P25 in Madison County NY and question on Cortland County

[jhendrickson]

Good Morning: My Madison County New York P25 Trunking is working just fine. At the moment the most active TGs are 7101, 7102, sometimes 7103, frequently I hear 7104 and many times I hear the dogs barking in the background, probably 7104 is Sheriff Dept. Canine unit; and 7477 is becoming more active and is Fire/Emerg. control. Once in awhile I get very brief "maintenance traffic" on other TGs. I live a mile or so from the hilltop outside Earlville, NY where the 911 tower, as we call it, is located. Across the street is Chenango County. I pull in Broome, Chenango, Otsego, Delaware, Oneida besides Madison-plenty of activity and relevancy as I've lived in all these counties, couldn't ask for more................well...........

This brings me to Cortland County. I'm not that far away from this county and want to see if I can pick anything up there. I see by RR Database under Law Enforcement there are "normal" Sheriff Dept. frequencies but including a P25 frequency at 156.0975. Can anyone tell me if this is P25 is active and how do I program for it-step by step please if you have the time to write. What are the roles of the P25 and the other Sheriff Dept. freqencies listed and how are they related to one another. Sounds confusing, need help here.

Thank you
Jeff Hendrickson

 

[GTR8000]

I see by RR Database under Law Enforcement there are "normal" Sheriff Dept. frequencies but including a P25 frequency at 156.0975. Can anyone tell me if this is P25 is active and how do I program for it-step by step please if you have the time to write.

That is a conventional P25 frequency, not to be confused with the very different P25 trunked system. You simply program it as you would any "normal" conventional frequency, except that you would need to make sure your scanner knows it's a digital frequency, not analog. How you accomplish that depends on what model scanner you have, which you didn't specify. I believe you've posted in the past about a 996XT, so assuming that's what you're using...program the frequency in as normal, then set the Audio Type to Digital Only, and the P25 NAC Option to Search (since no NAC code is specified in the database).

If you happen to get P25 activity on that 156.0975 frequency and you confirm a NAC code, please submit it to the database.

 

[jeepsandradios]

Madison County is P25 Trunked. Cortland County is still conventional. They will be P25 UHF Trunked. The VHF channel will be dropped I would assume once on UHF.

 

[AuntEnvy]

Dropped

Madison County is P25 Trunked. Cortland County is still conventional. They will be P25 UHF Trunked. The VHF channel will be dropped I would assume once on UHF.

Eventually...?

I'm still wondering why a lot of these counties are keeping their VHF frequencies, not to mention the simulcasting on conventional. It's not as if they are keeping the radios hooked up.

But I digress...

The Cortland frequency you're asking about is for some kind of computer-related data channel or something like that...

 

[jeepsandradios]

I just noticed the freq you posted also. Correct that is the MDT frequency for the police cars. As for conventional simulcasts, most of the counties doing this are for paging on the fire and ems channels. This is the only way they can page by keeping a simulcast channel online. In the past Oswego County simulcasted the law conventional with law trunking as they had a few dead spots on the 800 mhz system, and also alot of the "out of area" units only had VHF still.

 

[GTR8000]

I just noticed the freq you posted also.

Same here, oops. He was talking about all those P25 frequencies in Madison County that I didn't even think to check the license for 156.0975 in Cortland.

I'm not sure who put 156.0975 in the RR database as "P25", but clearly it's incorrect. I just updated the listing.

 

[AuntEnvy]

I see

I just noticed the freq you posted also. Correct that is the MDT frequency for the police cars. As for conventional simulcasts, most of the counties doing this are for paging on the fire and ems channels. This is the only way they can page by keeping a simulcast channel online. In the past Oswego County simulcasted the law conventional with law trunking as they had a few dead spots on the 800 mhz system, and also alot of the "out of area" units only had VHF still.

So I guess for those that don't want or can't afford theses new scanners and their associated technologies/software, they may still get some use, although limited, out of the conventional units.

 

[jeepsandradios]

So I guess for those that don't want or can't afford theses new scanners and their associated technologies/software, they may still get some use, although limited, out of the conventional units.

Correct. Each county in this region that are part of the OCICS Radio Systme have Fire Paging on an analog conventional channel. In Onondaga County the Fire Trunking is patched to the Fire Conventional, hence you hear all the trunking traffic also. This is the same on the EMS Channel. In Oswego they do not patch the radio traffic but all dispatch info is on conventional for the listening. I am told Madision and Cayuga did the same thing for paging. So at leaset on the FIRE/EMS side I still use an old 16 channel bearcat for monitoring.

 

[GTR8000]

Each county in this region that are part of the OCICS Radio Systme...

Just to clarify so that there's no confusion: OCICS refers to only the Onondaga County simulcast zone (Site 001), it does not refer to the entire CNYICC Network that the counties are part of.

 

[AuntEnvy]

Yes

Correct. Each county in this region that are part of the OCICS Radio Systme have Fire Paging on an analog conventional channel. In Onondaga County the Fire Trunking is patched to the Fire Conventional, hence you hear all the trunking traffic also. This is the same on the EMS Channel. In Oswego they do not patch the radio traffic but all dispatch info is on conventional for the listening. I am told Madision and Cayuga did the same thing for paging. So at leaset on the FIRE/EMS side I still use an old 16 channel bearcat for monitoring.

I can get ON fire on the 453, and Oswego comes in rather well on the 153 simulcast. And I'm quite a ways away from both.

Although I don't know this for sure, I'm guessing it's rare for counties to simulcast their fire "tac" or ops channels...? I get Tompkin's loud and clear on their 400 simulcasts. It's not far from where I live but it comes in better than some of my local channels. Weird

Ahh but alas, those crazy frequencies...

 

[jeepsandradios]

Just to clarify so that there's no confusion: OCICS refers to only the Onondaga County simulcast zone (Site 001), it does not refer to the entire CNYICC Network that the counties are part of.

Correct. Sorry all my equipment (SAR/EMS) is labeled OCICS as Onondaga was the first....Need to remember a few other counties are now part of this...

 

[jeepsandradios]

I can get ON fire on the 453, and Oswego comes in rather well on the 153 simulcast. And I'm quite a ways away from both.

Although I don't know this for sure, I'm guessing it's rare for counties to simulcast their fire "tac" or ops channels...? I get Tompkin's loud and clear on their 400 simulcasts. It's not far from where I live but it comes in better than some of my local channels. Weird

Ahh but alas, those crazy frequencies...

As reference Oswego also is using a UHF channnel. Once that goes fully active the 153 will be transferred to SAR for local repeater use. I think the UHF paging channel is in the database already. I have switched to this from my location.

 

[GTR8000]

Correct. Sorry all my equipment (SAR/EMS) is labeled OCICS as Onondaga was the first....Need to remember a few other counties are now part of this...

Yup no problem, I was just clarifying for the RR audience so I don't have to answer questions later about "Where is the OCICS in the database?!?"

 

[AuntEnvy]

Roger that KB

As reference Oswego also is using a UHF channnel. Once that goes fully active the 153 will be transferred to SAR for local repeater use. I think the UHF paging channel is in the database already. I have switched to this from my location.

I'm not doing much here with trunked/digital yet. I'm still conventional for now, but getting trained-up and ready.