Got your submission, mfn002. I will try to have it all entered by Monday, but it is rather large. 
Brazos Valley Activity Thread
- Thread starter rattlerbb01
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Got your submission, mfn002. I will try to have it all entered by Monday, but it is rather large.
Sorry about that. I was going to include McLennan County and the rest of Waco, but decided not to.
Feel free to submit that as well. I am working the Brazos one now.
McLennan County submitted. Rattler, I would recommend that when you enter the data, pay close attention to the words in capital letters. Those are the recommended text tags.
I paid attention. Interestingly, I can't figure out what several should be described as. Things like CIAC, ATWR, etc...
Same here. I've been wondering about it since I got the list in October. I suspect you got the problem resolved since you've probably accurately described what they mean in the "descriptions" column.
Context clues.....middle school stuff. The bulk of it was going off the mostly identical talkgroup tags and descriptions from the analog Waco system.
Context clues.....middle school stuff. The bulk of it was going off the mostly identical talkgroup tags and descriptions from the analog Waco system.
I didn't think of looking there when I was making the list. Anyway, there has been no real activity on any of those new Bryan or Brazos County TGs (only Bryan Fire Primary). Last time I enquired about the delay, the person I talked to said Bryan and Brazos County were "dragging their feet" about it, but I suspect they are just being stubborn. Keep in mind that Bryan PD officers were allowed to have CS radios in their units, but were not allowed to monitor them. I think the main problem is the reason this took so long in the first place: territorialism. Essentially, Brazos County 911 views their systen as theirs alone, and neither College Station nor TAMU are allowed to use it (despite have TGs on there).
Its funny that you say that...I thought College Station would be the big holdouts, since their system was the first 800 trunk in the area, and it was THEIRS. Bryan and Brazos shared a system from day one of A710 and were the first at the table wanting to expand it into a valleywide shared system. Contrarily, College Station jumped onto the new system, and the others are dragging their feet. Could it be one of those things where they aren't satisfied with the level of control they have over TxWARN?
Possibly. However, they've been having problems recently with the County system. About a week or so ago, one of the frequencies wasn't keying up, and they had a tech there all afternoon trying to figure it out.
nosliwmj
Member
I heard the county fire last week having issues talking to College Station dispatchers. They were also not hearing the rest of the tone out after the fire tones sounded. I kept hearing the fire stations asking if they were suppposed to be heading somewhere after only hearing the tones and no call coming out. The new system really works better in town compared to the 800mhz system. You dont hear the radio cutting out all the time just driving down Texas Ave anymore, although random officers seem to have issues using the radios sometimes.
That was the problem Bryan was having. As I stated, it was a problem with one of the frequencies not keying up. They had a tech out there fixing it, and he spent a good part of the afternoon figuring it out.
The reason you have better coverage now is because you are not just working off of that one tower behind Gander Mountain, but have several in somewhat close proximity to each other. Actually, the original coverage map said there would be two additional sites in the northern part of the county: Riverside and North Brazos. There was also a proposed site in Burleson County (titled the "Sawdust Ranch" site). As far as I know, they were never built.
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I know Edge for sure will get a site in the future. The other two were rumored to be optional and depended on how well the surrounding sites covered Brazos and Washington counties' outlying areas. Now if Burleson decides they want in on the deal, I would imagine they would revisit the Sawdust Ranch site and a few more.
That's what I have been thinking. They'll probably look in to that once SO and volunteers move to the system. As for Burleson, it'll be a while before something happens there, even though it might not be a bad idea for them, since Washington County is already on TxWARN and soon Brazos County will be as well. I once read in newspaper article a while back that the system was supposed to consist of Brazos, Burleson, Robertson, and Washington counties. So far, and at least for the forseeable future, it'll only be Brazos and Washington.
On Sunday evening, Brazos County VFD began simulcasting on TxWARN, and have been ever since. Yesterday morning, I heard a radio tech checking Bryan Fire units in and out of service (possibly installing or programming new radios?).
I provide the feed for Brazos county FD, CSFD, BFD etc.
I have a pro 106.
