Gre 500 p25 problems oakland

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StephenCampi

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GRE PSR-500, Oakland CA

Purchased GRE 500 Scanner in Dec., preprogrammed by scannermaster for Alameda Co, to pick up rebanded Oakland,CA PD and Fire.

Worked fine for a month, then Oakland P25 police/fire stopped receiving. Noted that the "T" was no longer appearing on screen.

Purchased Blu-Tel Arc 500 software and subscription to Radio Reference to reload.

While we were buying software, we noted that firmware was updated to V2.1, on 1/12/ 2012. We installed and this fixed the problem for a week. Went out again last week.

We downloaded and saved scanner data to a file. We downloaded our local agencies to a new file using Arc 500 and RR and uploaded that file to the scanner. That did not fix the P25 problem. We tried reloading the firmware update; no luck. We uploaded the original install file; no luck.

Any thoughts on what might be causing us to lose our trunked digital P25 stations? As I mentioned, it seems that a T appears on the screen when they are working and does not appear when they are not.

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but I'm new to digital.
 

GrumpyAeroGuy

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Not sure this will help, but.....

when you are scanning the offending P25 system, if you see the "G A" to the right where of where the "T" appears, then you have global attenuation enabled. If it IS enabled, press FUNC followed by ATT.

If that was the case, you will see only a "G" rather then "G A". If this is your situation, try the suggestion above and report back.

I monitor a P25 system locally as well. When attenuation is activated ("GA"), I lose the trunking control channel like, yesterday. When that's gone, well, you get nothing.

Maybe this will help....
 

DaveIN

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You must have selected the "A"ttenution button. G is for global. This with the attenuation means all frequencies in the radio are attenuated.
 

mikey60

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My guess would be that you might be missing a control channel... If the control channel isn't programmed in, and the system switches to a different one, what's described sounds about right.

Mike
 

GrumpyAeroGuy

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another thought. If you have the control channels programmed correctly... could you have dropped the scanner and damaged the antenna w/o knowing it?

I'm shooting in the dark here, but....
 

StephenCampi

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Path Forward

Thank you all for your advice. I had initially posted on another site and got the following reply:

Steve if you look at the database listing for the Oakland/Piedmont P25 system

"Oakland/Piedmont P25 Trunking System, Oakland, California - Scanner Frequencies"

It appears like the system has not yet been fully mapped out. There are usually more than 1 or 2 control channels in a site - and your symptoms suggest that you don't have all the control channels (primary and alternate) that you need. There may be other reasons, but this one is the most obvious one.

It would take someone sitting down with a trunking utility like UniTrunker to fully analyze the system and map out ALL the control channels for all sites. This is not a trivial exercise and is usually done by folks intimately familiar with trunking concepts.

I would suggest posting in the California forum and asking questions there. This is most definitely some sort of local system issue - whether it's a user programming issue may not necessarily be clear. More research is called for.

best regards..Mike

I think that I'll start looking into whether I have the necessary control channels. Not clear on how to do that yet, but I guess that's part of the fun. Thank you to all that replied or thought about my problem. I'll be checking back in to see if you all have any additional thoughts and to post my findings once I resolve the problem.

PS: I did not mention that my radio went out right after the big "Occupy" protest in Oakland. Hopefully the system did not get hacked.
 

Retired911Guy

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Instead of posting a question in the blind, look at LEAST at the same page to see if there are recent questions of the same type.

Just FOUR Threads below this is a thread "New Oakland System" that covers the exactly the same topic.
(now on top because I just updated a post)


I will reply there and Wayne may wish to delete this thread to keep things clean...
Dave
 
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StephenCampi

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Oakland, CA
In a post to the California forum, I learned that the frequencies for Oakland have changed and are not up to date on Radio Reference.

Retired911Guy posted updated frequencies, which I uploaded, and I'm back up.
 
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