Does anyone here have a lead on how the new radio system plan will be set up? Will it be like the set up now that is in the MCFD One book?
Montgomery County PSSM Program update
- Thread starter maus92
- Start date
allen5565
Member
Agreed. Come the middle of the night --any night, it seems-- the police districts are going silent. Punch in any date on the archives here, https://www.openmhz.com/system/mocomdps and around 02:00 or 03:00 you not only hear, but can see via the time stamps, that suddenly all radio traffic ceases for the MoCo PD.
Here's hoping the new system won't prevent our monitoring them altogether.
I would imagine that the districts are being patched together / combined overnight for staffing reasons. I doubt they are going "silent." Of course, one way to verify is to run control channel decoding software. As far as encryption goes for police dispatch, some sources say it is likely at some point after the migration to the new system. Complain to your county executive / council member - their job is to listen to the citizenry.
boatbod
Member
Encryption seems to have been spreading like a virus here on the Shore. Seems to be the "smaller" departments first, where the cost of /\/\ radio licenses aren't such a hit on the budget.
allen5565
Member
I wish this were the case, but taking this morning, (Saturday, 12.12,) as example, the transmissions logged for the entire MCPD D1-D6 dispatch and ops channels, plus R'ville City and ICC pd, from 03:00 - 08:36, consisted of 15 --that's fifteen-- transmissions, totaling 63 seconds of air time. Monitoring of police in this county may well be about to go bye-bye. https://www.openmhz.com/system/moco...e=5d5718f1ea1bca003bd8d0b2&time=1607754600895
As for the complain-to-the-county bit, I agree with you, absolutely. I have about as much faith in their listening to or accommodating the wishes of the monitoring community as I do of winning the MegaPowerJackBall on the same afternoon Anne Hathaway's car breaks down in front of my house, setting the stage for an improbable romance. Still, you are right: the Council should take seriously the request to keep mainstream police comms in the clear, especially after the nation's summer of George Floyd protests illustrated the considerable mistrust that seems to exist between chunks of communities and the law enforcement orgs that patrol there.
I'll leave it there, since I know I'm not supposed to whine on here about encryption. I hope this post hasn't danced too close, or across, any forum rules. If it did, I apologize in advance.
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I am unsure why the county would spend money to encrypt transmissions on a system that will be retired in one month - and why do it only overnight? A counter argument would be that the subscribers are already capable of encryption, so why not test the capability overnight when there is less traffic? Again, people who suspect that encryption is occuring can run control channel decoding software and make the determination definitive.
allen5565
Member
I wondered if maybe, in the middle of the night, the PD was being toggled over to the new, not-officially-rolled-out system or something, but I suppose that doesn't make much sense. But where the devil are they transmitting, then? That's not asked in an accusatory fashion. I don't mean, "Oh yeah?! Well, where are all the radio transmissions then, smart guy?" But you have to admit it's really strange if night after night after night, there isn't any radio traffic at all on any of the police channels. These guys must be talking somewhere.
Maybe the call volume is low? Or more info is going out over MDT? I doubt they are moving over to the new system overnight - too much chance for user error and confusion.
I start my listing around 3am when i get up here in monkey county aka montgomery and its like a total blackout zone. nada as well. I do here some comes going out over RINS3 but it sounds like car2car talk as well. I wonder if they are using any of the 700mhz nifog tg's and i think it am going to program them into my county lineup that I monitor to see. I live here in aspen hill area of silver spring and when the tower at Rt97 and Rt200 goes live I am only 1 airmile from that tower and have a Yagi pointed right at it as well. Things that make you go hmmm in the middle of the night...
I feel like the openmhz whoever is running it might just be turning his computer off at night or something. Because on the Broadcastify calls, I am seeing a lot more radio traffic than the openmhz shows.
If you don't have access to that.... it basically shows steady voice traffic on A1 Dispatch ( Rockville, Sectors A/B/C )
Now what I do notice is no Traffic on A3, A4, A6. So I would assume that they are consolidating frequencys.
So I also noticed Lincoln units talking on A2 and many different units talking on channels that are not "their" designated ones. Yes I understand that sometimes units respond out of their districts etc.. but this was way more than to be a coincidence. So I am pretty sure they are just consolidating frequencies during the night time since they probably don't need as many freq.
I could be wrong and I will check tonight again.
