JC/Wash Co. need rebanding plan settings

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picree

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Can someone who knows please post the rebanding settings for the new Johnson City/Washington County ASTRO P-25 public safety system?

The Lower base frequency?

The Offset?

The Polarity?

The Spacing?
 

W4EMS

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What radio are you using? That helps others brief you on how to program.
For the Pro-106 and a pure P-25 digital system you only need to set it to P-25 auto.
 

picree

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I'm using a BC796D with the P25 card turned on. I am only getting very short sporadic clips of conversation. I used to pick up everything loud and clear. I live right in JC. I can trunk KPT which I believe is a P25 system just fine.
 

DonnieDog

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Kingsport isnt P25, they have a phase II control channel out of Bristol on the main system but i've never heard any P25 traffic on it. I use the 857.4625 as my control channel for the WC/JC P25 and im getting everything fine.
 

picree

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Johnson City, TN
Well...On various days I have picked up control channel static on 859.4625 and 860.4625. My scanner does seem to be picking up a control channel on 857.4625 but I can't hear the usual control channel static when I take it out of trunking mode (all the display does is toggle between "DAT" and "NFM". OTOH, I can hear control channel static on 859.4625 (this morning I can...last week the static was on 860.4625).

So, what does that mean?

Well maybe I am picking up something from Bristol and thinking it's Sullivan Co/KPT. It does decode (at times) as P25 on this scanner (it says so on the screen). I check the database here and they confirm Sullivan Co/KPT an analog/P25 system.

Sullivan County Trunking System, Various, Tennessee - Scanner Frequencies
 
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picree

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Johnson City, TN
DonnieDog-your scanner may have had the requisite band plans loaded with a firmware update but mine does not. I have banks to enter six custom band plans. I entered the two that BC recommends as the default for most rebanded systems but neither of those work (one gets me some of the transmissions).

Can you pole your scanner to find out what band plan you are using (offset, spacing, etc)? Has anyone else figured out what the new rebanded band plan is for JC/WC?
 

DonnieDog

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With the Second Tower up in Gray i'd say its throwing out a second Control Channel. All I have in my 197 is 857.4625 and i'm getting everything. 857.4625 was apart of the old Type II smartnet system they just carried the 10 freqs over from it to the 5 new ones. The old system is still active but not for long.

That Phase II Digital Control Channel your hearing from Bristol is apart of the Sullivan County TRS. Since its Phase II yours or my 197 wont decode it. I hate that too!!
 

picree

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Johnson City, TN
In your case you just put in the freqs and the 197 works but maybe my 796 needs a little more data or isn't as smart about it. I assume JC is rebanded (maybe not). Can you look at your rebanded config to see what the settings are? Lower Base Freq? Spacing? Offset?
 

picree

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Bump-is there anyone with a BC796D that can trunk the new JC/WC P25 Public Safety system? I can not get my radio to trunk it. The ONLY variable I can think of is a custom rebanding plan. Can anyone comment on the rebanding plan used by JC/WC?
 

nme1

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I too am trying to decipher the recent changes with the WCPS (Project 25) frequencies. I hear NOTHING with the RadioReference downloaded freqs for the WCPS (Project 25). HOWEVER, when I listen to the programmed Arkansas Wireless Information Network (AWIN) on my BCD396XT scanner, I hear some of the LOCAL JCP dispatch. There must be some similarities between the two systems for me to be able to do this. I live in JC and am still searching and listening to try to get this figured out.
 

ButchGone

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You don't have to do anything for P25 systems other than enter control channels. The data channel carries all the info a radio needs - no need to enter base, offsets, etc like on 3600 baud rebanded systems. There is no such thing as rebanded P25 9600 baud systems. That's different from 3600 mixed mode systems. On the 796 try fiddling with digi settings. I used to have a 296 and I had to adjust decode threshold levels to hear P25 right.
Also keep in mind decoding simulcast P25 systems is a boogar...Uniden and GRE issued firmware updates on their latest models to better handle proper decoding. Using an older 796 might prove challenging, depending on the system. Good luck!
BG..
 

picree

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Johnson City, TN
Unfortunately I guess I know just enough to scan a regular trunk system (and not much more). Things change too often to keep up these days. For a day or two last week I got snippets of conversations but not anything repeatable. Now I get nothing. I have all frequencies here and talkgroups programmed in one bank. The bank has been set up as Type2/800Mhz and Type2 Custom with a couple of standard base configurations.

