Elizabethton Fire Department

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sambo300

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If provoice is currently used in your area, get the upgrade. Some agencies still use it. If you're area isn't using provoice, don't get the upgrade.

There will never be any new systems switching to provoice anywhere in the US, except maybe some tiny esoteric ham radio club; provoice radios will be in museums sooner than later.

Also there is no such thing as "P25 provoice", Provoice was a predecessor to P25 and was used with EDACS systems decades ago.
Nate this just happened I do not believe they were sold a new PROVOICE VOICE SYSTEM in the last few weeks.

Elizabethton

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Police Department uses Encryption on occasion
FrequencyInput
LicenseTypeToneAlpha TagDescriptionModeTag
155.41500156.15000 WPJP871RM100.0 PLELZBTN PDPolice Dispatch ( Primary Paty Hill )FMNLaw Dispatch
155.68500153.86000 WPJP871RM100.0 PLELZBTN PD 2Police Dispatch ( Milligan Repeater )FMNLaw Dispatch
155.94000 WPJP871M100.0 PLELZBTN PDTACPolice TacFMNLaw Tac
460.48750465.48750 WPJP871RM565 DPLELZBTN PD LKPolice Dispatch LinkFMNLaw Dispatch
151.07000153.99500 WQFQ855BM100.0 PLELZBTN FDFire DispatchFMNFire Dispatch
856.96250811.96250 WPUG721RMPD / FD IOPolice / Fire InteropFMEmergency Ops
When you get a chance come to this area and attempt to monitor that analog frequency for the EFD,lol. It's not the old system anymore. Some kind of digital going on there,for sure. And with the upgrades I have for my SDS200....if it isn't encrypted it should be able to decode. Fortunately the $50 I spent for the Pro Voice didn't bankrupt me. Any way bottom line....so far still not getting it.
 

sambo300

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Sounds like they went with P25, DMR or NXDN with Basic Encryption. I am not going to spend over $100 in gas 2 days off without pay to prove a point. Why don't you go to the City Counsel meeting that is held twice a month and ask the ones that control the money.
And what is your point? Besides what I've been saying all along....they're encrypted.
 

K2NWC

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Drove to Elizabethton over the weekend with my BCD436HP and laptop running SDRTrunk. Apparently somewhere along the way, I added the ProVoice (who knows why I did that?) and DMR entitlements to my scanner (but not NXDN, as it turns out). I was still picking up Elizabethton Police and Carter County Sheriff using narrowband analog. Elizabethton Fire is another story... I put the Uniden in discovery mode (limited to the EFD frequency) and it certainly registered the "hits" every time I would hear the digital data burst on SDRTrunk - but it never decoded anything at all. No P25 NAC. No DMR color code. No audio. Didn't even indicate that whatever was being broadcast was encrypted (and trust me... I'm all too familiar with seeing that little ENC pop up in the display around here...). I listened for about 20 minutes. I heard a number of short bursts of digital traffic and then probably two or three times heard a much longer digital transmission *immediately* followed by analog voice traffic. The short bursts I would hear always seemed to be one-off - with no follow-up burst. In other words, the transmission pattern didn't sound like a "conversation" between two parties at all.

I am definitely not an expert with SDRTrunk, but have easily followed P25 traffic on TACN with it and DMR traffic on my own XPR-7550's with it (as well as the local hospitals that use DMR). Never could get it to decode any of the digital traffic on that Elizabethton Fire frequency, regardless of the mode I put it in.
 

KN4EHX

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DMR Capacity Plus perhaps? I gather a 7550 won’t actually let you hear any speech unless you are allowed onto the system. Don’t hold me to that, but that’s what I think. I believe Grainger County uses that as well.
 

K2NWC

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DMR Capacity Plus perhaps? I gather a 7550 won’t actually let you hear any speech unless you are allowed onto the system. Don’t hold me to that, but that’s what I think. I believe Grainger County uses that as well.
Certainly a possibility!

So my 7550s are UHF-banded and EFD is operating in VHF territory. I'm no help on that front unfortunately.

Good question on receive-only on a Cap+ system - and I definitely don't know the answer either. The local hospitals (and a few other businesses) are using DMR systems in conventional mode and I can definitely receive audio from those systems (without affiliating) but have never tried with a Capacity Plus system.

Hearing the analog audio on that frequency - mixed with some obvious digital transmissions - over the weekend totally confused me. Did not expect that at all.
 

sambo300

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The EFD was testing Monday on 151.070 using color code 0, slots 1/2. TGID's 3,6 and 9. While testing ID'd from COMM CTR and EFD1 and EFD2 and PD1. Submitted this info to RR database Monday. They must still be tweaking. And while the test was going on.....using my SDS200 no CAP PLUS or ENCR displayed........just DMR and the TGID and COLOR CODE. This all happened around 1-2 pm Monday 10/11/21.
 

sambo300

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....and if anyone is local....today testing again. 151.070. This seems to be a project for them. Maybe they'll get the bugs worked out soon.
 

sambo300

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A month later and still the DMR for the EFD/EPD is not 100% online, transitioned over yet. I talked to some people that know about the situation and they say the radio company is still fine tuning things. Must be a slow complex process.
 

KN4EHX

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They may have dead spots, they may have to make the system simulcast, they may be waiting on radios or DMR pagers.
For what it is worth, Hawkins County is switching to VHF DMR and their equipment is chilling on a ship waiting to join the rest of us on dry land.
 

sambo300

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Major activity on EFD/EPD today. I think they now may be officially online. Seems that 155.415 EPD and 151.070 EFD are both full-time DMR slots 1/2, color code 0. Mostly TGIDs 1 and 4 showing up.
 
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