Heard a couple of units on 1B Zone around 10:45PM. One of them was saying he was in the San Bernardino mountains, and was pretty stoked he was able to get out on NextGen from several counties away! :-D
Paul
Paul
Yeeeup!Elevation helps range. A San Diego City radio engineer once told me he was able to hit the city system with a portable from the San Bernardo mountains.
Ehh...uhh, nooo...the SD city 800 system is a lot older than 12 years! I remember back in the early to mid 90's I think when it was being brought online. At the time I had no 800MHz trunking scanner and I used to be able to hear the old 158.970 MHz North conventional site really well at my home in Carlsbad! Better sometimes than the, more local to me, local Carlsbad PD transmitter! Once the 800MHz trunking system took over that went away (SD City easy listening).Where in the world did you get the idea that the 800 MHz System is nearly 30 years old? The current 800 MHz trunking system was commissioned in 2008.
Also, the licensed ERPs are lower in the 700 MHz band width different adjacent and co-channel frequency use criteria with other licensee's.
So it is not the same system built in 1993.
The city 800 system back in the 90's, worked in a weird way. The four control channel group frequencies were the only far north and far south available frequencies (antenna sites), so only certain PD and FD talkgroups were allowed on them.
To be more clear. The original 800 MHz trunked system for San Diego City was built as a Variable Density analog Simulcast system using MSF5000 base stations. It was commissioned in 1993. It was analog only. In 2008, the system was upgraded to a Smartzone 4.1 platform with Quantar base stations and all 20 channels were Simulcast. It was also a mixed mode. ( Analog and P25). The inital phase of the 700 MHz system was commisioned in 2010. As time went on more channels were added to the 700 MHz system. The ASTRO 7.7 core which was the platform for the 700 MHz system was upgraded to release A7.9 and the 800 system was merged using SmartX converters for the 800 MHz system into a single system and commissioned in 2012. The same equipment from the 800 MHz 4.1 platform is still used today in the current A7.17 system release.
So it is not the same system built in 1993.
I remember a communication between Able and a dispatcher on a tac channel shortly after the cut over to 4.1. Able had the dispatcher play the different hot tones -- because one of the tones was the same as engine failure alarm on the helicopter -- tends to cause the crew's heart to skip a beat.