DeKalb Co P25 700mhz system

[officerdave]

talked to one of my part - time guys last night.... he is on the new system with his full time gig and is not happy ….. dead areas , missed calls etc. Looks like EFJ has their work cut out in DeKalb and possibly still in Will Counties . New systems these days seem to require more tweaking

 

[RoninJoliet]

Will Co seems to finally be a little better altho some of there audio is un-even, some very tinny, some loud and low....Still riding around with my H/H scanner many dead spots.....

 

[KB9WUV]

WLBK Local News DeKalb County Sheriff’s officials say the company that put up the county’s new emergency dispatch system won’t get their full payment until all problems are resolved. The new $4 million digital radio system went live last Thursday, and Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Andy Sullivan gave an update to the county board’s Finance Committee Wednesday night. “There are some people that are upset and have concerns, and obviously we’re listening to those and understand those,” says Sullivan. “But we’re working together, and I think that’s an important thing.” Sullivan says there were issues with paging some fire agencies. He says those were resolved Thursday and Friday and pages were followed up with phone calls until then. Most fire agencies could not talk on the system over the weekend. Sullivan says that was caused by all communication being directed at the antenna in Sycamore and was fix Monday evening. There are still some static issues and a dead spot in the northeast part of the county. Sullivan says they’ll keep working with the company behind the system, noting the company doesn’t receive its final payment until the county accepts the system, something Sullivan doesn’t expect until after the new year. Sullivan says there have also been successes. “Even though we had issues on the fire side, Cortland Fire Department had never been able to transmit on a portable radio on the old system, and last Friday night, they were able to transmit on that from their fire station,” says Sullivan. In addition to replacing an aging system, the new radio system is expected to improve transmissions from officers and firefighters when they’re inside of buildings.
(Taken from the CARMA group)

 

[JD21960]

I went there to test it out a few days ago *Tuesday this week. I used my Wishler WS1080 to see if it would work as multiple systems are in play there Starcom21 and now this County System. It actually worked sitting in the Sycamore IL park area, ball fields east of the Golf course. The phase II was loud and clear. A Copper pulled in the lot to check out why I was sitting there, saw I had McDonalds food and cup on dash and continued on satisfied I wasn't a terrorist. ON the move the signal was working in "downtown" Sycamore IL but went to hell as soon as I traveled into Dekalb itself. Was unable to get anything IN Dekalb at all on the WS1080. I drove home on the N.E. roads of the county to see if rural areas were better. No. So it's the same old thing if you use a Wishler for this system. Use a Yagi at home and something else when Mobile.

 

[FFPM571]

The ball fields by the golf course are less than a mile from one of the sites at the Sheriff's department and driving into DeKalb you drove right past the site.

 

[70cutlass442]

Hi guys (perhaps gals), I have been lurking since the inception of the thread and have had little time to listen myself. One thing I recall when speaking to a few of the fire guys a while back is they said they were on a voted system and that allowed them pretty good talk in throughout the county. Apparently now they are only on 3-4 sites? Am I understanding that correctly? how well is talk in now that 2/3rds of the talk in sites have been removed?

 

[Awesomeman92]

Wednesday I took a trip with my computer and SDS200 through the far south part of the county on the way to the Earlville area. SDS200 handled the system like a charm, not a single dropout. I started out using my mobile antenna but was also able to get a good signal using a telescoping whip inside the truck. Unitrunker didn't really show much that hasn't been posted or submitted already, a few new talkgroups but nothing that could be identified, couple with encryption. Fire appears to be operating on VHF and being patched to the system (at least from what I could tell, I only saw 1 RID pop up on the talkgroup for the 2-3 hours I was out there). Fire was operating in P1, I caught a very tiny bit of P1 on the sheriff TG but the vast majority is P2.

Hi guys (perhaps gals), I have been lurking since the inception of the thread and have had little time to listen myself. One thing I recall when speaking to a few of the fire guys a while back is they said they were on a voted system and that allowed them pretty good talk in throughout the county. Apparently now they are only on 3-4 sites? Am I understanding that correctly? how well is talk in now that 2/3rds of the talk in sites have been removed?

Something on that system has definitely changed. I used to have no problem receiving the fire channel at home and now it's a struggle. I have no receive at home anymore on 154.860 either.

