Homewood & Irondale Alabama

[Julian1]

Been traveling to B'ham area lately.

I have read about the new LTR systems of Irondale and Homewood.

So far, I am hearing Homewood Police 460.0625 w/ no PL tone. No trunking or jumping around. Homewood Fire same situation but on 460.3125.

Irondale Police I am hearing on 460.2625 PL 127.3 while Irondale Fire is using the old PD UHF channel of 460.225. I haven't heard enough broadcast to pick up the PL tone with my Uniden 780.

** Homewood PD & FD on the freq's mentioned above....every 11-seconds, the repeater comes on for maybe one second. No tones or sounds..just dead air. It sounds just like someone just keyed a mike for a second.

What is that one second carrier about?

Thanks,
Julian

 

[ericcarlson]

The "key-up" you are hearing is the LTR system's idle data burst. In an LTR system, every talkgroup has a "home repeater" that it will always use unless another talkgroup already happens to be using it, in which case the talkgroup will switch to another repeater in the system. Regular and Passport LTR systems have no control channel. LTR MultiNet systems have a "status channel" that acts like a control channel and sounds like a keyed-up mic (dead air) but can also carry voice traffic.

-Eric