Idaho Power's massive DMR trunking system on 217 MHz

[IdaScan]

RR entry:

Idaho Power Trunking System, Various, Idaho

Idaho Power Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

FCC license:

ULS License - Public Coast Stations, Auctioned License - WQZX715 - IPC Spectrum, LLC - Map

This system has been a blast to try to figure out over the last couple of days. This appears to be a Harris/Tait system (vehicle radios are Harris branded Tait TM9355 HHCH units) with layers of overlapping coverage. From my location in Middleton I'm able to copy no less than 6 solid control channels with a 7th just beyond monitoring range.

The build uses a base frequency of 216.99375 with a 12.5 KHz step. Using the DMR TIII LSN/LCN calculator found here on RR, I was to build the fleet map. SDRTrunk and DSD+ were both very helpful to decode the control channel data - just had to fill in the frequencies for each site as the CC data called them out by LSN.

The first 10 LCNs are configured as control channels running LSN 1 217.00625 thru LSN 10 217.11875. These are paired with voice channels every 125 KHz (every 10th LSN), pairing LSN 1 with LSN 11, 21, 31, etc. Most sites appear to be 3 channels with some running 4 channels. These are DMR so each channel represents a voice path on each time slot with the control channel using TS2 often for the busier sites (3 channels=5 voice paths, 4 channels=7 voice paths, etc).

For the Boise Valley, there are 6 sites at regular tower sites:
Shafer Butte - 217.01875


Bennett Mountain - 217.03125


Packer John - 217.05625


War Eagle - 217.06875


ION Hill - 217.09375


Bonneville Point - 217.10625


Talkgroups
There are broken out by regional dispatch center:
169840 - Western Dispatch - Payette region
169850 - Canyon Dispatch - Nampa/Caldwell
169860 - Capital Dispatch - Boise region
169870 - Southern Dispatch - Maybe Elmore?
169880 - Eastern Dispatch - heard Hagerman mentioned

How you can monitor
There are 33 locations total within the main license for this system with frequency reuse. As this is a leased sub band, the frequencies per site are not licensed - just the entire B block within the market area. The easiest way to scan this system is with an RTL-SDR dongle (under $30 on Amazon) running SDRTrunk or DSD+. The repeater outputs are within a 1 MHz split.

More to come...

 

[thewenk]

Heard some traffic on TG169880 in E Idaho (Idaho Falls) on both Sites 5.4 and 5.6.

 

[devicelab]

Lucky you guys got a DMR system... our state uses MPT1327.

 

[IdaScan]

Seems the majority of utilities are on a migration path off of MPT1327 into tier 3 DMR just looking at similar size system upgrades.

 

[IdaScan]

Mobile Installs
The majority of the vehicles within the Boise region fleet appear to have received the Harris cobranded Tait TM9355 mobile radio with handheld control head (HHCH) similar to the W3/O3 style heads from their Motorola counterparts. This is paired with a roof mounted Laird B132S broadband quarterwave cut for 217 MHz mounted directly into the cab roof (a divergence from years of IPCO installs using Acari and custom headache/lightbar rack mounts) in most fleet vehicles with the Larsen NMO220CS 5/8 wave antenna on an L bracket off of the hood for higher profile vehicles like bucket trucks where the roof may be obstructed by the boom. These appear to be paired up with PCTEL's 3978D-DH-W high gain GPS antenna which are recent additions to the the IPCO fleet.

User manual hosted on Tait's site








Handheld Radios
Based on the vendor information and lack of 220 MHz DMR trunking gear on the market, it appears these would likely by Tait TP9300 handheld radios in the C0 174-225 MHz bandsplit. These have not been seen in the wild up to this point. Based on pictures of the TM9355 radios above, we expect these to likely be in the SCAN (4 key) TP9305C0BA configuration with TPA-AN-041 helical antenna with likely TPAS080 DMR Trunking, TPAS0755-DMR DMR OTAP (over the air programming), and TPAS072 Alphanumeric ID options. These program with the TO2-00031-0001 Programming and Calibration kit (which includes the TM9300 mobiles above).

