Inyo County Moving to Mobile Relay Associates NEXEDGE System?

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KMFRADIO

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I really got off topic on this bog and I apologize, Now that I'm more familiar with my new scanners and the software available for them and a little bit of playing, I'm still working at getting all the information on the Inyo/Mono Counties Slash MRA Upgrade as of right now i have site Frequency's for every site and am working on LCN Information, and site ID and talk groups to be programed into your scanner. my dilemma at this time is the lack of use of the system as they really haven't switched over as of yet, i have been able to obtain some LCN information as well as a couple site IDs used by the Inyo SO but it would be useless to anyone as its encrypted full time, well at least what ive been able to pick up so far, hopefully will be able to record the information for Fire and EMS as they become active. so far I'm recording LCN search with Four Uniden BCD536hp's with four different site frequency's 24 hours a day,
 
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es93546

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Crap, my apologies we have gotten so far off subject here. We started out discussing a particular mountain top website that AMR might or might not be occupying when Mono County gets on this system. We then got into a tangent discussion of the mountain top and the USFS and LA DWP equipment on the mountain. Sorry!

If both Mono and Inyo Counties go to this system there will be interoperability for at least local law enforcement, assuming that both the Bishop and Mammoth Lakes PD follow suit. If fire goes with them, eventually the federal agencies might be buying some UHF radios. No problem though, they have such a large budget they can handle it -- NOT!
 

es93546

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that would be the old APRS system similar to what the hams use, it was on 170.525 The Forest Service was using it for GPS tracking of vehicles and also installed in some air craft also used on the packet side was monitoring of the snow packs. towards the end of this system, I had built several weather monitoring stations to be used on controlled burns, which at the time could be monitored be Dispatch and reginal offices, this was before the satellite system came out they may still be currently using now "forget the name of it"

170.5250 is now being used on the Humboldt-Toiyabe (HTF). It is the output of the Bridgeport and Santa Rosa Ranger Districts Net. They have the Carson RD and the Austin/Tonopah Ranger Districts on another net (173.7750) and the "Markleeville Lightning Net"/Spring Mountains Nat'l Recreation Area on another net. The Markleeville net has one repeater and I think it's Leviathan. The Humboldt NF portion of the forest is all on 169.9000, with the exception of the Santa Rosa RD on 170.5250. The HTF is dispatched by Minden, Winnemucca, Las Vegas, Ely and Elko - 5 centers, which has to be the most of any NF in the system.
 

KMFRADIO

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I do believe at this point both the Mammoth PD as well as Bishop PD are going towards this, also you still must remember from the information i received from a good source, most if not all are going to keep existing VHF radio's as well as Inyo Keeping the major existing VHF repeater sites as a back up system
 

KMFRADIO

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Also Inyo USFS is going P25 as well, so everyone in this valley, USFS, Caltrans, Edison, DWP, Inyo Mono Counties and CHP should be making their migration to their 700MHZ system in this area soon enough so basically everyone in this valley will be on some sort of digital system
 

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At the risk of staying on topic: In a NEXEDGE system, is the "encrypted status" of a talkgroup permanent unless a system administrator (or whatever the radio-guy-in-charge is called) turns off encryption at the Sheriffs request? Or can it be toggled on/off by someone at the dispatch center? I presume the end user operating his mobile/handheld radio has no ability to switch to transmit "in the clear"?
 

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At the risk of staying on topic: In a NEXEDGE system, is the "encrypted status" of a talkgroup permanent unless a system administrator (or whatever the radio-guy-in-charge is called) turns off encryption at the Sheriffs request? Or can it be toggled on/off by someone at the dispatch center? I presume the end user operating his mobile/handheld radio has no ability to switch to transmit "in the clear"?

NexEdge encryption is done at the radio. The repeaters simply pass the 1's and 0's no matter what order they are in.

A button/switch can be programmed on the radios to enable/disable encryption.
 

KMFRADIO

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simple encryption is built into each radio, for more secure encryption there is board placed into the radio, and either can be programmed permanently on or toggled. encryption is not done at the NXDN repeater site, since the Inyo So is going to be encrypted all the time, then I'm sure the radios were programed that way. in order to turn off the encryption would mean to reprogram the radio
 
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es93546

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Also Inyo USFS is going P25 as well, so everyone in this valley, USFS, Caltrans, Edison, DWP, Inyo Mono Counties and CHP should be making their migration to their 700MHZ system in this area soon enough so basically everyone in this valley will be on some sort of digital system

I'm wondering whether the Inyo will use the P25 mode on their VHF frequencies full time or just use it for law enforcement encryption. I also wonder if they will use it for law enforcement encryption just to meet the directive to encrypt PII traffic only. I have a lot of experience that tells me when law enforcement and fire on on different nets then everyone doesn't hear everything they should be hearing from each other, which is problematic.

