Los Alamos LAPD frequencies

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izmonitor

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Good afternoon.

I am a very amateur user; as a newspaper, we have a scanner in our office to monitor what might be going on in the county and provide public safety updates. This is the first time I've had to try to use and set up a scanner.

A few weeks ago, LAPD and LAFD both dropped out when every county agency switched over to the Los Alamos National Lab trunked P-25 system. We rushed out and bought a digital scanner (Radio Shack 668-Pro), and still have not been able to get it to work for the LANL system. Generally, after importing all possible frequencies in the area, I'm only able to pick up very occasional chatter from the state police, and even more occasionally from the DOE systems.

The radio office tells me that they are using P-25, but the RadioReference library still lists LANL as an EDACS system. I've manually switched the settings from the library in the scanner to P-25 (after EDACS didn't work) and tried playing with just about every setting I can find.

Is there anyone out there who knows what settings I could be missing? Again, I know only about as much as I've gleaned from the Internet on this subject, but it seems like maybe the database is outdated. Any help would be appreciated!
 

com_chaser

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First see if you able to listen to the P-25 control channel?
it's on 406.1875

Looks like the EDACS system is still running on 408.5875
 
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hpycmpr

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I notice the first five frequencies listed on the LANL EDACS system are the same frequencies as listed on the Los Alamos US DOE P25 system. Probably in a state of transition. Try using the DOE system setup with all TG's enabled.

Steve
 

chudgoo

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So there are a couple of different control channels that are used. They rotate through them every once in a while.
The frequencies I'm aware of (in order of most commonly used to least) are:

406.1125
406.1875
406.5500
(almost never used)
406.7875
406.9875

There are something like 90 different talk groups that I've identified, but I think only the 1001-1070 are for county services (LAPD, LAFD, animal control, etc). 1076-1400 are DOE and SOC. A few of these are encrypted, as you'd probably imagine/hope.
TGID 1001 is LAPD dispatch and the various TACs are 1002-101X.

I've never used that particular scanner, but you should be able to add a new system and enter the control channel frequencies and things should just start to work. Try using FreeScan and a programming cable for your scanner. Each manufacturer seems to do things differently on that end.

You can PM me if you have other questions or would like to discuss it further.
 
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chudgoo

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Also, as an aside, I'm 99% sure that the old EDACS system is mostly dead now, even though the control channel is still blasting away. The last things I heard on it (probably 3 months ago) were some kind of EMS patient transport/vitals stuff.
 

izmonitor

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Thanks for your help, chudgoo! It's good to know someone out there knows something - you wouldn't believe the luck we've been having...

All of those frequencies come "packaged" when I program the scanner (we've actually bit the bullet and bought a second one, in the off-chance the RadioShack one was just faulty...it wasn't, it still doesn't work). Should I be setting those up differently or using a particular format for them?

Once again, I'm able to pick up Santa Fe and various channels in the area, but it sticks on LANL and sits silent for a few seconds before moving on. I can't believe with the sirens I heard earlier that they're really not doing anything...

If I go into the settings, I see the DOE site, Project 25, for LA (and a few other sites I don't care about) with all of the frequencies you listed above. In theory, that should just work, right?
 

chudgoo

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I haven't used that particular radio, so I'm not sure how you program it really. For my Uniden BCD396XT, I just add a new system, select P25, add a control channel frequency and save. From there it kind of just works, but you wont have any idea who you're hearing unless you name the talk groups either in the radio itself or using FreeScan.

From the sound of it, you've got the info from the radioreference database in the radio, which is missing a great deal of the details for this site. I believe the only talkgroup that's listed is for DAHRT, which frankly is very boring. ;)
I casually keep kind of a running log in gmail of notes associated with the ones I've (mostly) identified, but I'll only paste the county ones here. (basically lanl related stuff begins at 1076)

1001 - LAPD Dispatch (various LAPD TACs after this)
1005 - "Raven 2" (animal control? lots of references to roaming dogs?)
.
1020 - FIRE DISPATCH
1021 - FIRE TAC 1
.
.
1034 - EMS - TAC 15
.
.
.
*Here be dragons... I mean LANL*
.
1076 - 1314 (and probably beyond) are all non-county.
 

chudgoo

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Also, it's worth noting that what you're trying to do can be achieved VERY inexpensively with a RTL-SDR, Unitrunker, DSDPlus setup. I currently have three different laptops listening to the Los Alamos P25 system. The best performance so far is with my most recent laptop purchase (a $200 AMD A8 based crappy laptop) and a single $25 RTL-SDR dongle. Unitrunker is free, so is DSDPlus (digital speech decoder). Dual SDRs allow for faster tuning though. (I've got about 5-6 of them now).

