Fleetnet in the Muskokas and Manitoulan

[EJB]

It looks like I may be taking a weekend trip up into Bruce Co next weekend. We used to have a cottage up there, but at the time I really did not have much better than a KSMA antenna and we did not go as far as Tobermory.


Over 10 years ago I took my 296 in the car with me and I was able to barely pull in towers on the east side of Georgian Bay. Can't remember what towers they were but maybe they are in Fleetnet Zone 3.

And when we were up in Tobermory I took my scanner on one of the glass bottom boats that go around the islands there and I heard Sudbury CACC talking to a Mantoulin EMS vehicle with a ETA to Sudbury of an hour! That was back in 2004 and it was before EMS in that area were on fleetnet, I heard it on whatever conventional frequency used by that areas CACC.

So, with a Larsen 1/4 wave cut for fleetnet could anyone guess my chances of my scanners locking on a Fleetnet Tower on Manitoulin or when we head east to Georgian Bay, being able to listen to Fleetnet in the Muskokas?

I will be using a 396XT and a HP1 and possibly another radio that I have. I am familiar with the radio range on the Bruce, its rocky, that does not help out radio signals. Also, its pretty heavilly forested still, I got better coverage when we were up there in December (no leaves on hardwood trees) when it was record warm (good atmospheric conditions) than when we would go up there in the other seasons.

It will be a fun trip up Hwy 6, I will go from Charlton to Woodlawn as I drive thru Guelph, then Listowel in the gap between Fegus to Mt.Forest then Durham covers everything till Owen Sound. Then Wiarton and then Dyers Bay when we head up to Tobermory.I plan on recording a ton of RIDS for OPP/MOH stuff.

Any feedback? There aren't a great deal of us in and around the Bruce Co or even Grey but I have had some feedback in the past from some members, and I appreciated it.

 

[VA3QRM]

Bruce 2014

Was near Tobermory; Singing Sands beach area, last year and had some good scanning. Cyprus campground ( National Park ) frequencies were good. Some search and rescue type traffic: missing campers and children. Fleetnet was good with multiple towers and some Zone 3 when there was band enhancement ( tropo ). Maybe with the right antenna? A few years back stayed in Lion's Head; up on the escarpment, and the height made a huge difference. Zone 3 was available the entire time. Enjoy your vacation.

 

[EJB]

Cool!

We used to cottage on the other end of Bruce Rd 9, the road that goes into Lions Head.

Can you remember what towers you were able to pull in?

 

[VA3QRM]

memories

Cool!

We used to cottage on the other end of Bruce Rd 9, the road that goes into Lions Head.

Can you remember what towers you were able to pull in?

Not off the top of my head. Used a 396T last year but now have a HP-1 with GPS and Diamond dual band antenna in the mobile and another HP-1 with the upgrade and a Comet SMA-3 for inside. Any info you come up with on your travels is appreciated. Possibly heading up to the Bruce end of the month.

 

[EJB]

Not off the top of my head. Used a 396T last year but now have a HP-1 with GPS and Diamond dual band antenna in the mobile and another HP-1 with the upgrade and a Comet SMA-3 for inside. Any info you come up with on your travels is appreciated. Possibly heading up to the Bruce end of the month.

We are headed up to the northern part of the Peninsula, I think we are staying between Wiarton and Tobermory.

Like you, the last time we were up there I used a 396T. This time I will have the HP1 and a 396XT, and I will use a 1/4 wave Larsen antenna while mobile and any of the various rubber ducky's I have.

When we head up to Tobermory I will see if I can get the fleetnet towers on Manitoulin and/or sones in the Muskokas when we are along the Georgian side.

I'll take a look at the DB for towers and talkgroups and see how I should go about scanning and building a new system in my scanners.

 

[EJB]

Not off the top of my head. Used a 396T last year but now have a HP-1 with GPS and Diamond dual band antenna in the mobile and another HP-1 with the upgrade and a Comet SMA-3 for inside. Any info you come up with on your travels is appreciated. Possibly heading up to the Bruce end of the month.

