Maryland FIRST 700mhz TRS

LordDonkey

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Dec 12, 2017
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Friendsville, MD
Radio maintenance is doing testing on all the OPs, Law Main, Event Tac, Fire/EMS Main, Fire/EMS Repeaters, and DNR Forestry channels on the VHF system. Also did siren and pager testing.

Ahh, I should have looked out my window. There's climbers on the Blooming Rose site working on the county antennas.

What are the RIDs of the West Virginia fire companies in the area?

Not sure. I don't monitor them much. I need to move my antenna to a better/higher spot so I can get a decent WV-SIRN signal.
 

LordDonkey

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Friendsville, MD
Nevermind about the tower work... I thought they were working on the county antennas, but turns out there was a CHART camera being installed. Totally forgot about that, it was listed on the website but not in service. Still isn't. Pretty sure the radio testing was unrelated to the tower work.

Side note: Garrett Central said they were having radio interference problems earlier.
 

maus92

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Nevermind about the tower work... I thought they were working on the county antennas, but turns out there was a CHART camera being installed. Totally forgot about that, it was listed on the website but not in service. Still isn't. Pretty sure the radio testing was unrelated to the tower work.

Side note: Garrett Central said they were having radio interference problems earlier.
Interference on what channels?
 

LordDonkey

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Dec 12, 2017
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Friendsville, MD
I believe they were having issues with FiRST. It was at around 4:27 PM, Garrett Central asked if an ambulance was direct on a transmission. The ambulance advised they were not. Garrett then said they were having radio interference "in here." It was on Fire Tac 1.
 

BM82557

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Berkeley Co WV
Nevermind about the tower work... I thought they were working on the county antennas, but turns out there was a CHART camera being installed. Totally forgot about that, it was listed on the website but not in service. Still isn't. Pretty sure the radio testing was unrelated to the tower work.

Side note: Garrett Central said they were having radio interference problems earlier.


A related question ... Has anyone seen anything that indicates when CHART will be started up in District 6? I haven't copied any activity on TG 7291 since last January, even then the total count of activity was only 10.
 

Dispatcher308

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As of 1:39 there is traffic back on GCSO Main. AS for EOC Consoles, I have no idea when it comes to installing consoles. The county did set aside some money for FY2020 for communications.

Elder Hill Tower: $24,070 (There used to be a tower on top of Elder Hill around 2007, around the 5700 block on RT. 42. I don't know if it was taken down by the tornado in 2008 or if something happened before that. I can't find any information about it.)
911 console radio upgrade: $823,150

Its still there, I just visited it yesterday.
 

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LordDonkey

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Friendsville, MD
There was another tower that was near Rt. 42 in the field. Around 39.646837, -79.391819. The way the street view looks in May 2009, it was just a pole in the middle of the field. I think a storm took it down because it's not there today. Not sure what its purpose was. I was around 9 or 10 at the time. Never really payed attention to towers much back then, not like I do today.

A related question ... Has anyone seen anything that indicates when CHART will be started up in District 6? I haven't copied any activity on TG 7291 since last January, even then the total count of activity was only 10.
I haven't seen any activity from 7291.


As for Garrett County and the new consoles...
I believe the RIDs for the new Garrett County consoles are in the 243900x range. I've logged 2439001, 2439002, and 2439003 so far. There's 4 consoles so the last one is probably 2439000 or 2439004. I heard a series of tones on GR Fire EMS Main early morning (single 1000 Hz tone, hi-lo hi-lo for structure fire, and a weather alert tone) on the 19th from 2439001 and then "Radio maintenance testing only." Most of the time the tones aren't showing a source RID. There was a toneout for siren and pagers for each company, Co 110 had incorrect tones. I did pick up 3 unknown talkgroups, 12631, 12633, 12634. A GCSO radio was heard doing a 10-97 (Radio Check) on those 3 talkgroups around noon on Tuesday, and 2439002 keyed up for 5 seconds of silence. Nothing since on those TGs. This morning, 21st of May, around 07:42 it sounded like Mineral County police over GR Fire EMS Main - 12601. Sounded like analog. It was a tone and then something about resuming normal radio traffic.

Side note: I hope the consoles some with better mics. Currently it's hard to understand what's being said, it's garbled and there's a lot of noise. Sometimes background noise, but mostly static like noise. Like a bad cable or mic.
 
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LordDonkey

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Friendsville, MD
I'm hearing some very strange tones over 12682. It's a Garrett County RID sending the tones. The TG isn't in the database. I've never heard tones like this used here before. I've attached the tones. Anyone know what they could be for?
 

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firebal

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Baltimore, MD
I'm hearing some very strange tones over 12682. It's a Garrett County RID sending the tones. The TG isn't in the database. I've never heard tones like this used here before. I've attached the tones. Anyone know what they could be for?
A few of them sound like fire tones but the others are really strange as you said.
 

maus92

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Various alert tones, not sure of the vendor. They may be testing the fidelity of the voice channel - it's not just a matter of sending QCII type tones over a tg for personnel alerting. It took Talbot a while to get it right.
 

AdamHLG

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Feb 13, 2012
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Various alert tones, not sure of the vendor. They may be testing the fidelity of the voice channel - it's not just a matter of sending QCII type tones over a tg for personnel alerting. It took Talbot a while to get it right.

Interesting. I read the Unication white paper on P25 alerting and the cost of maintaining separate legacy radio hardware just to page vs. paging on P25, along with the other arguments to replace minitors with unications. I was sold. I was thinking of pitching the idea up the food chain to the powers that be in my jurisdiction as a beta program if our station buys the radios. I guess I assumed it would be simple - just hook up a few wires, pick an unused TG, and profit! Maybe its not so simple after all.
 
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