The benefit in this approach (especially for a stationary setup) is you have full logging, recording, indexing, etc of all signals received and decoded. This can be helpful if something interesting happens and you miss it and wish you could 'rewind'. You can also easily set priorities (like LAPD dispatch) and lock out channels that you don't care about (TA16 access control, pest control, SOC and their endless alarm checks and whatnot). That and it looks like your two portable scanners are $500 each...?!?! My best scanner was like $300! heh. ;)

If you're one of the two newspapers in town, I had already liked your pages, so if you search for CHUD in your FB friends, you can find me if you want to talk off the RR forums.
 
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chudgoo

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>> it sticks on LANL and sits silent for a few seconds before moving on

Does this radio have a 'HOLD' function?
You should be able to lock onto the LA P25 system and just let it run.
From there you should hear audio and see all kinds of random talk group IDs pop up.
Then you should be able to do a temporary lockout of any TGs you don't want to hear. I'm not sure of the specifics of this radio, but you -should- be able to delete talk groups inside the settings for the system.
(For public safety purposes, anything above 1075 can be removed completely)
 

izmonitor

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Hi, chudgoo.

Your previous posts worked on one of the scanners - thank you! We can hear more than we actually want to now - but at least that includes all of the public safety channels that we need.

I ultimately wound up manually adding a trunked system to the newer Uniden HomePatrol II scanner that we bought in a desperate attempt to get something that worked. After some tweaking and figuring out how all of those settings worked, I started hearing police dispatch.

Again, I can't thank you enough. Our whole office is thrilled to have this functionality back so we can better get information out to the community.
 

beerzkool

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I am having trouble with the pro-106
I set it to p25 auto, put in the 5 current freqs, and have left it on wildcard.
Most transmissions are garbled and cut out. Occasionally I hear one perfect.
Are there sub settings I need to do under TSYS?
I am in white rock so I would assume I am close enough.
 

chudgoo

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I am having trouble with the pro-106
I set it to p25 auto, put in the 5 current freqs, and have left it on wildcard.
Most transmissions are garbled and cut out. Occasionally I hear one perfect.
Are there sub settings I need to do under TSYS?
I am in white rock so I would assume I am close enough.


I've never used a PRO-106 personally, but I'd imagine you're seeing the same simulcast issues I am up in LA.
The best luck I had with "traditional" digital scanners (Uniden BCD396XT and BCD436HP) was with using a directional antenna (yagi) pointing directly at one tower, while trying to avoid the other. Even then, the results were either great or terrible. Never consistent...

This summarizes some of the differences between C4FM ("normal") and CQPSK ("LSM" or simulcast):
APCO Project 25 - The RadioReference Wiki

The system up here is using simulcast (CQPSK or LSM) and I've actually had the best results BY FAR with a fantastic little java app (windows/mac/linux) called SDRTrunk and a cheap $10 RTL-SDR dongle with stock 6" antenna.
The creator of the application is a member on the radioreference forums as well. See: http://forums.radioreference.com/vo...308299-sdrtrunk-p25-decoder-test-release.html

SDRTrunk supports LSM (simulcast mode) and even with meager hardware (an old Core 2 Duo) I'm getting great results.

I'm sure that doesn't make you feel any better about plunking down $400+ on a scanner (believe me, I've got two P25 capable ones now) but I know Uniden is working on refining their code, and I believe Whistler and GRE/RadioShack are as well. Hopefully in time, these issues will be a thing of the past.
 
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chudgoo

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I am having trouble with the pro-106
I set it to p25 auto, put in the 5 current freqs, and have left it on wildcard.
Most transmissions are garbled and cut out. Occasionally I hear one perfect.
Are there sub settings I need to do under TSYS?
I am in white rock so I would assume I am close enough.

This thread sounds like it could help...possibly... (edit: if you can dig around the guy who was "completely banned for the greater good")
http://forums.radioreference.com/radio-shack-scanners/124103-pro-106-cqpsk.html
 
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beerzkool

Scanning the Pajarito Plateau since 1995.
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Los Alamos, New Mexico
Thanks for the info.
I drove uptown and had great results. So I guess I need to focus on the antenna.

Do you monitor Bandelier?
 

N0GTG

Scanner programmer since 1997
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Also, see this RR Wiki page on simulcast digital distortion. As it explains, much of the problem with digital simulcast involves digital bits from 2 (or more) sites arriving at your scanner at very slightly different times. It's like the multipath distortion on your TV when television was analog. There's no quick fix, but it does give some insight into the problem, and some things to try which might minimize the problem. I wish you luck!! Simulcast digital distortion - The RadioReference Wiki
 
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