15 MHz.

should i program all of these into one talk group?
and i only counted 6 freqs from you above