 

[IdaScan]

Repeater Sites
Based on equipment availability and OTA control channel info, we can infer the following:

• Repeater base stations are Tait TB9300s in 100 watt 220 MHz band split
  • The majority of the SU install is Tait/Harris so it be likely the infrastructure is as we
• The commercial package would likely be either DMR-Trunked or DMR Trunked + SCADA Gateway, operating in either the Trunking Node without High Availability (TNAS300) or with High Availability (TNAS301)
  • 
  • The Express 6 (TNAS320) and Express20 (TNAS321) licenses we do not believe would fit considering the total number of licensed sites.
    • 
  • Idaho Power likely deployed on their own server infrastructure (TN9320 Solaris or TN9321 CentOS) rather than opting for Tait's Kontron CG2300 Server.

 

[IdaScan]

Mobile Radio - Update
Post 5 indicated the new GPS antenna on the roof was likely the PC-TEL 3978D-DH-W. After digging further into the accessory manual from May 2022, this actually looks like it could be for Tait's Unified Vehicle platform. This looks more like the T05-00031-0004 WiFi antenna for TUV.


What I'm not seeing is the full cellular on the faceplate which is misleading as it appeared TUV required all 3 antenna ports on the radio body. Looking at the description, it looks like TU2000-M300-0000-000B-10 is available for 1 antenna port for WiFi and no LTE ports, unlike the port below, but matching the faceplate of the installed radio in Post 5.

 

[Cameron314]

It's likely Wifi only if it just has a single sma on the front. Likely used to reprogram in the yards. I know they have an option for an internal GPS, not sure how that looks, could be another option.

 

[IdaScan]

It's likely Wifi only if it just has a single sma on the front. Likely used to reprogram in the yards. I know they have an option for an internal GPS, not sure how that looks, could be another option.

Looking at the TUV info, this could potentially enable remote access to the radio through a smartphone app... A la crossband repeat... Among other features. Pretty cool I know most of the yards appear to have fairly dense outdoor WiFi deployments.

 

[Cameron314]

Also looking at your pictures now that is not a TMX450 face.

 

[Cameron314]

Looking at the TUV info, this could potentially enable remote access to the radio through a smartphone app... A la crossband repeat... Among other features. Pretty cool I know most of the yards appear to have fairly dense outdoor WiFi deployments.

Sorry, didn't see this until I post the my last reply but I don't think that is a TMX face plate.

 

[IdaScan]

Sorry, didn't see this until I post the my last reply but I don't think that is a TMX face plate.

Correct - it's in the TM9300's accessory sheet - the radio body faceplate swap to add the TUV antenna(s) to go with the HHCH.

 

[Cameron314]

Correct - it's in the TM9300's accessory sheet - the radio body faceplate swap to add the TUV antenna(s) to go with the HHCH.

Right but what I'm saying is I don't think it is that. The connectors on those are on the far right side. If I was betting I would say this is a connector for the internal GPS option board.

 

[IdaScan]

Right but what I'm saying is I don't think it is that. The connectors on those are on the far right side. If I was betting I would say this is a connector for the internal GPS option board.

The reason I'm thinking it's the TUV option is based on both the price list and the label of the installed radio - kinda hard to make out...

 

[thewenk]

For those of you who want to monitor the Idaho Power System using a Uniden scanner, some internal changes have been made recently to the RR DB for DMR Tier III Systems which should greatly improve the ease of doing that.

The RR DB site details page originally only stored Channel IDs (LSNs) as obtained from DSDPlus. Uniden scanners require the Logical Channel Number (LCN) to function properly, and for the LCN data to be uploaded into the Sentinel Database each week by Uniden.

The modified RR database now stores the LCN as the default value, but will also calculate and display the Channel ID on the site details page.

Also, to clarify:
There is one LCN per frequency and two Channel IDs (Logical Slot Numbers) per frequency. (DSDPlus reports Channel IDs)

Either LCNs or Channel IDs can be used in a submittal to the DB. Just include the source of the data such as DSDPlus.

I have been monitoring Idaho Power for the last several days and my SDS200 seems to be tracking the transmissions quite well. But, depending on your location, there may not be much traffic.

The online RR DB has been updated but the new Idaho Power information will not be available on Sentinel until Monday, 2/6.

And thanks to Idascan for all his inputs on this system.

