Jackson County's new Harris P25ip system

[Wilrobnson]

News to me, living in Harrison County and being told over the weekend they're nearly done inking their L3/Harris contract.

Also, how does a separate system matter? This isn't 1990, we can patch, use gateways, and program other systems in radios these days, the same way Harrison EDACS radios have MSWIN access (on special events talkgroups) as well as on-affiliation patches to 45.220 and 155.490.

 

[Hammerguy69]

News to me, living in Harrison County and being told over the weekend they're nearly done inking their L3/Harris contract.

Also, how does a separate system matter? This isn't 1990, we can patch, use gateways, and program other systems in radios these days, the same way Harrison EDACS radios have MSWIN access (on special events talkgroups) as well as on-affiliation patches to 45.220 and 155.490.

Well just seems like Harrison and Jackson have that "mine, mine" mentality and don't like to play well with others. Harrison use to patch to MSWIN a lot but now they just hand out radios to MHP and others so they don't have to.

 

[leoaln]

Jackson County Sheriff Dept is supposed to switch to the new system next week, according to a Patrol Officer.

 

[scanphreak]

Jackson County Sheriff Dept is supposed to switch to the new system next week, according to a Patrol Officer.

Are you using OP25 on this new system? If so how well are you picking it up?

 

[leoaln]

I just found out about the change yesterday, and I am trying to get the new system setup. The information that I got was that the Sheriff Dept was possibly going to be encrypted

 

[leoaln]

I got the new system running today, decoding and streaming to my phone with Zello. I seem to have a good solid fix on it, but it is hard to tell with the small amount of traffic now.

 

[scanphreak]

I got the new system running today, decoding and streaming to my phone with Zello. I seem to have a good solid fix on it, but it is hard to tell with the small amount of traffic now.

I just wanted to verify that the simulcast distortion isn't there like it is with all of the commercially made scanners. The only ones capable of successfully decoding are the SDS100 and SDS200. My SDS200 is doing a great job with it. My BCD436HP not so great because I'm in a spot where it's picking up a signal from two of the three towers. I tried changing antennas and taking my yagi and pointing it 90 degrees away from the two towers which improved some, but some of the time things still come in distorted or I can't even get the data from the control channel.

I read that an RTL-SDR with OP25 can successfully overcome these issues. So I was hoping that you wouldn't have any issues clearly understanding what everyone is saying. Pascagoula PD dispatch, and Ocean Springs PD Dispatch are using it 100% right now, also East Fire and West Fire dispatch are being toned-out for calls, and communicating back and forth on it too. TGID 1201, 1211, 1240 are the main ones being used by them. Oh and all of the county schools, Singing River Health are using it 100% now too. During the morning and afternoon you'll here a bunch of bus radio traffic 1901, 1904, 1907, 1910. The DB has this info as well now.

 

[leoaln]

No problem with distortion. OP25 decodes it pretty clean.

 

[scanphreak]

No problem with distortion. OP25 decodes it pretty clean.

cool... Was it very difficult to put together? Are you using a Pi for it? Which model? I have questions lol.

 

[leoaln]

I have run op25 on a rpi4 before, but I switched to an old i3 laptop that I installed Ubuntu on. Jackson County’s old system, Motorola SmartZone , required 2 sdr to decode and the pi would run it okay, but I was also decoding Harrison county and it would struggle with both systems.
It usually takes me a little while to get op25 up and running right but once I get it right, it is real stable and will run for months at a time without any problems. The developer of OP25 (Boatbod)is on here and he and some of the other more experienced users are real helpful getting everything running.

 

[leoaln]

I am only streaming to my phone using Zello, but alpha tags don’t work with this setup. Alpha tags can work if you are streaming to Brodcastify, but I am trying to get them to work on a private server.

 

[scanphreak]

Jackson County Sheriff Dept is supposed to switch to the new system next week, according to a Patrol Officer.

They started using it this morning while keeping everything patched to the old system. Then later on this evening the patches stopped and they're transmitting only on the new system. At least Patrol 1 and West Sub 1, and ADC is. Patrol 3 was still using the old system this evening.