If you don't have access to that.... it basically shows steady voice traffic on A1 Dispatch ( Rockville, Sectors A/B/C )
Now what I do notice is no Traffic on A3, A4, A6. So I would assume that they are consolidating frequencys.
So I also noticed Lincoln units talking on A2 and many different units talking on channels that are not "their" designated ones. Yes I understand that sometimes units respond out of their districts etc.. but this was way more than to be a coincidence. So I am pretty sure they are just consolidating frequencies during the night time since they probably don't need as many freq.
I could be wrong and I will check tonight again.
Yes at night time they do use just 2 talk groups at night time. They split the county in half and one dispatch takes the A1,A5 and A6 and dispatcher 2 takes A2,A3 and A4. That way less personal at night at EEOC and for officer safety as well plus car 10,the night time duty LT, can monitor what is going on by having the radio on one channel but yet scan the other channels at the same time. They have been splitting the county like that for the past 3 or 4 years at least. I have been listing to a scanner since the mid 80's. Anyone remember when FD only had 4 channels and they used EMS1 for hospital info ?? channel 1 for FG, and channel 3 for mutual Raid aka mutual aid..
He's either turning off the computer, or it's going to sleep.I feel like the openmhz whoever is running it might just be turning his computer off at night or something. Because on the Broadcastify calls, I am seeing a lot more radio traffic than the openmhz shows.
If you don't have access to that.... it basically shows steady voice traffic on A1 Dispatch ( Rockville, Sectors A/B/C )
Now what I do notice is no Traffic on A3, A4, A6. So I would assume that they are consolidating frequencys.
So I also noticed Lincoln units talking on A2 and many different units talking on channels that are not "their" designated ones. Yes I understand that sometimes units respond out of their districts etc.. but this was way more than to be a coincidence. So I am pretty sure they are just consolidating frequencies during the night time since they probably don't need as many freq.
I could be wrong and I will check tonight again.
Exactly
mocomdcitizen
Member
Hello,
I'm the person you may be referring to who is voluntarily feeding to OpenMHz for Montgomery County MD. Long time guest on-and-off lurker, first time poster. I have learned more from many of you on this forum with more information about the current SmartNet/SmartZone system and the eventual rollout of the P25 system later this month if not January than I would on my own. I started feeding to OpenMHz just as a hobby/fun project in March 2019 and still consider myself an amateur.
The computer dedicated to running trunk-recorder is not shutting down or sleeping overnight. I ran a Linux command to double check and there are no recorded logs of it sleeping or hibernating. So it may be:
a.) the SDR receiver is losing its tuning;
b.) my internet connection is flaky/unstable during the overnight hours. Unfortunately, I'm stuck only with Comcast/Xfinity in my neighborhood (the only provider), and as such I'm unable to switch to another provider;
c.) uploading to OpenMHz may have failed which may be a fault on my end (see b.) or OpenMHz.com may have been unresponsive at the time of uploading a recorded transmission;
d.) the computer is beginning to fail hardware-wise. Last restart was 10 days ago for Linux updates. I just restarted the computer today before lunch for some Linux updates.
Where I'm located, there are two towers near me within 4 miles - I'm feeding in an area between tower site #2 and #6 from this map: FCC Callsign WPVA690 (MONTGOMERY, COUNTY OF)
I could try boosting the RF gain (it's currently set at +20) in the configuration a bit (+25, +30?) to see if that helps.
I'm more than happy to receive feedback/suggestions if you have any.
Thanks!
---
Update: I took a look at trunk-recorder's logs, it appears that the SmartNet parser is failing on a couple of dispatch calls (Non-Grant with source errors) and fails to record the transmission. It may just be trunk-recorder itself on how it handles SmartZone. Hopefully, switching over to P25 should help parse calls better.
I'm the person you may be referring to who is voluntarily feeding to OpenMHz for Montgomery County MD. Long time guest on-and-off lurker, first time poster. I have learned more from many of you on this forum with more information about the current SmartNet/SmartZone system and the eventual rollout of the P25 system later this month if not January than I would on my own. I started feeding to OpenMHz just as a hobby/fun project in March 2019 and still consider myself an amateur.