If you have any questions or problems with the database info, let me know.

 

[merlin]

I have been having a H E double hockey sticks of a time getting DSD+ to monitor this .
A persistent gripe there are no frequencies in the frequencies list.
So is this a special list and how do you add all the frequencies for 3 region 5 sites ?

 

[thewenk]

I find it much easier to use a DMR capable Uniden scanner to montior this system since there is not a lot of traffic. I have to use an outside antenna since I am not close enough to any of the sites in E Idaho to receive anything without one. I find DSD+ difficult to use to monitor since I can listen to only one frequency at a time and it may not be the frequency with the voice traffic.

The frequencies are listed for each site here:

Idaho Power Trunking System, Various, Idaho

Idaho Power Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

Lucky you guys got a DMR system... our state uses MPT1327.

Phila Electric Co (PECO) is on a rather antiquated & fully-encrypted P25 Phase-I system so yes, lucky indeed

 

[merlin]

I find it much easier to use a DMR capable Uniden scanner to montior this system since there is not a lot of traffic. I have to use an outside antenna since I am not close enough to any of the sites in E Idaho to receive anything without one. I find DSD+ difficult to use to monitor since I can listen to only one frequency at a time and it may not be the frequency with the voice traffic.

The frequencies are listed for each site here:

Idaho Power Trunking System, Various, Idaho

Idaho Power Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

I have the list of frequencies, LCNs etc.
I won't be buying anything expensive to monitor one system.
Problem is sitting on the control channel , site 169880 for 8 hrs. not one voice call.
I am in Pocatello and get 2 neighbor sites with my setup.
clips from the huge log files:

 

[merlin]

OK, spent a couple hours grabbing voice channels as they came up for site 6.1
This is what I got:

2023/02/14 21:36:40 Freq=217.106250 Current network: L9 Idaho Power
2023/02/14 21:36:40 Freq=217.106250 Current site: L9-6.1
Grabbing voice channels
2023/02/14 21:37:31 Freq=217.356250 DCC=0 Group call; TG=171830 RID=169790 Slot=1 14s
2023/02/14 21:39:45 Freq=217.356250 DCC=0 Group call; TG=171830 RID=169790 Slot=2 24s
2023/02/14 21:49:44 Freq=217.225000 DCC=0 Group call; TG=171830 RID=169790 Slot=1 15s
2023/02/14 21:51:59 Freq=217.225000 DCC=0 Group call; TG=171830 RID=169790 Slot=2 24s
2023/02/14 21:54:32 Freq=217.356250 DCC=0 Group call; TG=171830 RID=169790 Slot=1 16s
2023/02/14 21:56:48 Freq=217.356250 DCC=0 Group call; TG=171830 RID=169790 Slot=2 24s
2023/02/14 22:01:52 Freq=217.481250 DCC=0 Group call; TG=171830 RID=169790 Slot=2 10s
Grabbing site control channels
2023/02/14 22:05:57 Freq=217.106250 Current network: L9 Idaho Power
2023/02/14 22:05:57 Freq=217.106250 Current site: L9-6.1
2023/02/14 22:06:07 Freq=217.081250 Current network: L9 Idaho Power
2023/02/14 22:06:07 Freq=217.081250 Current site: L9-5.6
2023/02/14 22:06:16 Freq=217.043750 Current network: L9 Idaho Power
2023/02/14 22:06:16 Freq=217.043750 Current site: L9-5.4
2023/02/14 22:06:16 Freq=217.043750 DCC=0 No data for current site found in DSDPlus.frequencies file

2023/02/14 22:06:33 Freq=217.231250 DCC=0 Group call; TG=171830 RID=169790 Slot=1 18s
2023/02/14 22:08:51 Freq=217.231250 DCC=0 Group call; TG=171830 RID=169790 Slot=2 24s
2023/02/14 22:09:28 Freq=217.231250 DCC=0 Group call; TG=171830 RID=169790 Slot=2 6s
2023/02/14 22:09:38 Freq=217.231250 DCC=0 Group call; TG=171830 RID=169790 Slot=2 5s

What isn't happening is no voice channel hand offs with any CC channels, and can't figure out why.
Any clues ?