I hadn't heard that Caltrans was going to go digital. I also did not know that the CHP was going to any type of 700 MHz system in the field. So far their licenses for 700 MHz are for the extenders and for office building extenders. The CHPERS program they went through, and never entirely completed, was a very long term investment in staying on low band.

The CHP would experience great coverage losses if they switched from VHF Low to 700 MHz.. An example, I was working a large traffic accident just south of Pumice Flat (between Pumice Flat Campground and the turnoff to Minaret Falls Campground) involving an overturned stock truck that had about a dozen horses on board. The truck overturned, horses were running all over the place, horses on the road dying or crippled (had to be shot) and CHP responded along with myself as rec supervisor/traffic control (I had our entrance stations close the road), one USFS Type III engine and Mono Co. Medic 3 out of Mammoth. The CHP officer was using his extender and his vehicle VHF Low radio was able to reach either the Crestview or Silver remote bases. This right up over the San Joaquin Ridge and/or Mammoth Mountain while deep in the hole of the San Joaquin River. 700 MHz would require at least one additional repeater site on the top of Mammoth Mountain, to have covered this incident, if not more.

There are a ton of 700 MHz blind spots all over the eastern Sierra that VHF Low and High have coverage of right now. Caltrans, on 800 MHz, now 40 years since the moved up from 47 MHz, is still trying to cover its blind spots. They are naturally more tolerant of blind spots than the emergency services.

As for DWP it appears they want this system to remain a low level one, with repeaters not installed on high mountain peaks. They didn't choose Silver for their northern Owens Valley coverage, opting for Poleta Peak instead, which is less than 500 feet above the valley floor. The highest they seem to have in Mono County is over near or on Aurora Peak on the Pacific Intertie north of Anchorite Pass. This is to cover the entire Mono Lake Basin, including locations in the June Lake Loop. I think SCE has something over that way as well, for the same reasons, although they have something on top of June Mtn. as well. DWP has just relicensed their low band system in the eastern Sierra as well as on the Pacific Intertie and locations leading to Hoover Dam. I see a large number of their rigs with at least 2 antennas on them. Their radio techs have a thick forest of antennas on top of their rigs.
 

KMFRADIO

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I think Mike put travel net on Bald so that he had a repeater he could drive to. Glass requires a helicopter so if the north net goes down due to power issues anything else up there goes out as well. The Service Net is used as kind of a backup system and sometimes command so being able to drive to it in case of problems was an advantage. The disadvantage being it doesn't have near the coverage Glass has.

Yes, the travel net saga. I think the directories showed it on Conway and Silver or Mazourka or Cerro Gordo. That is some long distance coverage, but that is how the net was designed. Then for some reason, travel net was taken away by another agency, which included the equipment as well. So some other agency just took the whole thing away from us. It's OK as widespread cell phone coverage made the net a bit unnecessary. However, we needed a travel frequency so the state volunteered their OES VHF net or CSERS as I think it is called. I think the direction to use it only on simplex is OK as it just needed so that vehicles traveling together, like a bus for a Type 2 crew and the crew bosses pickup can talk about where to turn at intersections, what restaurant everyone wants to go to, what lane to change to so as to make the correct paths at freeway interchanges and similar. If units need a repeater that suggests they aren't traveling close enough. A travel frequency is also needed for engine strike teams. The state might need a travel frequency more than the feds as they are always moving crews and engines around all over California, possibly more than the feds do.

I kerchunked the Travel Net when I was traveling and I seem to remember doing so in Bridgeport to test Conway and got the kickback squelch tail. I think I did the same for Mazourka or Cerro Gordo with the same result, but from Olancha or Little Lake. Speaking of Olancha, I could communicate fully on it from the top of Cajon Pass and then lost it just north of Kramer Junction until south of Ridgecrest, near that southern Trona intersection.

What sucks about the Travel Net is that an unknown agency took the travel net from us isn't using it anymore. The 169.1250 output frequency is now an air to ground on the national list. It is used in California and I think the old input frequency is used by the wildland fire agencies for something or other now. One problem the travel net had was the radio techs never really made the system well known to the ground troops who could have used it. We just did the old "Let's monitor Tac 2" to communicate with each other. Tac 2 used to sound like an extremely busy CB Channel 19 when you would drive up and down the Calif. Central Valley. When I would suggest we all use "Travel Net," no one seemed to know what it was even though it was shown on the back page of the Regional Frequency Guide. But now the ground troops have the option of CSERS on 153.7550, cell phones or texting each other to conduct logistical comms.

