Complied List of Jurisdictions Planning New Radio Systems

[ThePhotoGuy]

Howard County's Proposed Budget.

$5.9 million to complete replacement and upgrade of public safety radio system

https://www.howardcountymd.gov/News/ArticleID/1135/News032918b

 

[maus92]

Anyone know the status of Wicomico and Ocean City's new systems? I would think OC would want to be up before Summer?

It seems Wicomico County was delinquent in filing construction notifications, but the FCC took it easy on them - unlike Cecil County. Ultimately the FCC granted a wavier. Note that Wicomico says they are already using the frequencies (unclear if they just added them to the current system, or if they are using them in P25 mode,) or if they have completed construction yet.

 

[guyiv]

They have at least some of them up and running. I don’t remember what the CC is off the top of my head. There is very little activity on them.


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[maus92]

On my wardriving expedition mentioned elsewhere, I did some searching for the new Wicomico P25 system, and found it. Wicomico is licensed for 10 800 freqs using WPMU653. Their current system is actively using six of those freqs. The other four are being used for the new system, presumably for testing. I did not see any activity on the new system other than BSI. Current details for the new system:

WACN: BEE00
SysID: 8EA
Mod: C4FM
MFID: Motorola
Voice: P2
TDMA
Site: 001-001

There is a peer / neighbor site 001-002

Site freqs:
856.7125 primary cc
857.9875 alt cc
856.9625 alt cc
858.2375 alt cc

 

[Mark]

Recent letter March 23 from FCC to Cecil denied extension as filed 2 months too late
and license is terminated and don't use those new freqs till you start over and reapply.
Guess Cecil will start over and RFP again.

 

[maus92]

Recent letter March 23 from FCC to Cecil denied extension as filed 2 months too late
and license is terminated and don't use those new freqs till you start over and reapply.
Guess Cecil will start over and RFP again.

The state is building - or has already built a new tower site in Cecilton, so maybe they might join FiRST instead.

 

[guyiv]

On my wardriving expedition mentioned elsewhere, I did some searching for the new Wicomico P25 system, and found it. Wicomico is licensed for 10 800 freqs using WPMU653. Their current system is actively using six of those freqs. The other four are being used for the new system, presumably for testing. I did not see any activity on the new system other than BSI. Current details for the new system:



WACN: BEE00

SysID: 8EA

Mod: C4FM

MFID: Motorola

Voice: P2

TDMA

Site: 001-001



There is a peer / neighbor site 001-002



Site freqs:

856.7125 primary cc

857.9875 alt cc

856.9625 alt cc

858.2375 alt cc

I haven't gotten much more activity over the last week's. They where doing testing quite a few weeks ago, but not much more since.


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[troymail]

On my wardriving expedition mentioned elsewhere, I did some searching for the new Wicomico P25 system, and found it. Wicomico is licensed for 10 800 freqs using WPMU653. Their current system is actively using six of those freqs. The other four are being used for the new system, presumably for testing. I did not see any activity on the new system other than BSI. Current details for the new system:

WACN: BEE00
SysID: 8EA
Mod: C4FM
MFID: Motorola
Voice: P2
TDMA
Site: 001-001

There is a peer / neighbor site 001-002

Site freqs:
856.7125 primary cc
857.9875 alt cc
856.9625 alt cc
858.2375 alt cc

In the area for the weekend - picked up the main Wicomico site (1-1) from Rt 13 at the MD/VA border. Also found the neighbor site which I believe is in the far western end of the county in an area called Bivalve...

Also gathered info on the West Ocean City site as well....

 

[troymail]

Really not super thrilled about this Worcester county simulcast system.... seeing lots of signal fluctuation on the G5. .. much more than I see on FiRST but that may be partly because I'm fairly close the the Berlin Barrack... not certain at this point where the Worcester County towers are relative to my location.

Curious to see how systems in the Baltimore/PG area look since my last trip (February) and the older firmware. In the past, those systems always looked and sounded really good.

 

[emtLarmy15]

Worcester towers are Berlin barrack, central site ln, nassawango, Klej grange, pocomoke water... mystic harbor is not online. It was turned on by generator for some basic stuff but turned off when the generator turned off

 

[troymail]

I thought the barrack had a tower.... well, then, I don't understand why the signal isn't as good as FiRST... other than Motorola vs. Harris...

With the stock antenna, I get 3 bars on the county system with an occasional 4 and sometimes it fades. I get rock solid bars for the Worcester site of FIRST and 1-2 bars for the FIRST OC site.

