Darke County MARCS signal gone

[tomcat2702]

Anyone happen to know a reason for the Darke County controller going offline for the better part of 18 hours now?

I lost the signal for the control channel 774.90625 around 2pm 3/24
I checked on a different setup with different antenna, same thing... I am still pulling in Mercer and Auglaize just fine and can see Van Werts signal as well, but Darke is completely flat gone.

 

[scannerboy02]

I'm assuming you have also tried the alternate control channels for the site?

 

[tomcat2702]

Yes, multiple ones, nothing there.

 

[scannerboy02]

Yes, multiple ones, nothing there.

How about the three other sites in the county?

 

[tomcat2702]

Yes, all of them, it's like it stopped broadcasting. I'm still getting fire and EMS through the mercer controller but no darke co sheriff.

 

[al_35]

From my location, 773.03125(greenville site),still on. 774.28125,(new madison/eaton site on but barely readable. 853.7875(union city) on but barely readable, 774.90625(osgood), not on. This new marcs ip doesnt go out as far in cloudy/rainy weather.

 

[tomcat2702]

From my location, 773.03125(greenville site),still on. 774.28125,(new madison/eaton site on but barely readable. 853.7875(union city) on but barely readable, 774.90625(osgood), not on. This new marcs ip doesnt go out as far in cloudy/rainy weather.

OSGOOD TOWER 774.90625 was full strength and was my listening tower. I wonder why it suddenly shut down.

 

[al_35]

Hey folks, the osgood tower is back on. But with new control channel, 773.58125.

 

[tomcat2702]

Can confirm. Wonder what that was all about.

 

[west-pac]

Hey folks, the osgood tower is back on. But with new control channel, 773.58125.

That's not a new CC. That freq is the known Alternate Control Channel. I'm curious if the CC has went back to the 774.90625 freq yet.

 

[tomcat2702]

It's still off. I've been unable to get any reason why .90625 went offline.

 

[wa8pyr]

It's still off. I've been unable to get any reason why .90625 went offline.

Does it matter that much? As long as you have the primary control channel and alternate(s) in your scanner, you're good to go; the scanner will just hop to the new CC. The whole thing is transparent, actual users don't even know when the CC changes.

 

[tomcat2702]

Well it matters a bit if you're using an sdr setup and providing multiple feeds and two tone capture and streaming. The curiosity of why there were 5 days where neither frequency was active at all seems relevant to this board.

 

[west-pac]

It's still off. I've been unable to get any reason why .90625 went offline.

Who did you ask?.. Did you call the mayor? Did you call dispatch?.. the fire chief?..the local barber?

 

[wa8pyr]

Well it matters a bit if you're using an sdr setup and providing multiple feeds and two tone capture and streaming. The curiosity of why there were 5 days where neither frequency was active at all seems relevant to this board.

I can see that.

However, I would have trouble believing that the site was completely down for five days; that would leave a major coverage gap in that area, such that MARCS might bring in one of the TOW sites to fill in (that's a place to check if something like this happens again), unless coverage for their users wasn't really that bad after all.

Otherwise there's not much you can really do; there's no way to predict when there might be a site outage. Real radios will find another site, but all we can do is live with it.

 

[west-pac]

All of the Darke Co sites are licensed for simulcast, so they likely overlap quite a bit.

 

[wa8pyr]

All of the Darke Co sites are licensed for simulcast, so they likely overlap quite a bit.

They might be licensed for simulcast (although I didn't think they were), but they sure aren't set up that way. They're all stand-alone sites with separate frequencies.

If it were truly a simulcast, @tomcat2702 probably wouldn't have lost coverage with his streaming setup.

 

[west-pac]

They might be licensed for simulcast (although I didn't think they were), but they sure aren't set up that way. They're all stand-alone sites with separate frequencies.

If it were truly a simulcast, @tomcat2702 probably wouldn't have lost coverage with his streaming setup.

Of course they're not set up that way, but they are licensed for it. With that being said when they determined the site locations in Darke Co they may have had simulcast in mind accounting for the overlap in signal. Given the Fort Recovery, Celina, and Sidney sites that cover the northern part of Darke Co, along with the Greenville site, subscriber radios likely didn't notice much, if any difference in coverage.

 

[west-pac]

There must be a little bit of enhancement going on. I received the Osgood site, 1.20, and it shows 773.58125 as CC, and 774.90625 as ACC. It appears that the CC's swapped places.

 

[wa8pyr]

Of course they're not set up that way, but they are licensed for it. With that being said when they determined the site locations in Darke Co they may have had simulcast in mind accounting for the overlap in signal. Given the Fort Recovery, Celina, and Sidney sites that cover the northern part of Darke Co, along with the Greenville site, subscriber radios likely didn't notice much, if any difference in coverage.

Not sure where you're getting your info, but they're not licensed for simulcast; there are no common frequencies between any of those sites. The only sites originally intended for simulcast were Columbus and Cleveland; as other counties joined they built out their own simulcast sites. Other counties not originally intended as simulcast have been or will shortly be converted to simulcast, but at the moment Darke doesn't appear to be one of them.

You're correct about the coverage though. Simply simulcasting those four sites wouldn't change coverage too much; the major difference would be reducing both roaming and the number of frequencies needed to cover the entire county.