I went to fires all over California and did personnel misconduct investigations, somewhat like fires, on an on call basis. I've used at least half the forest nets in R5 as I was on a fire or an investigation on 11 forests total. One last tidbit, I was on U.S. 101 between Santa Marquita and Paso Robles in brought up Mammoth Mountain (Tone 2) on the Inyo's Forest Net while on a fire on the Los Padres. It was scratchy, but I did talk with the ranger station in Mammoth.
 

KMFRADIO

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Yes the merging to 700 mhz for the CHP has been a 5 year plus plan, so far and yes they have completed the extender upgrade to 700 in our area but hadn't merged completely to their new system, however its in the plans according to the State tech's in our area, as well as Caltrans
as for the LEOs on forest they have had DMR capability since i left 2007 as i made sure of it, they were the only folks on the forest that received DMR Kings as regionally the setup of their stupid secret squirrel system especially in places around the border of Mexico had merged to digital back when the NB upgrade happened, although it was kept secret it became known cause i have had some rangers come by the shop insisting on the frequency's being programed into their units, which couldn't be done cause they had regular King GMH mobiles not DMHs so there wasn't much argument for them for that fact. as for the running of the P25 I'm sure its going to be full time with the new radios being able to do either P25 of narrow band, it shouldn't be an issue
as per DWP. being completely honest with you, haven't heard much of their voice communication at all, although ive been assured that i have it all programmed correctly in my latest scanner, so that will be my next project after I'm through mapping MRA stuff, also just because you don't see it in the FCC data base, there are systems out there that don't require them to license such, and I'm talking about there telemetry stuff id have to talk more with them on it but that's my guess. about 90 percent of there system is telemetry, inner phone.
SCE has been very active on my scanner with their new system, when i first started messing with the discovery feature had found that Radio Reference wasn't up to date on it as of my programming of my scanner, and most of the features of the discovery are automatic to program, I'm not sure as to everything i found to be exact and will further look into that as well
 

KMFRADIO

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I know off topic but i must add,

The State of California is slowly building out a 700MHz trunked radio system to provide for interoperability between agencies. That 700MHz system will never cover the state like low band does. "My opinion" The 700MHz system will be P25 and include encryption. check lout the radios currently on contract. also follow the links for further information as per interoperability



 

KMFRADIO

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Here's the P25 radio used by the USFS

 

KMFRADIO

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the merging to 700 mhz for the CHP has been a 5 year plus plan,

i had meant to write that CHP's upgrade is a multi-year plan, think i was thinking of my heart meds LOL at the time of writing this
 

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es93546

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New license issued on December 8th.
_________________________________________________
WROU200 - Mobile Relay Associates, LLC
12/08/2021 License Issued - (NEW)
Site: 18.4 MI NW, FURNACE CREEK, CA INYO County
https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/license.jsp?licKey=4531057
https://www.radioreference.com/db/fcc/callsign/WROU200
https://nxdn-systems.blogspot.com/p/inyocounty-mra-info.html
_________________________________________________

Most licenses that list "Furnace Creek" are actually located on Rogers Peak, the major electronics site for southern Inyo County. This license actually reads 18.4 miles northwest of Furnace Creek so Rogers is the likely location. Furnace Creek is the closest location of any kind that can be called a town, for the purposes of describing a location. Rogers has good line of site for most of southeast Inyo County and also works very well for southwestern Inyo County as well. It's coverage works well from south of Lone Pine to just south of Olancha. From there south to the Kern County line a mountain range on the China Lake Military Reservation blocks line of site to Rogers. Interestingly, there is a UHF and now, I believe, a microwave path from Rogers to San Sevaine Peak located near Lytle Creek near San Bernardino that links the Federal Interagency Communications Center to Death Valley NP, who provides dispatch services for the park. When it was a UHF link I could pick it up south of Palmdale and hear all comms in Death Valley north to about Inyokern while driving. The NPS is not allowing any new users there, but Inyo County has a building up there or are sharing space in the state's building and thus are an existing use.
 

KMFRADIO

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Yes Inyo county shares a rack space in the State Building on Rogers, also i don't think the microwave is providing a link to the Federal Interagency Comm center, I believe its RoiP now
 

es93546

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? The WROU200 licensed coordinates are 36 36 16.1 N, 117 08 41.7 W, which is at Stovepipe Wells Village, at sea level along SR190, 26.5 miles north along the range on which sits what the State (on WJZ67 loc 3) and others call Rogers Peak.

There is quite a bit of variability on licenses for Rogers Peak. I've seen some listing Furnace Creek and some list Stovepipe Wells. Caltrans itself, lists them both ways, depending on how new the license is. Some licensees do an awfully bad job at calculating lat and long.
 
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