I am listening to Douglas Co South Simulcast. Looking at the Modulation code of CQPSK loud and clear without any issues.
Colorado Springs Simulcast has the same CQPSK modulation. Why are we having issues? Both state the same modulation.
Then you look at the other towers that are not included in the Simulcast. They state they are C4FM. I cannot get any signal from Black Forest or Templeton Gap from home. Will go out and investigate the other towers soon.
In the meantime, any clues as why those 2 "Simulcast" are the same modulation but one is fine while the other is not?.
NOTE: Noticed the Pueblo Simulcast Modulation says C4FM as well. Any known issues with the Pueblo system?
Thanks.
There a bunch of factors with simulcast. Some people will receive the site better and most probably will not be able to receive it at all.
One factor is attributed to multipath. For Douglas Co South Simulcast, only a single site can be heard in the Colorado Springs area. I believe you tested this out yourself before it went online vs now. Only being able to "see" one site gives the scanner a better chance to properly decode the quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) modulation.
The big deal is that scanners were not designed to handle QPSK. QPSK is essentially a new form of modulation of the phase of the signal, which is different from the traditional AM and FM that scanners were designed to handle. C4FM, noting the FM at the end, is a form of FM and therefore scanners do not have many problems with it. Not being designed to handle QPSK means that they struggle with that signal type. Add multipath into the mix and the scanner now has no idea what it is doing and producing gibberish.
Templeton Gap is offline and part of the simulcast, but I chose to leave it for now in the off chance of it making a reappearance like Airport did.
The modulation for Pubelo Simulcast is not correct in the DB.
Hi All!
Is the simulcast only City of Colorado Springs or all of El Paso County?
Al
USASA
It is the combined coverage area of 6 sites:
Stanley Canyon (4-012)
Ski Summit (4-013)
Austin Bluffs (4-016)
Airport (4-017)
Templeton Gap (4-022)
Cedar Heights (4-024)
Basically all of Colorado Springs and up north to the county line.
Hi All!
I don't know if anyone can answer this but here goes.
Do the respective agencies on the system have to have the individual radio's reprogrammed for the simulcast system. I thing that is a yes and that is maybe why the troubles with this new system? Once all radios are programmed things may get somewhat better. What say you? I worked (before retirement) for the city and when we re-banded all our department radios had to be reprogrammed. Just a though.
Al
USASA
Most radios seem to already be set to handle the new system by default. Certain radios might need to be reprogrammed if they were not already enabled to handle the new modulation. They might also need to be reprogrammed to update their preferred sites, but that has no affect the new system itself.
Current scanners are just not able to handle simulcast sites correctly. The troubles you are seeing are exclusive to scanners. Actual radios do not encounter this issue. The site would have never been built in the first place if they did have this issue, let alone turned on and left on for nearly a week.
