Calgary Area Radio Discussions (Split Thread)

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masonb

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Moderator Note: Split off from Cochrane trunk system discussion thread


Wow lots of info there, thanks Jay911

By Alpha 5 & 6 I meant the RCMP frequency's 155.580 (123.0) & 155.565 (131.8) and by Chestermere fire I meant there conventional frequency (413.96250)... not the CDR system. RMES R1 & R2 I get very clear reception as well. What you said makes complete sense, I should wait till the bugs are figured out.
 
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Jay911

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Alpha 5 and 6? Yoinks, where are you getting them? I think A6 is Canmore, no? A5 is ... Nanton? Sundre?

I get A6 sometimes IF I'm lucky, in my car with the magmount, when driving over 1x22. :) And yeah, Chestermere just booms in on their conventional all the way into Bragg. A couple of times, during our training nights (Redwood FD and Chestermere FD both train (or trained) on Tuesday nights), we've talked to them when we're out in our area. :)
 

masonb

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Interesting,

Yea that Alpha-5 I still have no idea where its coming from. I went out to Canmore today & I was getting Alpha-4 with 1 bar of reception, still got Alpha-5 even by Exshaw & Alpha-6 was booming (go figure). Funny thing I was also getting Alpha-2 from south Calgary out there aswell, little scratchy though. I also got one of the RMES repeaters (151.4) as well out near Exshaw. Im a little disappointed at the performance of the CDR system out there, only got it till around that new Indian Casino on Morley adjacent from the Trans Canada. Do the Alberta Sheriff's use the CDR system out there or do they move to iDEN? I know they use the CDR when around Cochrane, Airdrie, Chestermere & Black Diamond/Okotoks.

Isn't the CDR system supposed to make it out to Big Horn somewhere? Maybe I was just behind a large hill.

I found lots of weird side channels around Exshaw for the Rangers & Co's I believe, shoulda taken note on the frequency's but its a little hard to write & drive without running into a Big Horn Sheep.
 
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Jay911

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masonb said:
Interesting,

Yea that Alpha-5 I still have no idea where its coming from. I went out to Canmore today & I was getting Alpha-4 with 1 bar of reception, still got Alpha-5 even by Exshaw & Alpha-6 was booming (go figure). Funny thing I was also getting Alpha-2 from south Calgary out there aswell, little scratchy though.

I'm thinking A5 is Sundre in that case. Not a stretch to pick them up from there, if you can still get A4 and A2 in that location.

masonb said:
I also got one of the RMES repeaters (151.4) as well out near Exshaw.

Nice! :) The PL/CTCSS code on both our repeaters is 151.4 .. the only radio traffic I heard today (while trying to sleep, working tonight!) was on our Channel 1... my bro-in-law taking one of our trucks in for service. :)

masonb said:
Im a little disappointed at the performance of the CDR system out there, only got it till around that new Indian Casino on Morley adjacent from the Trans Canada. Do the Alberta Sheriff's use the CDR system out there or do they move to iDEN? I know they use the CDR when around Cochrane, Airdrie, Chestermere & Black Diamond/Okotoks.

Actually, all the Sheriffs - the ones doing traffic enforcement - are on iDEN. There are patches from their iDEN talkgroups into the Calgary system so that they can communicate with CPS and the other users of the Calgary system. The only Sheriffs that are on the Calgary system are the ones doing court duties in downtown Calgary, and a handful of others like the ones who go to execute warrants, etc.

masonb said:
Isn't the CDR system supposed to make it out to Big Horn somewhere? Maybe I was just behind a large hill.

I know I have been out with fire trucks that can get it right to Seebe, but that'd be a stretch with a scanner. In fact, most of the time, getting onto the wrong side of Scott Lake Hill puts us in a dead spot right away. You may be thinking of the fact that Bighorn is on the Calgary system... that's accomplished using a link between their VHF conventional network and an 800MHz mobile/base radio permanently tuned to C16. That link is high up on a tower in the Ghost/Benchlands area northwest of Cochrane, so it's got a good line-of-sight into the trunk system.

masonb said:
I found lots of weird side channels around Exshaw for the Rangers & Co's I believe, shoulda taken note on the frequency's but its a little hard to write & drive without running into a Big Horn Sheep.

