Ohio Turnpike

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TOP2

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I'm traveling from the Penn. TPK onto the Ohio TPK going up to Cleveland. I'd like to program my SDS100 for the new radio system used on the Ohio TPK. I guess my first question is the system encrypted which would mean I wouldn't hear anything anyway and no need to go any further. If the system is open to monitoring how should I proceed to program in the system for just that section of the Turnpike.
 

rcid1971

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It’s mostly in the clear.

Assuming you’ll want OSP District 10, Ohio Turnpike Maintenance and Toll Plazas.

You’ll mostly want these towers:
East Palestine
Trumbull CI
Shalersville
Summit Simulcast
Cuyahoga Simulcast

That will get you from Eastgate to Cleveland.

OSP Dispatch is call sign “Cleveland” with extremely rare situations of other dispatch centers taking over. OSP TP E, is the primary patrol area for your journey. Post 91, which covers from Eastgate to the 161 mile marker. Quite frequently OSP TP East and West are patched.

“Berea” is the call sign for all things maintenance. Your trip is through the Canfield and Hiram maintenance coverage zones if you hear them do weather or road condition reports.
 

TOP2

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Wow Thank you so much. Back in the day when it was a VHF system ,it worked quite well. I even wrote a letter to the Communications director of the Turnpike asking permission to monitor the system and surprising enough I got a reply back thanking me for asking and that It was okay for me to listen in.
 

rcid1971

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Wow Thank you so much. Back in the day when it was a VHF system ,it worked quite well. I even wrote a letter to the Communications director of the Turnpike asking permission to monitor the system and surprising enough I got a reply back thanking me for asking and that It was okay for me to listen in.

If you need fire departments or neighboring agencies that provide support I can gather a list of them too.
 

kc4jgc

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I've been driving the Turnpike quite a bit the last couple years; I can confirm rcid's observations.

Driving a commercial vehicle, hearing the OHP, maintenance and (believe it or not) the toll plazas can be valuable, especially during weather events.

Rcid, I have one question: At what point divides "east" and "west"?
 

rcid1971

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I've been driving the Turnpike quite a bit the last couple years; I can confirm rcid's observations.

Driving a commercial vehicle, hearing the OHP, maintenance and (believe it or not) the toll plazas can be valuable, especially during weather events.

Rcid, I have one question: At what point divides "east" and "west"?

OSP: Post 89 & Post 90 are west circuit so 0-160, and Post 91 (161-241.2) is east circuit.

OTP: Kunkle, Swanton, Elmore, Castalia are west
Amherst, Boston, Hiram, Canfield are east.
 

rcid1971

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Driving a commercial vehicle, hearing the OHP, maintenance and (believe it or not) the toll plazas can be valuable, especially during weather events.

That's exactly right and to illustrate your point just yesterday they had a camper towed by a pickup with a fire from propane tanks on the trailer eastbound at the 177.

Literally all talk groups related to the turnpike were active with that information that would be vital to professional drivers and average turnpike patrons. Even Toll Plazas were relaying info to Berea & Cleveland about fire departments entering their gates and going contra-flow to the scene. A great team effort.

Watch, the OP's trip, doesn't hear a peep. :(
 

TOP2

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It’s mostly in the clear.

Assuming you’ll want OSP District 10, Ohio Turnpike Maintenance and Toll Plazas.

You’ll mostly want these towers:
East Palestine
Trumbull CI
Shalersville
Summit Simulcast
Cuyahoga Simulcast

That will get you from Eastgate to Cleveland.

OSP Dispatch is call sign “Cleveland” with extremely rare situations of other dispatch centers taking over. OSP TP E, is the primary patrol area for your journey. Post 91, which covers from Eastgate to the 161 mile marker. Quite frequently OSP TP East and West are patched.

“Berea” is the call sign for all things maintenance. Your trip is through the Canfield and Hiram maintenance coverage zones if you hear them do weather or road condition reports.
 

TOP2

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Thanks again for the additional info. Got question, I couldn't find Summit Simulcast found the others though. I was using Uniden's Sentinel to program my SDS100 and I couldn't locate on the database nor could I find it RR's data base.
 

rcid1971

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IStebleton

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If there is an incident on the T-Pike which requires Fire/EMS response, do they talk on the T-Pike channels like they do in PA? I know in PA, each unit is given a Turnpike callsign to communicate with the Turnpike units.
 

rcid1971

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If there is an incident on the T-Pike which requires Fire/EMS response, do they talk on the T-Pike channels like they do in PA? I know in PA, each unit is given a Turnpike callsign to communicate with the Turnpike units.

Negative. Despite hundreds of millions spent in the name of interoperability, most of the coms from turnpike to fire departments are still on plain old telephone systems.
 

northernsummit

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If there is an incident on the T-Pike which requires Fire/EMS response, do they talk on the T-Pike channels like they do in PA? I know in PA, each unit is given a Turnpike callsign to communicate with the Turnpike units.

In Summit County when the local FD go onto the TP they just talk on their own talk groups. No reason to interop with OSHP when they’re out of the car working a scene. If other FD come out they use MAC channels for a shared fireground
 

rcid1971

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In Summit County when the local FD go onto the TP they just talk on their own talk groups. No reason to interop with OSHP when they’re out of the car working a scene. If other FD come out they use MAC channels for a shared fireground

It’s my understanding that OSHP and Turnpike commission do not have access to Summit MAC, though it is quite frequent to hear Hudson Fire, Valley Fire District and Richfield Fire request a MAC channel for turnpike calls as stated above.
 

rcid1971

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If fire and EMS are called onto the turnpike they frequently use turnpike maintenance channels to contact Berea and find the exact location of the emergency.

Is that a West circuit thing?

I’ve never heard that on the East circuit in 30 years, including all the time recently on MARCS.
 

dlwtrunked

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Back in the 1970's, when I lived in Ohio, I used to listed to the then VHF repeaters of the Turnpike. One funny thing was at the end of the day, each gate reported a number. I assume this was the money intake. They used a verbal code that would change monthly. The first month, A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4, E=5, G=6, H=7, I=8, J=9, and K=0 (they did not use F, P, and S). The next month they started where they left off: L=1, M=2, O=3, Q=4, R=5, etc. When they got to the end of the alphabet, they went back to the beginning. This was figured out by watching over several months, first noting during a month when say J... became A.... that J was probably 9 and A was probably 1 with 9... getting larger to 1.... (requiring another digit). Fun but useless. (During the same time, the FCC DF network used HF repeaters and coded their Baudot with simple bit inversion that changed daily in just as simple of the way. I added $2 of parts to my Baudot RTTY decoder andI would automatically set up by setting DIP switches for the next day when it came and would know where ever their DF found a fix. If I lost track, I had made a table for the inversions of Downspace-Carriage_Return-Line_Feed and would instantly know which bits were being inverted. I knew where they DFed pirate broadcasts, drug dealer etc. Many years ago, they abandoned the HF DF repeater network to satellite, as told to me by an FCC person who visited me on another matter, and today that system is remoted.)
 
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