Moss Point PD and FD moved over today too. Gautier seems to be the only city not migrated (even partially) yet. But oddly enough I heard several of their units asking for radio checks (assuming they were given their new radios but hadn't moved to the new TGIDs/system yet.)

 

[leoaln]

I have Jackson County and MSWIN FountainBleau both running on the same instance of OP25. They each have their own sdr and audio outputs, and can be individually setup with their own whitelists and blacklists. It took me a little while to get it all working together, but it seems to be running pretty smooth.

 

[scanphreak]

I have Jackson County and MSWIN FountainBleau both running on the same instance of OP25. They each have their own sdr and audio outputs, and can be individually setup with their own whitelists and blacklists. It took me a little while to get it all working together, but it seems to be running pretty smooth.

Nice that answered a question of mine how would different systems work (if at all) with one instance.

 

[leoaln]

Which MSWIN site do you monitor? I can pull in FountainBleau fairly easily, and I can get Gulfport, but it is not as strong of a signal.

 

[Techoutlaw]

Does anybody know whether a Uniden Home Patrol 2 will pick up the new system?

 

[mcems79]

Does anybody know whether a Uniden Home Patrol 2 will pick up the new system?

i read it can scan p25 phase 2 so it should.

 

[scanphreak]

Does anybody know whether a Uniden Home Patrol 2 will pick up the new system?

That model will receive P25 Phase I and Phase II signals. However, this system is Simulcast which means it has multiple towers throughout the county all of which are transmitting the control channel on the same frequency at the same time. If you happen to be in an area where your scanner can receive the control channel from more than one tower your scanner can't properly decode the signal it'll get interference from the other towers it hears therefore cancelling out the control channel entirely.

When that happens you'll see strong signal bars, but where the control channel displays the frequency you'll only see NFM and you'll never hear anything at all. There are only a few ways to defeat this problem.

1. Move closer to a tower like within 1-2 miles from it, where it's signal will override the signal from the other towers therefore allowing the scanner to decode the control channel.

2. Move to a position where your scanner is at equal distance from all towers so it can hear the control channel with the same equal strength which will prevent one from cancelling out the other.

3. Buy a Uniden SDS100 or SDS200 which is the only truly I/Q performing scanner on the market. It was designed specifically to fix these problems with Simulcast trunked systems.

4. Use a computer with an SDR dongle/receiver along with a Linux distro and install OP25 decoding software. (cheapest method)

I have a BCD325P2 which is pretty much the same thing as a HP 2, and 90% of the time where I'm at I won't hear anything on this system except by occasional moving the scanner around, or getting in the car and driving closer to one of the towers.

 

[n1chu]

Without reading every post, (this has probably been mentioned, I just didn’t catch it), I wonder if you tried locking out (avoiding) those simulcast sites that are not closest to you. Pick the strongest one and avoid all others. Or, another farther away than the closest one and only listening to that one site. Try numerous sites by themselves and see if the BCD325P2 or HP2 comes to life for you.

 

[scanphreak]

Without reading every post, (this has probably been mentioned, I just didn’t catch it), I wonder if you tried locking out (avoiding) those simulcast sites that are not closest to you. Pick the strongest one and avoid all others. Or, another farther away than the closest one and only listening to that one site. Try numerous sites by themselves and see if the BCD325P2 or HP2 comes to life for you.

Can't do that. All three sites on this system are broadcasting the control channel on the same frequency at the same time, they don't have their own control channel. So when my radio is picking up the signal from more than one site it cancels it out and I get NFM instead of the cc frequency being displayed. If I drive closer to one site it's signal overrides everything else and then it comes to life.

I've taken a 4 element yagi and I have positioned it where it nulls out adjacent signals from the further towers so about 95% of the time I'm getting a signal, but some transmissions still come in garbled. SDS200 works flawlessly, and I'm getting an RTL-SDR next week and I'm going to just build a linux box and use OP25.

In the meantime I've made a work-around. I'm using my SDS200 connected to my router and I'm running a web server through ProScan so I can actually listen and control my SDS200 from my smartphone on the road.