Let me see if I have this straight... (San Patricio County)

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zabuni

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I am researching how to use a scanner to receive signals for a friend of mine. This is what I have learned so far, please correct me if I am wrong:

  • San Patricio County has recently switch to EDACS, currently unecrypted AEGIS and voice.

    While the voice is easy enough to listen to, AEGIS isn't, at the very least it costs a great deal of difficult to get equipment to listen to them.

    Currently, using my friend's Radio Shack Pro-96 Handheld scanner, I have programmed in the System Frequencies, as per RadioReference.com and the reference manual for the scanner.

    Doing this has resulted with two of the system frequencies giving back results. One system frequency gives a constant, unintelligible signal, as if AEGIS was on all the time, and was undecodable.

    The other gives a mix of short duration signals like the above, as well as, to a lesser extent, understandable voice communications.

    The voice communications are ended by a set of short beeps. I have no idea what this means.

Conclusion:

San Patricio County is using AEGIS for most of it's voice communications. This makes it difficult to impossible to receive their communications. The voice communications I hear are the people with mobile/old units who don't have AEGIS. It will be difficult for my friend to monitor police channels.

Note, my familiarity of the EDACS and AEGIS models are cursory. I may have made mistakes in the setting of the mode of the channels I was listening to, but it seemed that it was in EDACS mode.

Totally right? Totally wrong? Something in the middle?
 

INDY72

Monitoring since 1982, using radios since 1991.
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The BEEP BEEP BBEP BEEP BEEP is the sound telling you that the EDACS system is not programmed in correctly...... Iether you don't have it in EDACS mode, or the LCN's are not all correct. A loud constant BUZZING sound indicates a data chan, which again means incorrect programming.

When AEGIS is turned on on a TG, you hear the BUZZ/HISS,. each time a transmission is made. Also remember AEGIS is a selectable digital encryption mode used per TG. A few systems may use it 24/7, but most only use it for some comms. If a TG has it on 24/7 you can not monitor it.. AEGIS is the oldest "Digital" type of security offered on an EDACS system. Most of the newer systems use Provoice which is even more impossible to hear.

Question: On the 96, is it set up to program in the mode on each chan, as well as bank, like the rest of the GRE line up (92, 93, 95)?

If so, make sure you set the bank as ED, each chan as ED, and start the LCN's in the second open chan in the bank- 01, not 00. Make sure that you put the freqs in proper LCN order if possible.
 

mam1081

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While trunking, most scanners will ignore digital talkgroups, so you would only hear the AEGIS while scanning conventionally.

You might try listening to the systems conventionally for a while and noting what order the frequencies are assigned. By this, I mean program all channels in, then scan. Lock out the data channel when it locks on. Now sit back and listen. Once you hear someone talking, note the frequency and lock out that channel. You should not hear any traffic on that frequency again until all channels have been used. Once you have locked out all of the frequancies, you should have an order of frequencies used. Check this with what is on this database (your list probably won't be in the same numberical order, but the channels should be in the correct order). If they are in order as on this database, then it should work trunking. If not, re-program your scanner with the oder of frequencies you found. You might have to experiment a lot. There is a program called etrunk which will give you the correct LCN (logical channel numbering).

This order is used my EDACS and LTR systems. EDACS systems MUST be programmed in the correct order - or they will not trunk correctly.
 
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