Gastonia & Gaston Co

[yardbird]

I was just curious to see if anybody is experiencing the same problem as I am having with hearing Gastonia & Gaston Co. Frequencies.

I have Gastonia Fire & Gaston Co. Fire & EMS progammed in my Spectra in my Explorer.

I have noticed they have very low voice modulation, I have to turn up the volume in order to hear them, but when another agency talks, it blows me out of my truck.

I was just wandering if any on else is having the same trouble

Thanks

David
KI4GBJ

 

[blp3]

Yes, I am in Catawba Co. I use to hear them loud and clear, but now they are a whisper.

 

[jeffmulter]

I noticed the same over a month ago, and noted that the repeater licenses - atleast for EMS / 155.235 - are relatively low power ... I'm thinking the max ERP is 40 watts.

They might have also upgraded to narrowband, so setting a scanner to NFM might help balance audio when scanning 155.235 and 154.235 with other channels.

Nowadays, Greenville County Fire walks all over Gaston County EMS on 155.235 MHz.


Jeff Multer

 

[yardbird]

Thanks for the replies. I thought maybe it was just my radios.

Jeff, you are right about 155.235. I use to be in Davidson County, who uses the same frequency for EMS & Rescue dispatch then all of a sudden, Gaston County would just start talking right over them.

Same thing happed with my base scanner at home. Now I hear Davidson pretty well, and Gaston Co. not so well

Thanks again

David
KI4GBJ

 

[CCHLLM]

The modulation profile for Gaston's stuff is right on the money for narrowband, and my HT1250 seems to like it on the 12.5 kHz setting rather than the 20 kHz setting, so all I can assume is that Gaston must have moved to narrowband.

 

[blp3]

Gaston is much clearer now for some reason.

 

[qball]

Simulcast

Gaston Co has "upgraded" most of their Police, Fire, and EMS channels to simulcast and narrowband. They have been doing their upgrades over the last year. They also moved EMS over to a repeater.

 

[bonus1331]

When you say narrowband, do you mean they are now broadcasting on NFM rather than FM?

 

[qball]

I can't speak to that in scanner terms. They are now using a 12.5KHz channel bandwidth rather than 25KHz. I would assume that it would be narrow FM.

 

[Grog]

Just a bump, there is a seller on ebay selling some UHF MT1000s he got from Gaston County, as well as some fire related stuff. I know one of the smaller towns bought HT1250s to replace their HT1000s awhile ago as well.

When I program my Yaseu 2600 to Narrow FM instead of Wide FM, County fire & EMS does come in better.