What I can tell you about scanning in that area, I wrote an article in the WIki section about Dyers Bay so take a look at that. I know that for my trip up Hwy 6 I use in this order:

Woodlawn (from the 401/6 to Hwy 6)
Then I switch to Listowel when I am north of Fergus. Before Woodlawn was active it was kinda hard to hit any fleetnet tower while north of Guelph up to the Mt.Forest but a friend of mine who doesn't use this site much schooled me in to Listowel, which is reachable thru Wellington Co.

Around this area you then use Durham. This tower does an amazing job anywhere from Northern Wellington to well into Grey County, pretty much right to Owen Sound. Then Wiarton, then Dyers Bay anywhere north of Ferndale.

I think that there are towers in Kincardine and Southampton, this might be used if anyone heads further west to the Huron side, south of Sauble.

The last time I was up there, I did not hear a great deal of Grey and Bruce Co EMS on the London North talkgroup, and any action was generally centered in Grey Co and Southern areas of Bruce. I have never heard a patch while monitoring London N on any tower north of O.Sound.

As for the OPP, the Bruce Pen (6 Romeo), Bruce Co (6 India) and Grey Co (6 Lima) are generally patched. There isn't much activity anywhere north of Wiarton but the OPP police a good part of Bruce Co and some areas of Grey.

I'll keep an eye out for MNR stuff and maybe some MTO.

This time I can run the HP Extreme to see whats going on and use the recording function liberally.

When I get back I will happily submit a report and I still would love some pointers/info on fleetnet in Manitoulin and points north and east.

Eric

 

[EJB]

Thinking Moon River, Parry Sound and the Britt towers?

I have heard the towers in northern Simcoe, Penetang I think from the Georgian Bay shore.

 

[VA3ADP]

I was up in Owen Sound a few weeks back and the coverage was quite exceptional. I had my BCD436HP hooked up to a Hustler mag mount. I used sentinel the night before to create a favourite of Bruce, Grey, and Simcoe counties public safety (including FleetNet).

Coverage was good so I don't think you should have a problem pulling in any towers in that area. OPP was quite active and very interesting, probably cause I haven't been up in the Grey/Bruce area before!

Happy scanning!

Michael



Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

 

[shores]

I just got a bcd436hp and with the built in ducky I was getting excellent reception near Owen sound
I had a good 10 to 15 minutes of dead air Elsinore to saugeen shores before it started picking up the next tower
Is there a tower in inverhuron?
I ďidnt pick much up until I got near kincardine
I have an nmo mount I need to finish I'm sure it would improve reception

 

[slicerwizard]

I just got a bcd436hp

Hello Mr. I am all for detail in the r database but as soon as you see it nxdn, which most people can't decode, we meet again...

and with the built in ducky I was getting excellent reception near Owen sound

Can't imagine why...

I had a good 10 to 15 minutes of dead air Elsinore to saugeen shores before it started picking up the next tower
Is there a tower in inverhuron?
I ďidnt pick much up until I got near kincardine

Again, can't imagine why.

Ok, maybe I can. You've been here ten years and you haven't grabbed these maps yet?

Index of /~phoenix/wap/Fleetnet

I have an nmo mount I need to finish I'm sure it would improve reception

It would be quite the trick to have an external antenna not improve VHF reception. You're pretty much wasting your time with a duck on a scanner in (or out of) a car trying to RX VHF.

 

[sirsmiley]

For some reason I thought Sauble Beach had a repeater...I guess they have a beat repeater at their headquarters off the main street for the officers using UHF as they do foot patrols and ATV patrols regularly and might not have a car.

 

[shores]

Dupe

 

[shores]

Hello Mr. I am all for detail in the r database but as soon as you see it nxdn, which most people can't decode, we meet again...


Can't imagine why...


Again, can't imagine why.

Ok, maybe I can. You've been here ten years and you haven't grabbed these maps yet?