I agree! If I'm going on a frequency hunting mission, I often take along a laptop and plug the scanner's computer control/programming cable into it. Even if the audio isn't going into the computer, it'll still log frequency info and time/date for me - especially on something like ARC396PRO along with, of course, a BCD396T. Just make sure you don't screw around with the laptop while driving - leave it shut and let it do its work; you can check it when you pull over and stop, or get home.
 

masonb

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Hmm, I bet your right Jay911 that Alpha-5 probably is Sundre. I just never hear their 20 when they do a T-stop. I believe that I was listening to the RMES 2 --> the rig-to-rig tac comm. I was listening to something to do with a wonky computer or something in one of the rigs. That 412.7375 looks familiar, but it could have possibly been 413.8375. Do the RMES channels bounce off that new Cochrane system to make it out that far? Speaking of which I never herd a peep out of Cochrane while out there, musta been really quiet today. I never knew that the Sheriffs relied all upon iDEN system, makes sense why you don't hear them sometimes; iDEN is untraceable isn't it? Speaking of patching up with CPS, have you ever herd anything on Interop Bravo-3 or Bravo-4 in the 35*** range from CDR? Im assuming it can hook up to Bravo-2, Alpha-4, Alpha-2, Alpha-15, Bravo-10, Alpha-1 ect.... everything relatively close to Calgary. Im also curious as to how patches work on the PACS system, does the voice go through a land line to control & then re-casted from the repeater or is it all through the air? Thats also interesting that the VHF freq's get linked to the 800MHz C16 Rural, all this linking and such is neat stuff! I also think next time I go out for a stroll im going to get the inverter going & hook up the ARC software aswell. Im 99% sure I came across a few freq's that aren't listed in the database. Speaking of database, sorry for not getting those COP channels dealt with, (been kinda busy).

Oh and I got another question, does the Sheriff communicate with the RCMP through phone, a patch through to PACS from CDR or do they just have a PACS radio system in their car along with the CDR? Also, how does this iDEN stuff work, is it like talking into a MIKE phone or is it somehow put into radio form?
 
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Jay911

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masonb said:
I believe that I was listening to the RMES 2 --> the rig-to-rig tac comm. I was listening to something to do with a wonky computer or something in one of the rigs.

Ok, I didn't hear that, I must've been in slumberland. :)

masonb said:
Do the RMES channels bounce off that new Cochrane system to make it out that far?

Nope, we're just lucky.. ;) Our main antenna points pretty much straight towards Airdrie from Bragg Creek - there's an antenna array on Big Hill Springs Road (look up XJJ517 in the TAFL for the lat/long) that has almost all the Rocky View & area channels on it, and condenses it into a microwave link to be transmitted to the Rocky View offices on 32 Av NE Calgary, where it then goes by landline cable to Rotary Park, just north of downtown, and enters the network for the city dispatch center's radio network. Our secondary channel points from the firehall more-or-less towards West Bragg Creek, and as luck would have it, has tremendous reach down into K-Country East. Routinely, we will have someone at our station monitor R2 for trucks' activities and then relay it to dispatch on R1, and vice versa.

masonb said:
Speaking of which I never herd a peep out of Cochrane while out there, musta been really quiet today.

I know the ambulance was out a few times today and Fire was out between 1530 and 1600 for sure. And the radio guys were fiddling with one of the Tac repeaters (.1625 I think) all afternoon.

masonb said:
iDEN is untraceable isn't it?

Yes, for all intents and purposes, iDEN can't be scanned. Besides the fact that it's in a digital format that scanners don't deal with, it uses TDMA protocol, which essentially allows multiple conversations on the same frequency at the same time, kind of time-shared multiple times per second. It would be the same as scanning all the channels of a trunk system conventionally with no way of picking the conversation you wanted to hear. That's a really simplified example and probably not 100% correct, but it gets the gist of the concept to you. :)

masonb said:
Speaking of patching up with CPS, have you ever herd anything on Interop Bravo-3 or Bravo-4 in the 35*** range from CDR? Im assuming it can hook up to Bravo-2, Alpha-4, Alpha-2, Alpha-15, Bravo-10, Alpha-1 ect.... everything relatively close to Calgary.

I personally haven't heard any patches on those channels. I don't recall if my Unitrunker setup has ever noticed a hit on either of them, either. I'm also not exactly sure how the patches work. There is a mobile radio on the CPS dispatch supervisor's desk with RCMP frequencies programmed into it, but I don't think that's how it works. There is some kind of landline data link that the RCMP can call into and link up their dispatch center in Red Deer with the CPS radio network here. That, IIRC, is how the patches usually work. Furthermore, the two units that go out of the city most often - C-FCPS and C-FHWC, aka HAWC1 and HAWC2 - have RCMP PACS radios as well as two CPS radios (usually one kept on Fire/EMS, one kept on CPS).

masonb said:
Oh and I got another question, does the Sheriff communicate with the RCMP through phone, a patch through to PACS from CDR or do they just have a PACS radio system in their car along with the CDR?

