FCPS Bus Systems/Frequencies

[dudeagle]

Ever since getting into radio, I have been curious about what systems FCPS uses. Specifically, I always hear radio chatter on my school bus, and have been interested on what they are saying. I had touched on this a tiny bit last year, but now I'm set on actually getting it to work. Please keep in mind that I am VERY new to this. I have never worked with digital radio. Anyways, after doing some research, I decided that I would be able to use my raspberry pi 4 and an RTL-SDR Blog V4 in order to listen in, beacuse it had everything I needed. When I got it, I made the mistake of asking ChatGPT for instructions on what program to use, and then asking for instillation instructions. Eight hours later, over two days, I looked for a YouTube video and did the instillation start to finish in five minutes.

The actual reason I'm creating this is to ask if anyone can give me some clarification. Because I don't have any experience with digital radio, I don't know what I'm looking at. Now that I have My Pi-4 working with SDRTrunk (and I have confirmed that I can receive NOAA weather, though I cant hear it even though I typed in the frequency, I can see it coming through on the graphs), I've been going through radio reference, trying to find info from actual people. The problem is that because FCPS is so broad and information ranges from now the early 2000's, I'm not sure exactly what is right. I found these links:

Fairfax County SmartNet System Magically Back Up and in FailSoft?

Hey All, Fairfax County began the decommission of their P16 system almost 3 years ago. The system was shut off in December of 2023 and removed. Today, it appears the system is... back and in FailSoft mode? all frequencies are keyed and there is no control channel. Anyone got any ideas? We...

forums.radioreference.com

Fairfax County Public Schools TIII DMR system

I have found a DMR TIII system being used by FCPS, seems to just be the school busses. The callsign is WRJI389: network ID, site, LSN, freq 2, 1.2, 691, 855.3125 2, 1.2, 1019, 857.3625 2, 1.2, 1091, 857.8125 [CC] 2, 1.2, 1343, 859.3875 2, 1.2, 1603, 861.0125 2, 1.2, 1607, 861.0375 2, 1.2, 1735...

forums.radioreference.com

Fairfax County School Buses Trunking System, Falls Church, Virginia

Fairfax County School Buses Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

Fairfax County School Buses Site: Falls Church

Fairfax County School Buses Site: Falls Church Details

www.radioreference.com

Fairfax County (P16) Gone?

Hey All, Can anyone confirm that it seems the control channel for the Fairfax County SmartNet || system has changed to the 853.575 frequency. I live very close to the transmitter and can't seem to see the listed control channel. Also, even when I tune to this, I cannot get trunk recorder, or SDR...

forums.radioreference.com

Fairfax County, Virginia (VA) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference (It says school buses in general in the last entry of the first block)

The only other information I have personally is that I think I remember hearing "Area 1" on the radio, and by looking at it while getting in, it LOOKS like a Mototrbo XPR 5000e Series. (I just looked at the radio and then compared it to images I saw when searching "Motorola bus radio" on Google)

Can anyone give me clarification on what I need to do to listen to the bus frequencies?

 

[dudeagle]

I got it (kind of)
I heard one bus frequency, area 4, so I think I'm on the right track. I'm going to try and find all the rest of them.

Next up: other trunked systems in my area!

 

[io401]

You're in the beginning stages of learning a ton of super awesome stuff about radio. Enjoy it!

 

[dudeagle]

You're in the beginning stages of learning a ton of super awesome stuff about radio. Enjoy it!

I will, It's pretty cool!

 

[KJ5GZR]

I did this with my school busses. Best part about it is I found the frequency listings randomly while roaming RadioReference in class.

 

[dudeagle]

I did this with my school busses. Best part about it is I found the frequency listings randomly while roaming RadioReference in class.

That's cool! I forget when I originally found my listings, but I was able to just plug in the frequencies on the correct mode and It just seemed to work! I am also guilty of looking through RadioReference listings in class.

 

[KJ5GZR]

My bus was a hour late to pick us up at school yesterday, and I regretted not bringing my radio to see what was going on...
Needless to say, it is currently sitting in my bag under my desk, and i'm just waiting until dismissal to take it out.
Having a $350 Anytone 878 in my bag at school makes me uncomfortable, so I may get a SDR dongle that I can access from a app or website on my phone while it runs at home.
Being DMR, when any of the busses key up on the Motorola's, it also sends the radio ID, just like Ham DMR. I may try to figure out which radio ID's are on what busses, and the corresponding routes. Gonna be a pain to figure out too...

 

[dudeagle]

Sorry for the late response! Funny enough, I've thought about how I could bring my SDR to school. I didn't even think about running it at home and then connecting to it, so I'll look into that. I'm still trying to figure out how I can get the frequency of my schools handhelds withought bringing a radio in (We have metal detectors).
I have a very base level understanding on the software I use to decode the buses, and only do the bare minimum to be able to hear them. I do get the info about ID's, so maybe I'll try doing the same as you; If I can get my SDR running at home, and then get on the bus when the radio starts, that may be a good way to correspond the ID. Also, I'm not sure how you have managed to avoid questions while walking around with a decently large handheld tranceiver while at school..

 

[KJ5GZR]

I don’t walk around with my handheld, it stays in my bag until I get on the bus. Texas has a house bill restricting personal comm. devices, like phones, pagers (wait, pagers?😂) and two-way radios at school, and I would raid the office like a bat out of hell to get it back at the end of the day. I use a spreadsheet to list the bus id, what route, and the date. This is a pain, because I rely on the busses calling with the number outside on the door of the bus, not something else. My own bus hasn’t even used the radio the entire year.

I’m also trying to confirm the outdated frequency of my school ht’s. Listing says anolog fm, but it’s older Motorola’s. I sorta know the dude that manages the license, but it expired ten years ago…

 

[dudeagle]

I'm sure the reason that they specified all communication devices (including pagers) was because if they didn't, there would be kids bringing in anything that connects to the internet. From what I'm aware, Virginia only specifies phones, so we have our fair share of kids using iPads.

My SDR is currently not working, but I plan on continuing listening to the buses when I can fix it or get a replacement. I also have a sheet with some bus information, but it's very simple, and I plan to work on that as well. Good luck with yours!
The most I have to work with for my schools ht's come from my own observations, over about a week of looking at the radios and making observations each time, I narrowed it down to the Motorola XPR 6550 VHF. I also know that the display shows "Admin". Besides that, I have no info.