Horry County SC

[IronsMan]

The alphanumeric system has been taken offline and HCFR is once again using the Quick Call tones and voice dispatching on both 154.4 and 158.7975. It is my understanding that this is temporary and will be in place until they sort out the alphanumeric system.

The county has been using both frequencies since 2013 with the Minitors in dual frequency mode in an attempt to take care of any dead spots on 154.4. However, I feel that 154.4 has overwhelmingly been the most consistent frequency regardless of location. With the need to run both frequencies up to this point, why would they not use both frequencies for the alphanumeric paging? It appears the Unication pagers are dual frequency capable.

 

[k3sls]

The alphanumeric system has been taken offline and HCFR is once again using the Quick Call tones and voice dispatching on both 154.4 and 158.7975. It is my understanding that this is temporary and will be in place until they sort out the alphanumeric system.

The county has been using both frequencies since 2013 with the Minitors in dual frequency mode in an attempt to take care of any dead spots on 154.4. However, I feel that 154.4 has overwhelmingly been the most consistent frequency regardless of location. With the need to run both frequencies up to this point, why would they not use both frequencies for the alphanumeric paging? It appears the Unication pagers are dual frequency capable.

I've heard nothing on 158.7975 for about 36 hours. HCFR has also started toning on TGID 6091 along with voice dispatch. Unication G4 and G5 pagers can decode tones on P25 800MHz for those of you that have them.

 

[IronsMan]

I've heard nothing on 158.7975 for about 36 hours. HCFR has also started toning on TGID 6091 along with voice dispatch. Unication G4 and G5 pagers can decode tones on P25 800MHz for those of you that have them.

I'm picking up the dispatches on 158.7975 but they are awfully weak.

 

[k3sls]

I'm picking up the dispatches on 158.7975 but they are awfully weak.

They must be using a single site and outside the range. I'm in the Cherry Grove/Little River Neck area. They might be using the Conway or Burgess sites…and low power.

 

[twinscrw]

Horry CO reception in Georgetown CO

Little, to no reception on VHF or P25, being able to pick up Horry CO in Pawleys Island. Hopefully that will change!

 

[K4RMN]

Ref SCHP, from what I understand the analog and digital talkgroups will be patched after the cutover. As to how long that remains the case, we shall see...

 

[Jakeportland]

Any encryption on the system

 

[cobra]

Horry fd paging

I haven't checked their license info, but I would imagine that the reason that the 158.7975 signal is weak is because it is probably the input from the dispatcher to the 154.0 paging repeater. That repeater used to cover about 50 miles to the west, and I can sometimes hear it in Columbia on some mornings and late at night.
As for the 800 system, if the simulcast tower at the Burgess site is operating, it should be covering Pawleys Island area with ease. Do you hear the control channel ?

 

[troymail]

FYI - from experience - upon transition from legacy Motorola simulcast systems that "blast" their signal, newer P25 simulcast systems are to the scanner user "much weaker" from outside the county. I will say, however, now that I have a Unication G4, I can easily receive in P25 simulcast systems from neighboring counties like I've never received before with a scanner.

In addition, when our neighboring county switched to their new system, their tomeout and voice paging got much weaker. In fact the tones are on one VHF frequency and the voice alert is on another. I believe essentially that the thinking is that there is no reason the alerting needs to go outside the county. But that's here....

 

[k3sls]

I haven't checked their license info, but I would imagine that the reason that the 158.7975 signal is weak is because it is probably the input from the dispatcher to the 154.0 paging repeater. That repeater used to cover about 50 miles to the west, and I can sometimes hear it in Columbia on some mornings and late at night.
As for the 800 system, if the simulcast tower at the Burgess site is operating, it should be covering Pawleys Island area with ease. Do you hear the control channel ?

If you mean the input to 154.4, that's 154.01. The new text (POCSAG) paging system (on 158.7975) was taken off line due to some unknown issue (per Ironman). That system was using multiple transmit sites (per the license) and very wide coverage, but I suspect the power amps have been turned off and they are running exciter power only because a few people have reported they continue to hear it very weakly. Horry County continues to use two-tone paging on 154.4, but also brought up a voice/tone dispatch TG on 6091. The text paging situation is wait and see what happens next...

 

[K4RMN]

158.7975 is the alaphanumeric paging receive frequency, which is data and not voice. As troymail said as well, since it is a data signal the propagation is different than analog voice. 154.4 is the analog voice paging channel that I've always monitored, and I've been able to hear it on a handheld in Dillon County at night.

As you can see, digital has better coverage to a point, but analog has better fringe signal.


Jakeportland, no encryption with SCHP at the moment aside from one talkgroup that is dedicated to that function for headquarters, but the radios have been keyloaded. As to when it actually is turned on, who knows? Likely not anytime soon from what I understand. The main push right now is the P25 cutover....besides, can't do analog encryption anyway.

Edit: was typing reply and K3SLS beat me to it heh

 

[k3sls]

We should also remember 150MHz signal propagation is very different from 800MHz signal propagation!