Index of /~phoenix/wap/Fleetnet


It would be quite the trick to have an external antenna not improve VHF reception. You're pretty much wasting your time with a duck on a scanner in (or out of) a car trying to RX VHF.

1) not just nxdn but encrypted for ssps. I'd decode it if it wasn't encrypted but personally have no value in mapping out something I can't hear. The op asked what was listenable while driving on his esy up. He doesn't want to drive with a laptop plotting out talk groups and users on systems he can't actually listen to.

2) I know where those towers are and the service radius shows it should work albeit sketchy, every tower is click able in the rr with the radius shown in red

3) some of us only dabble in radio and spend the bulk of our time and money on other hobbies like sports, guitar, etc. Plus spend a lot of time doing important things like taking care of our elders and dependents.

We don't have countless hours to dedicate to every hobby, and there's no reason to be rude to fellow board members for adding information based on experience, which is what the op was asking for.

 

[EJB]

1) not just nxdn but encrypted for ssps. I'd decode it if it wasn't encrypted but personally have no value in mapping out something I can't hear. The op asked what was listenable while driving on his esy up. He doesn't want to drive with a laptop plotting out talk groups and users on systems he can't actually listen to.

2) I know where those towers are and the service radius shows it should work albeit sketchy, every tower is click able in the rr with the radius shown in red

3) some of us only dabble in radio and spend the bulk of our time and money on other hobbies like sports, guitar, etc. Plus spend a lot of time doing important things like taking care of our elders and dependents.

We don't have countless hours to dedicate to every hobby, and there's no reason to be rude to fellow board members for adding information based on experience, which is what the op was asking for.

Ok, without any malice or nastiness:
re
We had a great trip up north. The Friday evening drive up there was stormy, we hit some weather in the Guelph/Wellington way but after that it was dry and mild, a good deal cooler than what we get here. There is a big difference between a 27c and 33c which was the Sunday temp leaving Wiarton and arriving in Burlington.

Started to monitor when we got out of Guelph, used the Woodlawn tower, gave me pretty good coverage to Fergus then the 396XT and HP1 zoned in on Listowel. I was able to hear Huron and Perth Co OPP and sone London East and north off it. By the time we were going thru Mt.Forest the Durham tower came in very strong. It covered the trip up Hwy6 till we hit Grey Sideroad 9 then we took Grey Hw 18 to avoid Owen Sound back up to Hwy6.

After that the radios focused on Wiarton and as we drove up to Mar, Dyers Bay. We stayed in a motel right off 6 and I was able to pull in both Wiarton and Dyers Bay with a WT antenna.

Last Friday nite was warm and humid, I was stunned what I was able to pick up on the AM dial. I wanted to listen to the Jays game. With all the lightning in the area I lost the FAN590 but I lucked out and found the game on 690. Perfect signal, I was guessing that maybe I was picking up a station in K/W or London, maybe Sarnia. I heard ad's for the Impact and Canadiens. To my shock I was listening to TSN Team690 in Montreal!

I understand well enough that AM signals can be heard over great distances, I used to enjoy DX'ing, Stations in Philly NYC, Chicago, Boston, St,Louis were often enough easy to monitor but I have lived in the GTA for 22 Years now and I have never heard a Montreal station this strong ever. CJAD800 was occasionally weak, CKAC730, a french station would come in but 690, never.Was blown away by this.

As for activity; the South Bruce 6India and Grey 6L were the dominant voice comms with the Bruce Peninsula 6R units the least busy. If it wasn't for Sauble beach I doubt I would have heard anything at all.

When we travelled west of Hwy6 in the Ferndale/Old Womans River area the scanners had trouble getting the Wiarton and Dyers Bay towers as we drove to where we used to have a cottage. Drove to Tobermory for a bit and I tried to hear the two towers on Manitoulin, too noisy. Then we drove south to Lions Head on the east side of the Pen, I hoped to hear a couple of Zone 2 towers in Muskoka and Parry Sound, I was using 2 1/4 Larson whips on my car but even driving right out to the waters edge (Lion's Head juts out into Georgian Bay and is part of the Escarptment, height and a lack of boundary) but I wasn't able to get the towers.