I haven't had the chance to see a Sheriffs' vehicle up close yet. My understanding is that they have PACS radios. I believe they are "Tango" units, i.e. 3T4 etc.

They do not have radios for the Calgary (753f) system - the patching for that is all done in the Calgary system's infrastructure itself.

masonb said:
Also, how does this iDEN stuff work, is it like talking into a MIKE phone or is it somehow put into radio form?

MiKE phones are just an iDEN radio coupled with a cellphone body and functionality. Calgary Transit uses iDEN as well. TELUS (and the other iDEN providers, like Nextel/Sprint in the States) make all sorts of radios for the iDEN network, looking much like "normal" radios.
 

HDMechanic

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masnob
Nice questions their. You should join us on thursday night at the North Hill Dinner for the meetup. Be nice to meet you and hear some more of your questions and hear the ansewers we come up with. I enjoy learning new things about scanning.
 

masonb

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I wish I could have some good radio talk, but I have exams left & right for engineering this semester. On another note, that Cochrane system seems to be working way better today than before. 424.3125 (123.0) was coming in real clear around Calaway today, least be said I was impressed at the noticeable difference. No static or anything was plaguing the scanner & I was at 2 bars reception. Maybe in the next bit they can tweak it a bit better.

Jay911, where is that Repeater supposed to cover, down to Elbow Valley? Next time im out I'll sit around there and see what hops up.
 

Jay911

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3125 is supposed to handle the city. It's at the 90m ski jump at COP. 3125, 4125, and eventually 422.925 when it comes down out of Waiparous, will be all linked together so any comms on any of them get transmitted to the other.
 

masonb

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Oh yea I forgot that Cochrane had that stuff over there. Even in my basement I get .3125 (123.0) its pretty good. Was it always at the top of COP or was it moved there just recently? Never thought twice about those repeaters since the freq's were always locked out on my scanner.

.925 is up in Waiparous... thats a stretch. And also those EMS channels are going to be able to patch into other CDR radios to get in talk groups if say there was a huge pile up eastbound trans Canada near the city limits that requires lots of manpower & C16 is plugged with everyone. Can they link into the 15*** series tgid's on the Tri-Services?
Possibly in the future im guessing, since they still are still tweaking now it could happen.
 

Jay911

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3125 was always on COP. It was an MPT1327 trunk site that was partnered with the main site. When the voice traffic was active, the control channel would actually stop running and voice traffic would go on the "control channel". This is called Voice On Control.

And the Waiparous channel was because Cochrane Fire and EMS have contracts for areas up that way. Bighorn Fire services most of the area as well, but the next closest ambulance is Canmore. (Nakoda doesn't really come off the reserve very often.) So Cochrane needed comms up that way. With the redeployed frequencies and stronger power, that's not a concern any more, but coverage in the treed/foothills-y area of Bragg Creek is. So 422.925 will be moved south eventually.

As for patching, we tried that last night. It SHOULD work, but it's not, right now. Ultimately, it will.
 

masonb

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This is a question aimed more for Jay911,

I picked up dispatch talking to station 71 (Springbank) this morning on 161.5950 (unknown tone). Its not in Calgary's database, nor Rocky View nor Redwood Meadows. I cannot remember what little section I picked out this frequency from, but I have herd it active more than once, just this morning I caught something to give me an idea of where it is.
 

Jay911

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Hi there -

That's the Ghost repeater for Bighorn Emergency Services. Bighorn's dispatching functions are accomplished by a permanent cross-patch between their VHF channels and C16 on the DRS (753f). I shouldn't say the patch is 'permanent', but it'll be up more than 95% of the time. Bighorn can shut down the patch from their end on a temporary basis, but rarely does so unless activity on C16 is overwhelming their channel at an inopportune time (i.e. middle of the night, etc).

Bighorn has three stations:

67 - Ghost River, aka Benchlands - on Hwy 940 (40) just south of the Summer Village of Waiparous
68 - Jamieson - on Jamieson Rd at Twp Rd 264
69 - Exshaw - in the Exshaw townsite

The tone for 161.595 should be 123.0, IIRC. I believe there is a second "channel" Bighorn crews can use which is simply a different tone on the same channel, which allows them to talk amongst themselves without broadcasting to all of the rest of us on C16.
 

masonb

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Ah thanks once again Jay911 !

I should really invest in a premium membership so I can look these things up for myself.
 
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