With the RS800, 1st OC goes to 3-4 bars and both FIRST aND the county are solid...

With the RS800, I'm getting 3-4 bars for the Wicomico system as well as the West OC site of Ocean City... but out of range for the main OC system site (assuming it is up).

 

[emtLarmy15]

Could be that the pager just doesn’t see the signal as well... based on what I saw the other night, the signal is better than -56 dB at the barrack from Worcester.

 

[troymail]

Oh, and getting 1 bar of NASA Wallops Flight from west of the barrack also! Sounds great!

 

[maus92]

Just a few notes on the First system on the G5. I can receive the Anne Arundel cell eastward to about Chesapeake College. Westward, I can receive the Talbot cell in St. Claire.

I've reconfigured First on my G5 to conform to First zones, so all Zone 1 sites are configured to a single knob position, if that makes sense. I've split the G5 zones into regions: UES, LES, NCR, Central, Southern, Western. I'm loading the counties in their respective regions, and loading the appropriate First zone into that region, and programming the appropriate First TGs for the region.

I'm still experimenting with the optimal configuration for this radio, but the P2 upgrade works well with the First system.

 

[troymail]

I'm still experimenting with the optimal configuration for this radio, but the P2 upgrade works well with the First system.

I agree - I've been listening to the Worcester site of FiRST all morning.... nice and smooth...

I'm still not sure what's up with Worcester - sometimes the audio seems like it is overloading the radio - volume swings from user to user and talkgroup to talkgroup. At times, the voice seems like it fades in and out during a transmission - something I've not seen on other systems.

I determined yesterday afternoon that I wasn't receiving the main OC system site from here because they changed the RFSS/site from 10/10 to 30/30 since the last time I was here (February?). I did see at least one radio key up briefly on that system/site yesterday but no real activity.

Headed up to southern Delaware later today... curious to see what I can receive from FiRST up that way. I was locking onto the Dorchester site of FiRST from here in Berlin earlier today ... pretty amazing - from here, I've received Wallops Island and Dorchester FiRST....

At this point, my trip north of Baltimore has been canceled but at least I'll get a chance to monitor FiRST up to Baltimore along with PG, etc.....

 

[troymail]

Confirmed the Wicomico 'Bivalve' site this morning... will submit shortly.

 

[Mr_Boh]

Confirmed the Wicomico 'Bivalve' site this morning... will submit shortly.

I am getting confused by the setup of the radio system in Worcester/Ocean City -

So are they now doing two separate simulcasts, one for the county, and one for Ocean City and having the Wicomoico site you reference act as the bridge between the two geographical areas?

Also what is the advantage of the them being two separate systems unlike before where it was one system with separate sites? I mean, I am sure the answer is political, but was curious if there was a more practical reason for them to set it up this way.

 

[troymail]

I am getting confused by the setup of the radio system in Worcester/Ocean City -

So are they now doing two separate simulcasts, one for the county, and one for Ocean City and having the Wicomoico site you reference act as the bridge between the two geographical areas?

Also what is the advantage of the them being two separate systems unlike before where it was one system with separate sites? I mean, I am sure the answer is political, but was curious if there was a more practical reason for them to set it up this way.

Worcester, Ocean City, and Wicomico are all separate systems.

Worcester appears to be a single simulcast site covering the entire county.

Ocean City has two sites - the main site is a (3 tower?) simulcast using 700 Mhz frequencies - the west Ocean City 800 Mhz site might be simulcast (the 800 license lists transmitters on 65th and Race Track Rd).

Wicomico has two sites - the main county (6 tower?) simulcast and the stand-alone site in Bivalve.

I believe the Worcester and Ocean City EDACS system was two sites that were really more or less two separate systems which were linked. The County and OC P25 systems can still be linked.

 

[Mr_Boh]

My bad for squeezing Wicomico in the mix. Get my W counties confused.

So the additional site is just for covering West Ocean City (which makes sense). Guessing there was some FCC restriction or cost issue from just lumping them into the same simulcast and just increasing total capacity.

 

[troymail]

My bad for squeezing Wicomico in the mix. Get my W counties confused.

So the additional site is just for covering West Ocean City (which makes sense). Guessing there was some FCC restriction or cost issue from just lumping them into the same simulcast and just increasing total capacity.

The OC west site could be do to some other signal/power limitations for the main site but it also could be for redundancy .... I'm sure someone knows -- we can only speculate.