Hawai'i County Radio System Upgrade

[scan18]

Testing on the Hilo site is occurring at night after 10 PM. Seeing a few radio IDs, but no voice.

Cool, thanks for the documents. Summarizes all the sites nicely.

 

[Sybex7254]

Ditto!

 

[northzone]

Great job on the map !! Thank You

 

[scan18]

Heard some testing today on the Honokaa and Laupahoehoe site. I could hear the conversations fine on my BCD996P2, but not on my Pro668 for some reason. On my Pro668, when someone would key up it would show the talkgroup along with the alternating CC/VC correctly, but there would be no voice at all. It would show D2 in the upper right corner so it appears to be recognizing it as a phase2 transmission. Is the Pro668 capable of decoding the modulation for this system? I don't seem to have any problems with the Maui phase2 system with the Pro668. Will see what happens as testing continues.

 

[scan18]

There has been a lot more testing on the Laupahoehoe (Site 7) and Honokaa (Site 4) sites this past week. Although as I watch the activity on Unitrunker for the Laupahoehoe site, it looks like I'm only picking up voice activity on 151.115 on my BCD996P2. I think it's because I'm so close to the Honokaa site (about 1000 ft from the tower), the 151.4075 control channel is killing any voice transmissions for me on 151.4225 from the Laupahoehoe site.

Anyway, I heard a random transmission from station 11 (Pahala) responding to a call on the new system, he must have had the radio tuned to the new system by mistake.

Sybex, have you been able to pick up anything on the West side? Or are you back in NJ?

I am able to faintly pick up the control channel from the Waimea site (Site 16), but not well enough to decode anything. Hoping to pick up a VHF yagi sometime and point it up there to see if I can pull it in better.

 

[Sybex7254]

Couple more weeks before I'm back on Island. Will see what I can pick up then. Will have to bring my 436 with me because I only have a 996XT there and it won't pickup Phase II systems.

 

[Sybex7254]

I am picking up the control channel (site ID verified) for the Kahua Ranch (Kamuela) site 5x5 with the back of set antenna but haven't caught any voice traffic or active talkgroups yet.

Also tried manually entering the frequencies for Kailua-Kona and Waimea and none seem to be active yet.

 

[scan18]

It's interesting this document as of June 2016 from project25.org is still showing the Hawaii County P25 system as 800mhz.

http://project25.org/images/stories/ptig/P25_Trunking_Systems_List_REV_03_June_2016__160518.pdf

EDIT: I just realized that perhaps they are referring to the Waimea site that services Maui County. I guess that would make sense given the actual Hawaii County system is not technically live yet.

 

[mmartinfan]

I will be on the Big Island late April, anyone know if the VHF P2 system will be up and running?

 

[scan18]

I will be on the Big Island late April, anyone know if the VHF P2 system will be up and running?

Testing appears to be continuing on the sites, however I am doubtful the users will actually be using the new system in 4 months. But who knows, anything is possible.

 

[Moosemedic]

Hilo Visitor

I'm going to be in Hilo for only a few days.

What system is active as of mid December 2016?

I've read of a Phase II transition, yet the database shows VHF Freq's.

 

[allend]

Hawaii County is still on their current VHF conventional frequencies as of today. Their new Phase II TDMA Trunking system is still in the build-out phase and probably won't be completely live for at least a year or two

 

[ccs247]

As of today, logging shows 41 talk groups and at least 225 radio IDs have been added to the system.

 

[scan18]

Fire Control was conducting tests with all the volunteer stations around the island this afternoon on the new system. They were using TG 6500, so assuming that will be the dispatch TG. I won't submit to the database yet as it's still early and things may change.

I was tuned to the Honokaa site and only heard responses from a few of the stations, I need to go back and review which ones.

 

[scan18]

During the test, I heard responses from stations 1, 6, 8 14 and 20 on the Honokaa site. Most likely I would have heard a response from station 17 also, but fire control confirmed no response from them.

I was hoping all of the stations on the east side of the island would be affiliated on the Honokaa site, but for now that doesn't look to be the case. I was surprised to hear responses from stations 6 and 20, which are on the other side in South Kona and Ocean View.

Although, these were the volunteer stations, I haven't logged any roll call testing with the county stations yet.

 

[scan18]

HPD Districts 2 (North Hilo) and District 3 (Hamakua) switched over to the new system for regular operations this morning, talkgroup 6105. It'll be interesting to see if it is permanent or just an experiment.

 

[scan18]

Both HPD and Fire/EMS using the new system today. Old VHF analog frequencies have been quiet all morning.

 

[shthomps808]

Talk Groups

Scan 18 are you able to monitor talk groups from different districts for HPD and Fire from your Honoka`a site? Are you able to share scanner info you're using to monitor?

 

[mmartinfan]

About about 5 weeks out from staying in the Kona area. I'm assuming then most will be on P25 then??

 

[scan18]

Scan 18 are you able to monitor talk groups from different districts for HPD and Fire from your Honoka`a site? Are you able to share scanner info you're using to monitor?

Here is what I've got so far... for Hawaii County PD, I've been only able to receive Districts 2 (North Hilo) and Districts 3 (Hamakua) on TG 6105. For a brief time yesterday, I was able to receive District 4 (South Kohala) on TG 6106 but I think that was because it was patched in temporarily.

For Fire/EMS, I have logged the following:

TG 6500 - Dispatch
TG 6502 - I've heard Stations 8 (Honokaa) and 17 (Laupahoehoe)
TG 6503 - I've heard Stations 9 (Kamuela), 14 (South Kohala), 15 (North Kohala) and 16 (Waikoloa Village)

Unfortunately, the Honokaa site (Site 4) is the only one I can lock onto from my location. I should be able to receive site 7 (Laupahoehoe) but I am literally about 500 ft. from the Honokaa tower so the control channel is pretty much killing any chance I have of that.

As for equipment, I am mainly using a BCD996P2. I also have an OP25 installation on a laptop that I've been experimenting with. I also have a PRO668, but for some reason nothing is coming through on that. I can see it locking onto the control channel successfully, but not getting any traffic. I know the scanner itself is fine because I can receive the Maui phase 2 system with no problems.

I also have a PRO-652 that I'm using as a signal scanner to decode CC data with Pro96Com. One thing I noticed is that when tuned to the control channel on the PRO-652, it is not showing the System/Site ID and such. Not sure if that is why the PRO-668 is having trouble.

On the BCD996P2, I see I am missing a few transmissions due to decode errors once in a while. I'm playing with the P25 threshold levels to see if it improves.