Hearing schools in the police frequencies

[bearcatrp]

Down in Eden prairie today taking wife to an appointment. Brought my R30. I have all the P25 frequencies in Minnesota programmed by county. This was programmed earlier this year. Am hearing allot of school and school busses on these frequencies. Don’t recall seeing any changes lately to the database on RR where I got my information from. Anyone else hearing this?

 

[bearcatrp]

Besides picking up schools in the metro, was picking up schools in belgrade and sauk center. Was surprised picking up anything north of st cloud from down here.

 

[ScanWI]

Since that receiver cannot track trunking you are going to pick up everything carried on the voice channels. The system carries everything from Schools to Busses to Fire to Law Enforcement, assuming you are talking about ARMER. It looks like there are at least 169 school talkgroups on the ARMER system.

 

[lenk911]

Down in Eden prairie today taking wife to an appointment. Brought my R30. I have all the P25 frequencies in Minnesota programmed by county. This was programmed earlier this year. Am hearing allot of school and school busses on these frequencies.

The City of Eden Prairie has its own P25 trunk system separate and not connect to ARMER. Their school district, transportation and administration is a major user of this system.

 

[buddrousa]

This is again why I tell people not to use not-trunking receivers on trunking systems you have no way to follow or control who you hear.
If you you use a non-trunking receiver to scan for a system then change to a device that can log and track trunking systems by talkgroups then that is a useable option.

 

[lenk911]

picking up schools in the metro,

I recall from an early ARMER meeting an allowance for school transportation operations to use the system but not school administration and operations. This goes back to a FCC policy, codified in the rules, that treats school transportation as public safety, thus eligible for public safety frequencies and school administration/operations as business radio. Although I have lately seen licensing exceptions . BTW, the same FCC philosophy applies to hospitals. Ambulance communications = Public Safety and administration and operations = business radio.

 

[bearcatrp]

Got to listen to a school in minneapolis talk about a kid brought a sawed off shot gun under his coat. Then it was determined it was not a real sawed off shotgun. I have all counties activated when I was down there with all frequencies from the database in my R30. Has no problem listening to both sides of the conversation. I can select or deselect by county that is programmed in my R30. Have the entire state of minnesota P25 in the radio. Guess its time to review all the frequencies again.

 

[lenk911]

listen to a school in Minneapolis

Most Twin City schools are using UHF DMR systems for administration and operations.

 

[egftechman]

I recall from an early ARMER meeting an allowance for school transportation operations to use the system but not school administration and operations. This goes back to a FCC policy, codified in the rules, that treats school transportation as public safety, thus eligible for public safety frequencies and school administration/operations as business radio. Although I have lately seen licensing exceptions . BTW, the same FCC philosophy applies to hospitals. Ambulance communications = Public Safety and administration and operations = business radio.

School Resource Officers and Security also qualify as Public Safety

 

[egftechman]

Down in Eden prairie today taking wife to an appointment. Brought my R30. I have all the P25 frequencies in Minnesota programmed by county. This was programmed earlier this year. Am hearing allot of school and school busses on these frequencies. Don’t recall seeing any changes lately to the database on RR where I got my information from. Anyone else hearing this?

If there are ARMER frequencies in your list, you will get everything from SWAT to Garbage Trucks (see https://www.radioreference.com/db/sid/3508 for the known talkgroups, always new/unknown ones showing up regularly also), and if there is a radio subscribed to the same talkgroup on your tower, you will hear everything on that talkgroup, even if it is across the state.
Listening to ARMER without talkgroup filtering is very hard to make heads or tails of. I mean only about a quarter of ARMER towers have Broadcastify Calls node monitoring them, but if you listen to the "firehose" of ARMER on Broadcastify Calls (Allied Radio Matrix for Emergency Response (ARMER) - All Calls Live ), even at 2x playback speed, the calls come in at a much higher rate than they can be played. Some of the rural towers may be easier to follow with a conventional P25 scanner as the traffic is much less on them, but during an "event", or even morning "rush" it can still be hard to track manually.

 

[bearcatrp]

The frequencies I put in the R30 are from RR database. These freqs are shown in the database for law enforcement. How will garbage trucks use those frequencies?

 

[n3obl]

The frequencies I put in the R30 are from RR database. These freqs are shown in the database for law enforcement. How will garbage trucks use those frequencies?

You need to read up on how a trunking system works. You think the channels are exclusive for police when they are not. It is part of a trunk system used by multiple entities.

 

[buddrousa]

@bearcatrp
And when you are done you should use the 325p2 you are trying to sell to listen to the trunking system so you know what talkgroup is talking then you would not have to guess who is talking.

 

[bearcatrp]

Next time I go down, will bring my SDS200. Also have to put more info on the descriptions in the R30. That took a bit to get the entire state P25 programmed. Always thought these agencies were licensed for those frequencies from the FCC. I'll go back and read some more. Still selling the 325P2. Good radio but have to thin some of this stuff down. Thanks folks for the education lesson.