Monmouth P25 Site 18

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GM

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I'm going to say it is, as I'm getting the signal with 96% decode rate in the southern part of Edison. My guess might be that it's coming from the Matawan area?
 

CastorLB

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I’m seeing no peers to North simulcast other than south And no peers to south other than north.

edit: just punched it into my scanner and have it at good strength in Tinton falls
 

rr60

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I’m seeing no peers to North simulcast other than south And no peers to south other than north.

edit: just punched it into my scanner and have it at good strength in Tinton falls

I see the same. Both “Neptune“ (117) nor unknown (118) show up as peers to either the North and South simulcasts.

Here are some signal levels seen by me, some 30 miles northwest of Tinton Falls.

North -110 dBm
South -102
Neptune -117
Site 18 -110

Site 18 has a sizable RF footprint. I see no activity on either of these sub sites.
 

CastorLB

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I see the same. Both “Neptune“ (117) nor unknown (118) show up as peers to either the North and South simulcasts.

Here are some signal levels seen by me, some 30 miles northwest of Tinton Falls.

North -110 dBm
South -102
Neptune -117
Site 18 -110

Site 18 has a sizable RF footprint. I see no activity on either of these sub sites.
What do you think the purpose for those would be? With only a CC channel I can’t imagine they’d be fill in sites since there’s no voice channels.
 

rr60

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What do you think the purpose for those would be? With only a CC channel I can’t imagine they’d be fill in sites since there’s no voice channels.

Perhaps testing. Signal measurements could be taken to evaluate new sites. It appears both are big enough signals not to be fill in or even off loading sites. Perhaps they are considering additional simulcast sites. Conjecture of course.
 

GM

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I checked the Matawan site earlier, and no luck with the signal coming from the site off of the Route 79 area. However, the signal was strong in the area though, which leads me to believe it's assigned to the northern Monmouth County area.
 

GM

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So the mystery location of Site 18 has been solved: Hazlet. However, both Site 17 and Site 18 have what sounds like a Harris or Tait Control Channel, while the Simulcast Sites 1 & 2 have Motorola Simulcast Control Channels. On top of this, Unitrunker data shows not the P4 that Motorola typically shows for encrypted talkgroups, but P5, P6, and P7. This is the same style that the Old Bridge P25 system shows regarding P5, P7, 5, 6, 7 etc. The WACN is still BEE00 though for both simulcast and Sites 17 & 18. I'm guessing that Tait/Harris equipment is being deployed for Control Channels in a true P25 vendor independent way?? Submission of data to the database will be forthcoming once voice channels are fully confirmed.
 
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GTR8000

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So the mystery location of Site 18 has been solved: Hazlet. However, both Site 17 and Site 18 have what sounds like a Harris or Tait Control Channel, while the Simulcast Sites 1 & 2 have Motorola Simulcast Control Channels. On top of this, Unitrunker data shows not the P4 that Motorola typically shows for encrypted talkgroups, but P5, P6, and P7. This is the same style that the Old Bridge P25 system shows regarding P5, P7, 5, 6, 7 etc. The WACN is still BEE00 though for both simulcast and Sites 17 & 18. I'm guessing that Tait/Harris equipment is being deployed for Control Channels in a true P25 vendor independent way?? Submission of data to the database will be forthcoming once voice channels are fully confirmed.
Are you sure it's not just LSM for the simulcasts vs C4FM for the standalone sites? That would account for the difference in modulation.

I'm not sure what you mean by "for Control Channels in a true P25 vendor independent way", as all control channels are vendor independent and have to comply with the APCO standards. In fact, both Harris and Tait repeaters are capable of LSM, which was originally proprietary Motorola, but they've allowed any manufacturer to use it as it's more efficient for simulcast cells.
 

GM

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Upon a further review, it appears that the control channels and voice frequencies have been changed for both North and South Simulcast sites completely. Site 18 in Hazlet is also simulcasting from the Highlands location as well now. I'm going to speculate that all of the North simulcast is now the same frequencies as Site 18 and South Simulcast is Site 17. Radio Techs were heard on one of the talkgroups about taking channels off the air and then switching them to the new system. After watching Unitrunker for 2 hours, it appears that a good number of frequencies have been changed around. I need to gather further details before I submit them to the database. Also, North Simulcast is showing 771.24375 as the new CC now, with only one alternate which is 772.10625. I did not have time to see what the South Simulcast was since I have other obligations to tend to this afternoon/evening. When I ran Unitrunker last week on Site 17, it was showing some new voice frequencies as well, which I have not submitted pending mor confirmation. No alternate CC was showing at the time.

With reference to the Control Channel sounds, it shows BEE00 and Sys ID 4A0 still, but the raw audio sounds is exactly the same way that Old Bridge's P25 system is, along with the fact that Unitrunker data now shows different levels in the Svc column. I observed numbers 2-7 on the Svc column, whereas most Motorola P25 system backbones show mostly 4 or P4, etc. And regarding Unitrunker, even if I'm parked on top of the signal at the tower, the signal bar in the top left does not go to green any longer, but just red and yellow. That was what I'm making reference to regarding P25 independent vendors (Harris & Tait backbone systems tend not to show a green strength bar, whereas Motorola does).
 

GTR8000

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It's certainly possible that they've switched from an ASTRO 25 system (assuming it originally was) to Harris or Tait.

With regard to the Unitrunker health/signal bar, the reason it doesn't get to 100% green with some Harris/Tait systems is because it's only looking at the amount of TBSK's per second and calculating based on that. An ASTRO 25 system broadcasts ~40 TBSK's per second, whereas some Harris only broadcast ~27 per second, and so Unitrunker will show "poor decode health" for those.

I believe Rick fixed that issue with v2.1 of Unitrunker, but it appears that you're still running v1 (unfortunately).
 

JMR3865

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Yea, they definitely changed some stuff because my unication G5 isn't picking it up anymore. Could they switch the frequencies back or does everything have to be reprogrammed?
 

cureforstupid

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Yea, they definitely changed some stuff because my unication G5 isn't picking it up anymore. Could they switch the frequencies back or does everything have to be reprogrammed?
I heard there may be a lot more encryption coming that way from a very reliable source…
 

kd2pm

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It's certainly possible that they've switched from an ASTRO 25 system (assuming it originally was) to Harris or Tait.

With regard to the Unitrunker health/signal bar, the reason it doesn't get to 100% green with some Harris/Tait systems is because it's only looking at the amount of TBSK's per second and calculating based on that. An ASTRO 25 system broadcasts ~40 TBSK's per second, whereas some Harris only broadcast ~27 per second, and so Unitrunker will show "poor decode health" for those.

I believe Rick fixed that issue with v2.1 of Unitrunker, but it appears that you're still running v1 (unfortunately).
Out with the Moto...in with the TAIT
 
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