Brevard County - Rockledge Tower

[KI4LIV]

Can anyone advise if for whatever reason the output power of the Rockledge tower has been reduced?

For the past few days I've been barely able to pick them up in south Merritt Island.

I've confirmed this on multiple scanners as well as an MPA System handheld.

 

[ElroyJetson]

I've noticed no variation in their signal strength from Melbourne, but usually listen on the Melbourne site anyway.

Supposedly a new site is going up in Cape Canaveral, and that may allow reduced power to be used
as it reduces the coverage demand on the Rockledge site as it's the Canaveral area that's been suffering.


More likely, I'd suspect that in preparation for rebanding, the Rockledge site may have been switched
over to the portable site trailer while the main site gets rebanding-related work, like reprogramming
every channel and retuning every duplexer, combiner, etc...

That seems reasonable.

Elroy

 

[batdude]

Rockeldge

this is the only site i listen to.

at night, a type 2 motorola control channel completely obliterates one of the voice channels.


i didnt catch the freq last night, but i doubt they can hear it - they just talk right over it (with lots of distortion) - i thought maybe this was osceola county - but they are way down in the 859/860 area... not up in the 868's like the rockledge site.


oh well -


doug

 

[gcr33]

Maybe the Motorola control channel is a sign of good things to come to this county. A real Motorola radio system that works.

 

[ElroyJetson]

Let me be perfectly honest: The EDACS system used by Brevard County has turned out to be an excellent, highly reliable system that is actually considerably BETTER for us "professional level" scanner enthusiasts than any Motorola trunking system could be. System availability is very high, in fact, I can't personally
recall any time at which any of the system's sites was totally unavailable for more than a few minutes.
Even in failsoft, communications still get through.

The majority of communications problems are due to, believe it or not, errors in the system channel
sets in some of the radios. If one is wrong, you get silence when that channel is called up. When
those errors were found, they were corrected.

There are occasional glitches in the firmware in individual radios. That's why M/A-Com issues new
releases so often.

I was never a GE fan. I was the ultimate Moto fanboy for a long time, and you may already know that.

But these days, I'm pretty close to impartial. Both companies have their strengths and weaknesses,
and the same can be said for their trunking systems.

And, on Brevard county, you don't need no stinkin' system key to program up a "real" radio, which is
always a sticky point when dealing with Mother M.

I work for a legit, authorized licensee of the M/A-Com Programmer and RPM software packages. There
is no legal obstacle to my programming up radios for anyone who asks, so long as they accept the fact
that nobody is going to get transmit access to a single group for any reason without a notarized, gold-
leafed letter of authorization from God Himself, or his designated agent.

I carry a 7200. You can't read it without RPM version 3. (Well, really it's a 7100 hiding in 7200 cosmetics, inside and out.)

As a result, if you see anyone in Brevard County with a 7200 clipped to his jeans, that'd almost
certainly be me. I don't think there's yet a single 7200 in the county.

Elroy

 

[batdude]

the frequency is 868.85

it's POLK county.

was completely walking all over voice comms on the rockledge tower again last night --- so bad i had to get up and turn the scanner off - since it's programmed as an EDACS trunk... the Moto data channel just sits there GRRRRRRRRRRing away locking the scanner up.


doug

 

[KI4LIV]

Batdude,

What type of scanner and antenna are you listening on? I must admit, I've not heard anything quite like that before, nor run into the data channel locking down my scanner.

Do you have data skip enabled on the scanner?

 

[gcr33]

Elroy has been kidnapped by the Tyco zombie people. Talk to the chief down in Palm Beach Co. who came from Brevard. He is happy to get away from that system.
It's always being tweaked and changed in Brevard.


Let me be perfectly honest: The EDACS system used by Brevard County has turned out to be an excellent, highly reliable system that is actually considerably BETTER for us "professional level" scanner enthusiasts than any Motorola trunking system could be. System availability is very high, in fact, I can't personally
recall any time at which any of the system's sites was totally unavailable for more than a few minutes.
Even in failsoft, communications still get through.

The majority of communications problems are due to, believe it or not, errors in the system channel
sets in some of the radios. If one is wrong, you get silence when that channel is called up. When
those errors were found, they were corrected.

There are occasional glitches in the firmware in individual radios. That's why M/A-Com issues new
releases so often.

I was never a GE fan. I was the ultimate Moto fanboy for a long time, and you may already know that.

But these days, I'm pretty close to impartial. Both companies have their strengths and weaknesses,
and the same can be said for their trunking systems.

And, on Brevard county, you don't need no stinkin' system key to program up a "real" radio, which is
always a sticky point when dealing with Mother M.

I work for a legit, authorized licensee of the M/A-Com Programmer and RPM software packages. There
is no legal obstacle to my programming up radios for anyone who asks, so long as they accept the fact
that nobody is going to get transmit access to a single group for any reason without a notarized, gold-
leafed letter of authorization from God Himself, or his designated agent.

I carry a 7200. You can't read it without RPM version 3. (Well, really it's a 7100 hiding in 7200 cosmetics, inside and out.)

As a result, if you see anyone in Brevard County with a 7200 clipped to his jeans, that'd almost
certainly be me. I don't think there's yet a single 7200 in the county.

Elroy

 

[WX4JCW]

Do You Think Someone Spiked his coffee?

 

[batdude]

PSR 600 and an antenna in the attic going to a mutlicoupler. nothing exotic - no preamps or anything.

take a listen to that freq tonight and tell me if i'm on crack (listen in conventional mode)


doug

 

[KI4LIV]

I'll see if I can stay awake long enough - been a rough day!

Maybe I'll hook up the scanner to the PC and record it using Scanner Recorder, see what time it starts.