 

[K4RMN]

Indeed Steve, and in fact that chart came from a CAP Communications presentation, and we use P25 almost exclusively on VHF.

 

[k3sls]

Indeed Steve, and in fact that chart came from a CAP Communications presentation, and we use P25 almost exclusively on VHF.

Yes, just reminding folks that hearing Horry County 150MHz voice or paging in Columbia or Dillon doesn't mean one will hear Horry County 800MHz ANYTHING in Columbia (Dillon...maybe!)

 

[INDY72]

You will be lucky to decode it past 3 miles of the county lines.

Sent from my LG-K330 using Tapatalk

 

[troymail]

You will be lucky to decode it past 3 miles of the county lines.

Sent from my LG-K330 using Tapatalk

FWIW - when I was down in March, I was decoding (but not really well) in Sunset Beach, NC with scanners.

On my next trip (in a few weeks), based on how well the G4 is working here at home, I have little to no doubt I'll receive the P25 system fairly well near Holden Beach, NC (and probably beyond).

 

[scan18]

I've heard nothing on 158.7975 for about 36 hours. HCFR has also started toning on TGID 6091 along with voice dispatch. Unication G4 and G5 pagers can decode tones on P25 800MHz for those of you that have them.

This last sentence caught my attention, are you saying that the G4 and G5 is able to decode tones on a P25 trunking talk group, TGID 6091 in the case of Horry County? I had thought it could only decode tones on a conventional frequency.

I'll be in the area in a couple of months and will be testing out my G5.

 

[k3sls]

This last sentence caught my attention, are you saying that the G4 and G5 is able to decode tones on a P25 trunking talk group, TGID 6091 in the case of Horry County? I had thought it could only decode tones on a conventional frequency.

I'll be in the area in a couple of months and will be testing out my G5.

Yes, the G5 will decode tones on P25…BUT…because the county is toning on a single TGID (6091), you can only decode one set of tones (a single long tone or a two-tone pair) per TGID. The PPS will not let you add the same TGID multiple times with different tones to a list (knob position), you get an error message and must cancel the add. So in my case, I want to hear dispatches for only the fire stations that would normally respond to my area. No can do! North Myrtle is now toning on a separate TGID for each station which solves the problem, but Horry County would need some 45 TGIDs to do that. NMB only has 5 active stations, so easier to accomplish.

There's another issue as well. TGID 6091 was only added after the new POCSAG text dispatching system was taken offline. The intent was to fully text dispatch (no voice). If they fix the issues with the text paging, they may well dump 6091. For now, it's more reliable to monitor toneouts on 154.4 where you can add as many slots as needed, then switch to a voice P25 slot/zone to voice monitor a call. Of course 154.4 could disappear too if the text paging returns, but there are lots of VHF Minitors out there…maybe they'll keep both. Stay tuned!

 

[scan18]

Yes, the G5 will decode tones on P25…BUT…because the county is toning on a single TGID (6091), you can only decode one set of tones (a single long tone or a two-tone pair) per TGID. The PPS will not let you add the same TGID multiple times with different tones to a list (knob position), you get an error message and must cancel the add. So in my case, I want to hear dispatches for only the fire stations that would normally respond to my area. No can do! North Myrtle is now toning on a separate TGID for each station which solves the problem, but Horry County would need some 45 TGIDs to do that. NMB only has 5 active stations, so easier to accomplish.

There's another issue as well. TGID 6091 was only added after the new POCSAG text dispatching system was taken offline. The intent was to fully text dispatch (no voice). If they fix the issues with the text paging, they may well dump 6091. For now, it's more reliable to monitor toneouts on 154.4 where you can add as many slots as needed, then switch to a voice P25 slot/zone to voice monitor a call. Of course 154.4 could disappear too if the text paging returns, but there are lots of VHF Minitors out there…maybe they'll keep both. Stay tuned!

I see, ok, thank you for the explanation. I didn't realize that if you assign a 2-Tone in addition to a P25 Trunking TGID to a particular Group ID it would recognize the 2-Tone setting when assigning a TGID to a knob position under "Trunking TG-Scan". I didn't see any option to select the 2-Tones when adding a TGID to the List Members, but that makes sense considering you can only have one 2-Tone pair for that TGID anyway.

Thanks!

 

[k3sls]

I see, ok, thank you for the explanation. I didn't realize that if you assign a 2-Tone in addition to a P25 Trunking TGID to a particular Group ID it would recognize the 2-Tone setting when assigning a TGID to a knob position under "Trunking TG-Scan". I didn't see any option to select the 2-Tones when adding a TGID to the List Members, but that makes sense considering you can only have one 2-Tone pair for that TGID anyway.

Thanks!

Yes, you would add the tone pair at PPS D4 (group ID) where you define the TGID. I think this is a flaw in the internal database design though because they didn't consider a department may tone multiple entities over a single TGID. OTOH, if you had a very large number of tone pairs on a single TGID, the decode could take longer than the 1 by 3 sec. time of the tones.