The only digital adjustment I can find is a "sound quality" setting. It can only be activated while the scanner is on an active talkgroup. I was able to get it to come up and I tried adjusting it to various settings but neither the higher nor the lower settings seem to make any difference.

This just sucks because this was a fun hobby and I paid quite a bit for this scanner just a few years ago. At this point I wouldn't even know which "P25 capable" scanner to buy. I thought the 796 would work. What the heck? How would someone know which scanner would even work?

I'll do some more reading and learning to see if I can understand more but right now it looks like some of us are SOL for the moment.
 

mokpt

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kingsport, TN
I have been using a Pro-97. I live in Kingsport and noticed several months back that I got nothing in Johnson city. I had trunk banks set up, one for PD and one for Fire/EMS. I assume it went dark when they re-banded. As of a couple days ago Sullivan county went quiet when using trunking. I assume it has been re-banded too. Can anyone confirm this? I got a Pro-164, updated it to firmware 1.07. I went thru Win97 and changed the trunked banks to "rebanded" and I'm still not getting anything. Can anyone help me with this?

Thanks
 

mokpt

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Just an update. With the help of a few guys on here, I discovered that Sullivan Co had changed to a new control channel that was not listed. One channel....a whole weekend of figurine it out.
 

INDY72

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TRS Tips! On a system that has less than 4 CC's listed, always keep checking to see if the CC rotates to an alternate as MOST TRS's have up to 4 possible CC's that can be rotated to for various reasons. Some systems never rotate to any unless there is an problem and they need to make a change to fix that issue. Others rotate weekly, others daily, and a very few every 12 hours or so. This is an essential thig for anyone using CC ONly to track an system. If you do not have at least 2 CC's known I would highly advise against CC only modes. For the longest time as an example, the City of Hot Springs, AR TRS had only 3 CC's known. When I moved here .. I was using CC only and one night.. NADA.. SO I did a lil test. I programmed in all the freqs and manually went through them. BINGO! Found that fourth CC! I now know they rotate all 4, but use 3 mainly and every now and again flop to that 4th.
 

picree

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Johnson City, TN
OK-I got it to work. For anyone with a BC796D it was a combination of several things.

1) As suggested here the only channel required to program in is the control channel 857.4625...no other frequencies.
2) There is no rebanding (my bad). No offset or base or anything. I just set it up as a Type 2/800Mhz P25 system. Do not select P25/Custom.
3) I found a post here at RR that describes how to use an "automatic" for adjusting the P25 Sound Quality feature. This auto adjustment is not documented in the manual! It really helps get the proper adjustment. When doing a P25 Sound Quality adjustment press "pri" and let the 796 do an automatic 3-step quality adjustment (why isn't this in the manual?). See link here;

http://forums.radioreference.com/uniden-scanners/39223-796d-p25-audio-problem.html#post292820

4) MOST IMPORTANTLY!!!!!! I read that lowering the squelch gate is sometimes required on a P25 digital system. Once I did that I started getting transmissions! Previously I had read that squelch didn't matter but should be set to midpoint for trunked systems. This was probably the biggest reason I was not receiving transmissions!

Thanks for the help.
 

firetrucker

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i live down in the lamar community and the signal is kinda weak down here i work with the fire dept at embreeville our new radios work pretty good but could be better the scanner started getting weak about 5 miles outside jc so i locked out all my frq except 857.4625 and set my pro 96 to open bank scanning just to see what it would pick up and it blowed my mind on what all it will do on that one channel thanks guys it works much better down here now on that one control channel. by the way we put up our own vhf repeater recently the freq is 154.385 we use it quite often give us a listen
 
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