Columbus City Schools transportation / REM trunk

[16b]

Not long ago I noticed a couple of Columbus City Schools buses outfitted with a UHF antenna in place of the VHF quarter wave that I'm used to seeing, so I started to wonder if they were transitioning to a new system. Didn't see any new licenses issued (this was before the government shutdown), so I started to suspect they might be on an SMR trunk. Today I finally dragged out my SDR and fired up dsdplus and found them operating on several talkgroups on the REM Communications NXDN system.

I started a section on the wiki page for unconfirmed talkgroups. I am going to submit the CCS talkgroups to the database, but will wait until later today or tomorrow to give me a chance to collect more information. I have seen CCS activity on talkgroups 1701-1704 and 1707, so I suspect at least 1705 and 1706 to be part of the channel layout also. RIDs seem to be 6xxx for base radios, 7xxx for buses (where xxx is the bus number), and 8xxx (unknown).

If anyone else has NXDN capability please give this system a listen and help contribute. In an hour or so of monitoring I heard three other talkgroups (besides the CCS ones) that aren't listed in the database; those have been added to the wiki also. I suspect there are a lot more users on it than have been documented.

The CCS VHF LTR trunk is still on the air and I still see the occasional bus with a VHF antenna, so I suspect not all buses have been moved over to the new system yet.

 

[16b]

Also, talkgroup 35 is another school transportation operation, but not Columbus City Schools. There is no radio ID overlap and it sounds like a smaller operation. There are a couple of school districts in Central Ohio that I'm not aware of any identified frequency or radio system for (Hamilton Local Schools comes to mind), or it could be a private school transportation company. If anyone can help identify the user that would be great.

 

[mtindor]

Also, talkgroup 35 is another school transportation operation, but not Columbus City Schools. There is no radio ID overlap and it sounds like a smaller operation. There are a couple of school districts in Central Ohio that I'm not aware of any identified frequency or radio system for (Hamilton Local Schools comes to mind), or it could be a private school transportation company. If anyone can help identify the user that would be great.

If Columbus City Schools is the same as Columbus Public Schools, you may want to update your ticket to ask that the admin to update the main Franklin Co page to reflect where the Columbus Public Schools activity is at now (because it lists an LTR system).