Iredell County Updates

[RF-Burns]

FYI - Iredell County is transitioning to a VIPER simulcast system. The county has constructed four tower sites, with a fifth currently being built in West Statesville near Interstate 40 and Stamey Farm Road. The new system should be going live by the end of the year per sources in the county. It will be RFSS 4 Site 40 (Dec) 31 (Hex). The new system will launch in TDMA so older scanners and Phase I radios will not work.

Several new talkgroups have been created, and many existing ones have been modified compared to the information in the current database. I submitted all the new talkgroups and updates to the existing ones on September 3, 2025, but the database has not yet been updated. Multiple new talkgroups are already active and in use.

 

[RaleighGuy]

@RF-Burns thank you for letting us know and for the submission to the database, hopefully @trumpetman or other DB admin will update it soon.

 

[trumpetman]

I apologize for not getting back to your private message, but a lot of what you submitted is not active yet and will not be active until the simulcast is live. Talkgroup names and purposes and encryption capabilities are still being firmed up and likely will be fluid through the foreseeable future as the county and participating towns iron out how they are going to utilize VIPER. I would rather not add a bunch of information that may be downloaded to scanners and ultimately have the talkgroup names and purposes changed and cause confusion. That is a lot of the reason why the database requires over the air confirmation rather than codeplug dumps and template plans that may never actually be programmed in or used. A good example is the the Iredell County simulcast is actually supposed to be zone 4 site 49, not 40, but we won't know that for sure until the site comes on the air and is monitored.

If you can provide what is actively in use now based on your monitoring, I would be happy to work that, but anything beyond that is still a guess until it goes live and you can personally confirm over the air what that talkgroup is used for.

 

[RF-Burns]

A good example is the the Iredell County simulcast is actually supposed to be zone 4 site 49, not 40

You are correct, it was my typo. Not sure why I typed 40 and not 49. Hex it 31 which correlates to 49 Dec.

 

[RF-Burns]

After much consideration regarding my submission being effectively denied by the admin team, I’ve decided not to provide any additional information to the RR Database. The information I submitted came directly from the radios currently in use in the field, programmed with the new template within the past month.

From my perspective, if this configuration is good enough for our first responders, it should be good enough for the scanner community. Any future changes to the current template would place a much greater burden on county programming officials—who would have to reprogram subscriber radios in the field—than on the few dozen SDS radios currently in use in Iredell County.

I hate that it came to this. As an 18-year member of this site, I’ve only had one other submission that I worked hard to obtain be denied— which remains nearly 75% incorrect in the database today. Even though my submission was intended to correct it with verified information from the system admin. Just like with that county, I’ve decided to stop providing corrected information.

 

[K9KLC]

After much consideration regarding my submission being effectively denied by the admin team, I’ve decided not to provide any additional information to the RR Database. The information I submitted came directly from the radios currently in use in the field, programmed with the new template within the past month.

From my perspective, if this configuration is good enough for our first responders, it should be good enough for the scanner community. Any future changes to the current template would place a much greater burden on county programming officials—who would have to reprogram subscriber radios in the field—than on the few dozen SDS radios currently in use in Iredell County.

I hate that it came to this. As an 18-year member of this site, I’ve only had one other submission that I worked hard to obtain be denied— which remains nearly 75% incorrect in the database today. Even though my submission was intended to correct it with verified information from the system admin. Just like with that county, I’ve decided to stop providing corrected information.

I'm not trying to be rude here, but I have a couple of questions.

Do you live where you can monitor either site? I see you're some kind of feed provider so do your feeds reflect this new information?

Also regarding the "other submission", have you heard traffic on that or is that something you feed out also?

Obviously if you provide feeds you're monitoring something, seems the new information would crop up on those and then be easily verifiable for submission. Yes obviously this could take some time, but seems it would meet the criteria.

I'm just trying to understand here exactly what's going on. Thru out the years I've been provided a "few" templates for radio programming, some of which did not come to pass. Even now on our system here, something that was supposed to happen, and did, in fact, for about a week, switched back to something else, so, after some work we had to get that updated in my area. Took several emails and then an actual submission thru the DB stuff here but we got it up to date.

Again I am just trying to understand exactly what's going on here with the systems you mentioned.

 

[RF-Burns]

Do you live where you can monitor either site?

Yes I do, and multiple new talkgroups are currently active and/or have had name changes which were also submitted.

Thru out the years I've been provided a "few" templates for radio programming, some of which did not come to pass.

Yes, this new template was over two years in the making before being rolled out to subscriber radios. It includes all the channels currently deployed in subscriber radios for the new simulcast system. While the simulcast system is not yet live, it is expected to go online in the coming weeks. With that said, new talkgroups are active and are currently in use on the multicast system of VIPER.

VIPER is primarily a multicast system, but a few select counties, like Iredell, have made significant investments to convert it into a simulcast system for improved countywide coverage. This effort includes the purchase and construction of five new tower sites, control channels, and talkgroups.

New talkgroups and conventional channels—both encrypted and unencrypted—are already in use, and I have provided those details as well.

I find no fault with Radio Reference or its admin team. I simply don’t find it productive to spend weeks searching, asking, and bartering for confirmed information, only for that information to be denied because it doesn’t meet the page’s guidelines. So for that reason, I will keep the gathered information to myself and to the people I choose to provide it too.

 

[K9KLC]

Thank you for taking the time to explain, I appreciate it. While at this time I do not live in the area mentioned, I do go probably once a year that way, and my wife and I are considering a possible move, and NC is one of the places she seems to really enjoy. While we're looking at places in other areas, obviously I still like to stay up to date when even traveling thru an area. We've stopped in Statesville several times now for a night or two, and the last time I brought my BCD 536 and used the zip code stuff but now I do 99% of my stuff on Unication pagers so programming accurate information is always helpful. We just like keeping abreast of things and frankly monitoring has helped us to avoid delays, dangerous situations, etc.

Again thank you for your explanation. I for one, appreciate it.

 

[RF-Burns]

I see you're some kind of feed provider so do your feeds reflect this new information?

Yes, my RR Feed and all my private feeds reflect the new information. However, my Calls Platform feed does not show the change because the admin team has not yet updated the database with the new channel names.

Also regarding the "other submission", have you heard traffic on that or is that something you feed out also?

Yes and No, a family member is the system administrator for that system and asked me to provide accurate information, which I gladly did. For obvious reasons, he couldn’t submit the changes himself. The RR administrator in that state did not believe the information was accurate or warranted and literally berated me in private messages, so the database still remains incorrect today with dozens of inaccurate talkgroup descriptions and ID's. That said, the last time I was in that area—this past summer—I monitored the system and confirmed that the information in the database is still wrong.

my wife and I are considering a possible move, and NC

It's a great state, you will enjoy it here if you make the move. Weather is usually good, the taxes are low, and the gun laws are fantastic. Many reasons I left the state I grew up in.

 

[K9KLC]

It's a great state, you will enjoy it here if you make the move. Weather is usually good, the taxes are low, and the gun laws are fantastic. Many reasons I left the state I grew up in.

Thanks and also for all the information. I've never worried too much about channel names, I have to rename all that stuff for my Unications anyway usually. Usually when traveling I have them in "wild card" scan anyway so the'll get all the talk groups and then only the TG # comes up. Obviously if I was to move to an area or spend any length of time there, I'd pick some and name them.