I lucked out that in Cape Croker there was a Pow Wow going on. I heard a 7Romeo unit there.Soft Id;s beginning with 7 are generally for Native peoples reserves. And I heard a good deal of OPP cars in Grey, South Bruce and to a lessor extent, 6 Romeo's on the 'Pen.

Ems was hard to monitor. Didn't really have a good enough signal at times to hear the unit numbers or what County they were based out of. I heard a code 8 for the Wiarton car, Since we were so close to Wiarton at the time we saw the Bruce Ems car head west to Sauble and saw another EMS unit taking a patient in to the hospital there. But for the most part there wasn't a great deal of EMS activity. I wonder if anyone has a good list of EMS units and RID's for the Grey/Bruce area and if you dio would you mind sending it to me?

Last but not least Sauble was busy, and we saw some drones flying up and down. Sauble does have a good deal of light pollution and it made little sense to do some star gaving there so we headed up north back to Myles Bay/Old Womans river. It is pure darkness up there. And there was enough of a breeze to limit the fog that popped up in areas. Let me tell you that the sky was absolutely amazing, Satellites galore, tons and tons of stars, the Milky Way, unbelivable!

So, thats my trip, I expected that the Durham Tower would come booming in from Mt.Forest up to the 6/10 split in Chatsworth.

So aside from Fleetnet I also heard some Fire calls on the Bruce Co channel but generally the low population (much higher on a nice August weekend, tons of people!) and a bit of air traffic.

And my conclusion, it had been 7 years since we were up there. From 2002-8 we would go up there about 5x a year. The population of this area is overwhelmingly white but this time there was a great deal of people of colour, it's so amazing to see! The Bruce Pen is a treasure, it seems as if people are discovering the area, perhaps the cottages in the other cottage country areas are too expensive but I was so happy to see people, either on vacation from the states or other parts of Canada who weren't bland and white like me, lol.

If anyone would like me to write about the towers up there I would be happy to do so in the wiki.

 

[slicerwizard]

1) not just nxdn but encrypted for ssps. I'd decode it if it wasn't encrypted but personally have no value in mapping out something I can't hear.

Mapping it out lets others who come across those signals know what they are. This was already explained to you.

The op asked what was listenable while driving on his esy up. He doesn't want to drive with a laptop plotting out talk groups and users on systems he can't actually listen to.

Nice strawman. No-one tried to feed Eric any information about an encrypted NXDN system.

2) I know where those towers are

"Is there a tower in inverhuron?"

Uh huh.

and the service radius shows it should work albeit sketchy, every tower is click able in the rr with the radius shown in red

And do those radii reflect the performance of a hobbled scanner with a duck in a car? No. Not even close.

3) some of us only dabble in radio and spend the bulk of our time and money on other hobbies like sports, guitar, etc. Plus spend a lot of time doing important things like taking care of our elders and dependents.

We don't have countless hours to dedicate to every hobby, and there's no reason to be rude to fellow board members for adding information based on experience, which is what the op was asking for.

Your added information was that you got good reception near two known transmitter sites. That's not information, that's just adding noise to the conversation. Not a whole lot different than your encrypted NXDN comments.

 

[VA3QRM]

Sounds good Eric. I too have been going to the Bruce for many (30) years. Scanning since 1990. Will be heading up to the Cape Hurd area soon. Bringing the HP-1 and the 396T but not my vehicle with antennas and ham gear....leaving the HF radio and dipoles home too. Hoping for good WX, clear skies and maybe some Aurora.

 

[VA3QRM]

Enjoying West Bay and Dyer's Bay towers.Tropo helping both. Noticing the 396T has better receive thsn the HP-1. At least here under these conditions.

 

[EJB]

Happy u are having a good time.

I guess that outside of Sauble and Wiarton there is little if any 6 ROMEO'S on the air. And the same would go for EMS on the London N tg.