The computer dedicated to running trunk-recorder is not shutting down or sleeping overnight. I ran a Linux command to double check and there are no recorded logs of it sleeping or hibernating. So it may be:
a.) the SDR receiver is losing its tuning;
b.) my internet connection is flaky/unstable during the overnight hours. Unfortunately, I'm stuck only with Comcast/Xfinity in my neighborhood (the only provider), and as such I'm unable to switch to another provider;
c.) uploading to OpenMHz may have failed which may be a fault on my end (see b.) or OpenMHz.com may have been unresponsive at the time of uploading a recorded transmission;
d.) the computer is beginning to fail hardware-wise. Last restart was 10 days ago for Linux updates. I just restarted the computer today before lunch for some Linux updates.
Where I'm located, there are two towers near me within 4 miles - I'm feeding in an area between tower site #2 and #6 from this map: FCC Callsign WPVA690 (MONTGOMERY, COUNTY OF)
I could try boosting the RF gain (it's currently set at +20) in the configuration a bit (+25, +30?) to see if that helps.
I'm more than happy to receive feedback/suggestions if you have any.
Thanks!
---
Update: I took a look at trunk-recorder's logs, it appears that the SmartNet parser is failing on a couple of dispatch calls (Non-Grant with source errors) and fails to record the transmission. It may just be trunk-recorder itself on how it handles SmartZone. Hopefully, switching over to P25 should help parse calls better.
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mocomdcitizen
Member
Earlier this morning, I finished the setup of a second computer, scanning MoCo's new P25 system via trunk-recorder for local monitoring only.
From 09:13 until 14:58 today, there have been several transmissions from the following TGs on 853.275MHz and 852.9125MHz. All of them relating to testing the system as far as I can tell...
- TG 4005
- TG 4000
- TG 7665 (majority of the calls today)
- TG 7720
- TG 7600
- TG 6375
From 09:13 until 14:58 today, there have been several transmissions from the following TGs on 853.275MHz and 852.9125MHz. All of them relating to testing the system as far as I can tell...
- TG 4005
- TG 4000
- TG 7665 (majority of the calls today)
- TG 7720
- TG 7600
- TG 6375
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thank you so much we really do appreciate your feed!
Just curious with those talk groups that you heard were any of them encrypted? I am semi-new to scanning and monitoring so if this wouldn’t be the case disregard my message lol
Just curious with those talk groups that you heard were any of them encrypted? I am semi-new to scanning and monitoring so if this wouldn’t be the case disregard my message lol
mocomdcitizen
Member
You're welcome!
It looks like they were not encrypted... for now.
I'd say the majority of them were maintenance crews communicating with each other on testing the system, the remainder were silent or garbled, sounded like they were probably pushing the PTT button for a second or two then letting go to test the TG. I may be wrong as this is my understanding, trunk-recorder doesn't have the ability to receive or record encrypted calls. It'll note in the logfile (I haven't checked it yet) that a TG was encrypted and was unable to record.
Hope this helps!
---
Edit: nothing in the logfile about encrypted calls.
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TG 4350 Sounds like Rockville Fire doing a Holiday run tonight. Not to much talking. Have my G5 on.
| DATE | NEIGHBORHOODS |
| Tues, 12/08 | Fallsgrove |
| Wed, 12/09 | New Mark Commons / Rose Hill |
| Thu, 12/10 | King Farm |
| Fri, 12/11 | Derwood (Indianola Area) |
| Sat, 12/12 | GlenoraHill / WattsBranch / CarterHill / GriffithOaks / Rochshire (north) |
| Sun, 12/13 | Woodley Gardens & College Gardens |
| Mon, 12/14 | Menorah Parade |
| Tue, 12/15 | Fallsmead / Fallsbend / Saddlebrook / Fallswood / Rockshire (south) |
| Wed, 12/16 | Rockcrest / Twinbrook (Richard Montgomery HS Side) |
| Thu, 12/17 | Silver Rock / Twinbrook (Rockville HS Side) |
| Fri, 12/18 | Lincoln Park / Maryvale / East Rockville |
| Sat, 12/19 | Make-ups as needed |
| Sun, 12/20 | West End |
| Mon, 12/21 | Horizon Hill / Make-ups as needed |
| Tues, 12/22 | Hungerford / Stoneridge / Americana Center |
| Wed, 12/23 | Make-ups as needed |
| Thu, 12/24 | Toy Deliveries |
mocomdcitizen
Member
Yes, concur. TG 4350 is being used by MCFRS Rockville VFD for the Santa Run. Calls from this TG started from 17:35 onwards. This TG is probably Station 703's apparatus to apparatus TG on the P25 system.
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