Ok so I have a few questions: Do I put everybody in the same bank thats on the new Wide Area Network? I want to scan CSFD and Brenham fd. Should they both be in the same bank? One problem I see is the slowness the scanner scans these new banks. It causes me to miss some traffic on other none Wide Area channels.
Also when I put Brenham in I don't seem to be picking them up very well or not at all. I thought everybody on the system could be heard locally.
Thanks
I have a pro 106.
Ok so I have a few questions: Do I put everybody in the same bank thats on the new Wide Area Network? I want to scan CSFD and Brenham fd. Should they both be in the same bank? One problem I see is the slowness the scanner scans these new banks. It causes me to miss some traffic on other none Wide Area channels.
Also when I put Brenham in I don't seem to be picking them up very well or not at all. I thought everybody on the system could be heard locally.
Thanks
texasemt13
CenTex DBA
Yes and no. Everyone on the system can be heard locally, if a subscriber (user radio) in range of the tower your nearest (the frequencies you have programmed in), is actually listening to that specific talkgroup.
For example, if a Brenham FF is travelling to B/CS and leaves his radio on the BrenhamFD Dispatch talkgroup, each TXWARN site he passes "nearest" will carry the BrenhamFD dispatch talkgroup on that site. So eventually when he winds up in College Station, that site will carry that talkgroup. The sites will only carry the talkgroups which users in range of it are tuned to. So if for some reason a BrenhamFD FF is in Bryan listening (and talking) to the BrenhamFD then decides to switch his radio to talk to BryanFD on one of their talkgroups, the Bryan site will stop carrying the Brenham talkgroup (because no user within range of that site is using the Brenham FD talkgroup). There are exceptions to this rule, that SysAdmins can put in place, but generally this is how it works.
That being said, the Pro-106 is a workhorse, and as long as you aren't trying to listen to hundreds of talkgroups or thousands of frequencies, it should scan relatively fast.
For trunking systems I usually have a minimum of 2 lists dedicated to one site in a trunking system. We'll call them A and B. On A, I place everything that I want to hear definitively. On B I place a "Wildcard." As wildcards pop-up on B, I store them, then if I care to listen to them, I move them to list A. If I don't care to ever hear them again, I permanently lock them out on List B. The reason I advise this, is for hosting a feed, you could just stop scanning list B (a much longer list, with hundreds of talkgroups) and only scan list A (the local stuff, with maybe 20 talkgroups). That way it's not scanning a long list of talkgroups that are locked out. I've found scanning a long list of talkgroups, where the majority are locked out, is a waste of effort, and slows down the "re-uptake" time, between recurring talkgroups of the same conversation.
nosliwmj
Member
I'm not too sure about the slowness on the pro 106 specifically as i have a 396XT, but i agree that trunked systems take a bit longer to search for activity vs say a VHF channel. As far as hearing Brenham, you will only pick them up when one of the brehnam fire radios is associated with one of the local towers in the BCS or millican. Sometimes you will hear spurts of traffic from Washington county SO on the College Station or TAMU tower if they are closer to us than the Brenham or Washington towers. I have found that the College Station tower can be heard partway down highway 105 between Navasota and Brenham which would be why they roam onto our towers and lets us hear them sometimes.
Thanks for the help. I guess I can't have Brenham/Washington FDs on the feed. Darn!
I like to have every agancy in there own bank so I can easily lock and open them back up. It just seems that the agencies on the New 700/Wide Area Network system seem to scan slower.
Do I need every tower programed in? I'm in south CS near Barron rd. You think it would speed up if only one tower was in?
I like to have every agancy in there own bank so I can easily lock and open them back up. It just seems that the agencies on the New 700/Wide Area Network system seem to scan slower.
Do I need every tower programed in? I'm in south CS near Barron rd. You think it would speed up if only one tower was in?
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texasemt13
CenTex DBA
No, you want only the towers in range of you, and if multiple ones are close, I would not put more than one site in the same list (this slows it down also). There is no sense in having far away sites programmed in to a scanner if it is stationary, and won't ever need to receive them. The easiest way to see if they're close enough, is to tune to the control channel (using "Tune" or by manually selecting the "TSYS" then "Analyz"ing the CC), to check the signal strength. If you can't hear the site, there's no since in making the scanner look for it.
Yes, I know it would.
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