 

[JD21960]

Was out there today (Wed) The Unication G5 got it in loud and clear except at 3:45 PM the system got weird and dropped OUT, showed "Entering SITE TRUNKING" warning and went off. Came back on a little while later. They had some trouble hearing some of the dispatches on the Sandwich PD talkgroup. I took 4 videos of the traffic but can't figure out how to get KDEN-live to edit and "mute" the personal data broadcast on a few of them. Same on YouTube. Working on it. I did have one video of no traffic, showing what Unication had for the WACN, RFSS, ID, Control Channel and Sys ID/NAC The frequency in the video is one of the alternate Control Channels I guess, it's different than the one in the RRef database for that system. Crazy day in Dekalb Co. A fight, stabbing and taser deploy by the UP's as well as a kook racing east on I88 from Whiteside Co driving over stop sticks and refusing to come out of his car. State Police chased him from IA border and finally after 4 hours of the entire Interstate being shut down out by mile maker 47 on I88, he surrendered

 

[JD21960]

Today's Control Channel (Wed-9th) was an alternate 771.50625 instead of 769.83125 as listed in the database.

 

[JD21960]

These were done over bluetooth on my car speakers. County Fire comes in fine. Sitting in Portillo's parking lot eating lunch

 

[JD21960]

Something on that system has definitely changed. I used to have no problem receiving the fire channel at home and now it's a struggle. I have no receive at home anymore on 154.860 either.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, I noticed today that 154.860 only has Sandwich and Sycamore still doing traffic as a simulcast there. Nothing else came over today on VHF.
County Fire was loud and clear by me from Waterman. Still working on the system it seems like. My signal dropped out twice showing "Entering SITE TRUNKING" Eventually the SDS 100/200 will be the perfect scanner for that area since 2 different SYSTEMS are in play. I had my Pro96 doing Starcom21 Dekalb SITE for the city and the G5 pager going, testing the new County stuff.

 

[KA9QPN]

There are four sites, detailed on the license for WRCZ994, which is apparently for the link transmitters. There is still no publicly displayed license for the system itself.

 

[ROIPme]

Leland FD was previously dispatched by Dekalb on 153.485. Does anyone know if they moved to the new Dekalb radio system for dispatch?

 

[N9ogs]

Why don't you try searching 769-775 MHz in 6.25 kHz steps. If the system is on the air and you are in range you will find the control channels.

I don't know how accurate the data is for your region but CAPRAD show the following allocated for De Kalb County, IL.

General Use    769.83125    Requested
General Use    769.84375   
General Use    770.30625    Requested
General Use    770.31875   
General Use    771.50625    Requested
General Use    771.51875   
General Use    771.83125    Requested
General Use    771.84375   
General Use    772.10625    Requested
General Use    772.11875   
General Use    772.43125    Requested
General Use    772.44375   
General Use    772.75625   
General Use    772.76875   
General Use    773.40625   
General Use    773.41875   
General Use    773.65625   
General Use    773.66875

That sounds like somebody fed you BS.

Ok, so what am I doing wrong? I live in DeKalb. I load the freqs listed above into my BCD436HP. I hear nothing. I do the freq search as listed above, nothing. I must be doing something wrong. I drove to Sycamore about 1/2 mile from the tower, nothing. I thought I was pretty good at searching for freqs, but this has me stumped.

 

[JD21960]

No need to even do a "search" YOU should be able to download from Sentinel software. The system/site/talkgroups might be in there now. I added everything manually when I listened on my WS1080 *until it crapped out from Simulcast death as usual* I saw they updated the Dekalb County Public Safety data the other day. All the data is listed that you need. You have to build the SYSTEM/SITE/talkgroups in the software and upload to the scanner.
DeKalb County Public Safety Trunking System, , Illinois - Scanner Frequencies

 

[retired25]

I was in the area today, and was unable to get any site information from Unitrunker. I was just looking for channel information and active talkgroups. Is the WACN really 0001?

 

[Awesomeman92]

I was in the area today, and was unable to get any site information from Unitrunker. I was just looking for channel information and active talkgroups. Is the WACN really 0001?

Unless they've changed it in the last 2 weeks or so since I was out there, that's what Unitrunker gave to me.

 

[KA9QPN]

They have been doing some tweaking to the system. Notably, the fire departments are “temporarily” back on VHF due to issues with the system passing paging tones. And Genoa PD is supposedly back on VHF due to reception issues.

 

[FFPM571]

Tweaking to the tune of $365K in more radios and infrastructure....

 

[KA9QPN]

I guess that nobody did any research about the “consulting firm” running the job and the police station that they built in IN that couldn’t be used. Speaks to competence.