Greene and Boone County ISICS Question

[K0MSM]

Greetings all -

I live in Greene County, in Dana. It's not too far from the Boone County / Greene County line. At home, I usually get all of my ISICS traffic on my SDS200 from the Boone County system, using the Woodward/Ames simulcast site(s). Even when running just the Greene County system (using the Seven Hills site) with Boone completely turned off, I hear no ISP traffic, and very little, if any, Greene County public safety traffic. That used to lead me to believe that the Seven Hills site wasn't running. For note, my SDS200 is connected to a discone at approximately 15' AGL. It works well enough to pick up Carroll, Webster, and Boone County conventional traffic.

However -

When I get in the car with my SDS100, and especially on the west side of the county, (not so much on the east side of the county) I get traffic on the Seven Hills site just fine.

Now, I wouldn't mind getting all of my ISP traffic from the Boone system, but I don't think Boone carries the Greene County public safety traffic on their system.

So I guess my question is this - is there some reason that my SDS200 is targeting Woodward/Ames so hard and ignoring Seven Hills? I should also add that the programming for the SDS100 and SDS200 are identical, at least as the FF-SS-DD setups are concerned. If I make a change to one, I make that same change to the other. I make the file in ProScan, then FTP the file to the 200, and us mass storage write to put it on the 100.

Sean

 

[VASCAR2]

I don’t live in Iowa but I have a couple ideas that might prove helpful. The site for ISICS is new enough I can’t determine the specific location. There appears to be a new tower being constructed near the entrance to Seven Hills state park. The GPS coordinates listed in RR data base for the site is closest to a tower just west of Jefferson on 230th (Wall Street) near the intersection of M Ave. I can’t see the towers via google earth street view to get the height or type of antennas.


There is a web site for determining line of site between two locations. It is entirely possible your residence is blocked from the tower by terrain and the curvature of the Earth. Here is a link to the line of site web site.

RF Line of Sight - SCADACore

RF Line-of-Sight provides radio path information for mapping long distance SCADA radio communications by using antenna height and topography.

www.scadacore.com

When looking at the ISICS site map the Greene County site is maintained by Greene County. There are only two Frequencies listed for the Greene County 2-37 site. I suspect the Greene County site only affiliates with very few Talk Groups that are not in Greene County. There are ISICS maintained sites in Carroll, Webster and Guthrie Counties where ISP probably affiliates on the West and South sides of Greene County. The Boone and Dallas simulcast sites probably cover the east and southern part of Greene County. It is possible the only time a non Greene County unit like Iowa State Patrol is carried on the Greene County site is if it is within range and is voting Greene County site 2-37. It is also possible only units that have access to Greene County TG‘s can affiliate with site 2-37 and if they are talking to the Greene County Sheriff or local police TG.

As Rural as Greene County is there might not be much radio traffic. Usually you can hear traffic near shift change times or when there activities like County Fairs, Sporting Events or severe weather. I haven’t looked at the ISICS page on RR for Greene County but I suspect there are only a few talk groups. The TG could be encrypted and might not be indicated in the data base if no one has submitted the information. A lot of traffic these days is transmitted via cell phone and computer systems (mobile Data Terminals) mounted in vehicles.

 

[VASCAR2]

I just checked the RR DB for ISICS Greene County. It looks like the LE Talk group 30405 is patched to the Sheriff’s dispatch frequency 153.800. It is entirely possible the patch is not continually activated. You could try to add the two school districts TG’s to your favorites list and ensure the type code for schools is turned on. You might get enough transmissions to verify you can receive the Greene County Site 2-37 from your residence.

Greene County
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DEC	HEX	Mode	Alpha Tag	Description	Tag
30405	76c5	T	37 LAW 1	Law 1 - 153.800	Law Dispatch
30419	76d3	T	37 ROAM	Statewide Roam	Multi-Dispatch
30424	76d8	T	PCCSD BUSES	Paton-Churdan Community School District	Schools
30412	76cc	T	SCHOOL	School	Schools