New Newton County system

[Indianabrad]

Yesterday (3/24) the "Scan" TGs started have comms on them. This could be good since my reg otherwise reception of Lake Co isn't good.

 

[usswood]

If somebody "in the know" can explain why that's needed, I'd like to be educated. If it was for fire channels/mutual aid, I understand that.

Mutual Aid without the need to change zones or grab a different radio, simply select that talkgroup and you are patched to that dispatch full time.... Im sure the need is for LEA Pursuits South toward Newton or West toward Newton

 

[west-pac]

Mutual Aid without the need to change zones or grab a different radio, simply select that talkgroup and you are patched to that dispatch full time.... Im sure the need is for LEA Pursuits South toward Newton or West toward Newton

When hearing about SAFE-T TGs being patched onto county-owned radio systems on a full-time basis, I've always been under the impression that those are receive-only channels.

 

[19K10Tanker]

Seems the ISP isn't working right now, there's traffic on region a ma 1 and nothing shows on pro96com now after it worked early today. Jasper and lake still working. Jasper in pursuit that's why I noticed ISP not working now.

bee listening all day, been seeing scan-lake, scan jasper and scan ISP

 

[I_Am_Infinite]

bee listening all day, been seeing scan-lake, scan jasper and scan ISP

I noticed ISP Scan pop back up around 16:35 on pro96com.... I didn't have time to post about it. It is actually pretty amazing to get these on the county system. Gives others who might not be able, the ability to hear those 2 dispatches. I already got them on my other scanners, so I just locked them out. I like to keep my phone county with its own scanner to hear everything I can.

The other 2 have not stopped being active since they first came active.

Another thing I noticed is Lake and Jasper counties definitely give the system more use than Newton County themselves. But also made me think in an emergency if those 3 TGs are active while Newton County is active wud give them 3 less voice slots of their 12 available for their own use.

 

[I_Am_Infinite]

I just heard the ISP Scan TG again, I seen it on pro96com after it started popping up again earlier, but now after just hearing it again since I last heard it the other day after they put it online, it's now broadcasting the Region D Mutual Aid 1 again that was on TG 19 before.

Like the the radio techs must not know that Newton County is in ISP District 13's area and took off Region A Mutual Aid 1 (the right one) and put ISP District 14's mutual aid TG in again 🤷🏻

Edit: now just heard dispatch say to 56-10 they can see him coming thru but his volume was extremely low, might be issues other than putting the wrong ISP districts MA TG into the system, or just hit wrong buttons.

 

[19K10Tanker]

They just had, I think, EMA running around the county doing radio check with car radio's, and lapel mic's, with windows up, down, cracked, etc...

 

[I_Am_Infinite]

They just had, I think, EMA running around the county doing radio check with car radio's, and lapel mic's, with windows up, down, cracked, etc...

Those were radio techs on EMA TG I'm pretty sure, one of them was from the testing Monday and Tuesday, the other 2 I'm not sure. Im try post the recordings later or when I can so others can listen if they choose.

 

[I_Am_Infinite]

@19K10Tanker the other 2 guys that day might have been EMA doing testing, I just heard talking about how sumava seemed ok, but we will see when the leaves come, then another guy said it wasnt great in LaSalle or something (paraphrasing). So u were right bout some EMA guy running around.

One was a male dispatcher (RID 3001) and the other guy was the EMA Director 601 (RID 5610580) on TG 19 today.

 

[speedway_navigator]

I am heading to Newton on Thursday to do signal strength tests and antenna system testing.
If you guys want to see what kind of coverage each site should have try plotting signal strength with these tools.

Radio Mobile WEB Site

www.ve2dbe.com

RF Line of Sight - SCADACore

RF Line-of-Sight provides radio path information for mapping long distance SCADA radio communications by using antenna height and topography.

www.scadacore.com

HeyWhatsThat Path Profiler

Compute elevation profile for an arbitrary path

www.heywhatsthat.com

RF Toolkit - Nautel Support

support.nautel.com

 

[I_Am_Infinite]

I am heading to Newton on Thursday to do signal strength tests and antenna system testing.
If you guys want to see what kind of coverage each site should have try plotting signal strength with these tools.

Radio Mobile WEB Site

www.ve2dbe.com

RF Line of Sight - SCADACore

RF Line-of-Sight provides radio path information for mapping long distance SCADA radio communications by using antenna height and topography.

www.scadacore.com

HeyWhatsThat Path Profiler

Compute elevation profile for an arbitrary path

www.heywhatsthat.com

RF Toolkit - Nautel Support

support.nautel.com

Is this as hobby or as work you are doing this? If work can u bring up a couple things to them?
1) why is the southeast antenna mount on the north tower not hang out as far as the southwest side antenna, like why ain't is as long as a mount to get the antenna away from the tower farther like the southwest antenna?
2) why do they have Region D Mutual Aid 1 on TG 27 for ISP Scan and not the Region A Mutual Aid 1 the actual one for our area?
3) do they plan on doing more testing when the leaves are full bloom?


Edit: also since the testing earlier this week etc.... The CC for the past 2 days now switches at 3am local time, not 4am as it was. Will keep watching see if it changes or stays.

 

[I_Am_Infinite]

I tried upload the zips of the comms for those days of testing but files to big. If anyone wants them let me know I was able to recover that lost day also.

 

[speedway_navigator]

I won't be able to answer these questions until I do my survey.

 

[speedway_navigator]

What freqs do you see control channels on? Their application is for 770.08125 and 771.08125.

 

[I_Am_Infinite]

What freqs do you see control channels on? Their application is for 770.08125 and 771.08125.

770.08125 and 770.09375 rotate daily at 3am now, and pro96com shows 771.08125 and 771.09375 as backups. As of right now the CC is 770.08125.

To be exact, In pro96com if 770.08125 is the CC it will say 770.09375 "alternate control broadcast" and 771.08125 and 771.09375 as "backup control channel only"

Here's pic of screen on pro96com

 

[I_Am_Infinite]

This morning I drove by the north tower, they were getting ready to have climbers go up, had 2 new bigger microwave dishes on the ground getting ready to put up.
On the way back home we went back by there and the 2 dishes that were up on tower were removed and the 2 bigger ones were up on the tower and mounted higher than they were before.

 

[I_Am_Infinite]

Here's the screenshots of pics, crappy I know, but u can see the new microwave dishes put up, barely on the first pic and decently on the second pic from yesterday. Also based on comparing pics from yesterday and other days, the dishes a about if not the same height but bigger than old ones

 

[I_Am_Infinite]

today a fire guy said something about the VHF wasn't working and then I heard techs, but everything seems ok now.

CC did change now to 770.08125 from 770.09375 but that's it, probably just did a reset of the system

 

[mr10pt]

Question for Speedway Nav or MMcKenna. Since this is your profession, how long does this Newton County system keep transmitting across 3 different systems? I know it's still in testing phase but, what is the end goal?

 

[west-pac]

Question for Speedway Nav or MMcKenna. Since this is your profession, how long does this Newton County system keep transmitting across 3 different systems? I know it's still in testing phase but, what is the end goal?

The obvious answer is: until all departments get new radios.