P25 Patches in Windsor

[tilt404]

I posted about this on the GRE forum but didn't quite get the help I was after. So thought I would try here since maybe someone is listening to the same P25 site listed below:

Windsor Public Safety Trunking System, Windsor, Ontario - Scanner Frequencies

I've only had my GRE PSR800 for about a month and a half now but during that time I haven't seen this happen on that P25 system at all. It started happening this Friday, in the evening. I began seeing quite a bit of activity on a TGID I had only seen a few RIDs on. The TGID is 12 which I know isn't listed on RR yet since I don't know what it is. Its right in the middle of the main police dispatch TGID's, and I began to see the same dispatch RID's used on it as well. The city was having its annual Zombie Walk that night so I thought the TGID could be some sort of special events TGID for nights like that.

I set the scanner to record over night and in the morning I looked over the audio file data. I thought my scanner had messed up since for the one TGID 12, it showed the name I had for it, but the TGID for it went from 11 to 12, 13 and 14. Same TGID name, different TGID number.

In the morning though as I began monitoring more and being able to see the display now, I noticed it would stop on one of those TGID's then say 'patch' on the display to the right of TGRP. Then the TGID number would change and flash between 2 different TGIDs like between 11 and 14 for example.

I have all four of these TGIDs listed as using dispatch RIDs for police. I've only seen 'patch' show on the display once before when a ambulance was transporting to a hospital. Its not even talked about in the manual for my scanner.

Anyway... I've been told in the GRE forum that patches take place all the time within PD. This is the first i've seen it here though but I have been away from scanning for about a year. I was wondering if anyone else from Windsor has seen it happen, but I know most probably aren't monitoring TGID 12. I'm still searching out RIDs and TGIDs so that's why I'm following them.

I was also told that its like a dispatcher gets too busy or short, then 'patches' one TGID to another. I don't know why its suddenly happening now though for the past 3 days. Maybe they started something new? I've only seen it happen between those 4 TGIDs. If it is common, maybe someone can explain what is taking place if they know.

I attached a photo here from the audio files section from tonight also, where you can see the one TGID 12 which I call Special Events 1 for now, has its TGID number go from 11, 12, 13 and 14 over the course of a short time. Making it so hard for me to follow and track RIDs. Especially when the audio is encrypted and I can't tell what's going on. I actually notice in the image below that even other ones besides 12 changes too like PD Central will have its TGID change from 13 to 14. Likely another patch taking place.

 

[tilt404]

In the last 12 hours of recording, it hasn't happened again but I will keep watching. I thought it might just be a corrupted SD card, but on Saturday I completely wiped the card, uninstalled the GRE EZ Scan software and started over with a new beta CPU firmware/DSP/Software update GRE released that day. Yet it kept happening. I'll keep watching today and see if it happens again.

 

[tilt404]

Just saw another patch between TGID 12 and 14 so I guess its still happening.

 

[DonS]

I posted about this on the GRE forum but didn't quite get the help I was after.

The answers on the GRE forum seemed to be correct and relatively complete. The scanner seems to be behaving correctly in response to the patches in use on the system.

Exactly what help were you after?

 

[Forts]

Patches are common on pretty much any public safety radio system, and could be in use at any given time for a multitude of reasons. On Fleetnet it's not uncommon for an OPP dispatcher to be taking care of more than one county (for example in my area Elgin and Chatham/Kent are usually patched). Closer to the GTA it's common for one dispatcher to handle an OPP talkgroup as well as an MTO enforcement group, and perhaps even an MNR group.

What you are seeing is normal activity... but Windsor may just not use it very much. If you want more info about what's going on with the system and to see a bigger picture of what's happening you should setup UniTrunker (if you aren't using it already).

 

[tilt404]

The answers on the GRE forum seemed to be correct and relatively complete. The scanner seems to be behaving correctly in response to the patches in use on the system.

Exactly what help were you after?

I was just trying to hear back from someone listening to the same system to compare with.

 

[tilt404]

Patches are common on pretty much any public safety radio system, and could be in use at any given time for a multitude of reasons. On Fleetnet it's not uncommon for an OPP dispatcher to be taking care of more than one county (for example in my area Elgin and Chatham/Kent are usually patched). Closer to the GTA it's common for one dispatcher to handle an OPP talkgroup as well as an MTO enforcement group, and perhaps even an MNR group.

What you are seeing is normal activity... but Windsor may just not use it very much. If you want more info about what's going on with the system and to see a bigger picture of what's happening you should setup UniTrunker (if you aren't using it already).

Already had unitrunker set up but didn't show much more than I can see on my own. Its making it impossible for me to track RID's anymore since I never know what TGID the RID is coming from in 11, 12, 13 and 14. Its not normal here though so that's why I was confused and don't know why dispatches are constantly patching back and forth to each other. I guess I will just have to let it be and move on. I can't hear any of it anyway. This TGID 12 had no activity for 40 days or so and now is suddenly patching all the time to the main PD dispatches.

I haven't been listening long though since I just got the scanner a little over a month ago. So this could of been happening for a long time. Just not in the past month or so. I know you know what you're talking about though so will learn from what you said. It would be helpful if the software showed it was a patch though since you can see from the image the name stays the same and TGID changes. Would be fine if I could hear everything, but since I can't and I'm just tracking RIDs it makes it a waste of time now.

 

[Forts]

You will find that you can rarely isolate RID's to a specific talkgroup anyways. With an encrypted system like this, the best you can do is use good judgement and common sense. You know from the talkgroup ID (and the fact that it's encrypted) that it's a WPS talkgroup. You also know it's not used often, so it's not a primary group. Now, from watching the ID's that are using it you might start to see that it's only a certain group.. or it's the same ID's that are over on the regular operational talkgroups and from there you can learn a few things. For example, in my case, with London's new system... I know their main operational groups are 145 and 146. Doesn't take too long to spot the console ID's, so you know who they are. Now from time to time other groups pop up that are being used by RID's that I've seen on 145 and 145... so from that I figure those are perhaps special event groups for paid duty operations, things like that. There are also other groups that pop up that have a range of RID's that I *don't* typically see on 145 & 146. However these RID's frequent a few other groups in that same range... I also notice that I don't see the consoles ever talking on these groups... so that tells me these are 'special purpose' groups like narcotics/vice/JFO/surveillance type stuff. Beyond that, there is very little you can do without inside knowledge of the system. It's unfortunate the UniTrunker doesn't store affiliation history beyond a few hours. With the older versions of Trunker (and Trunk88) (none of which work on a P25 system by the way) a log was kept of ALL affiliations. You could then go back thru that data and see exactly which radios have been on which groups, or which groups a particular radio had been on. Was very handy to see which ones were associated with each other.

 

[tilt404]

Thank you Forts,
I have logged a lot already thankfully in the PD dispatch area. I know the RIDs of the dispatch for PD are 8001 and 8002. Fire dispatch RID's are 8005, 8006 and 8007. Transit dispatch RIDs are 8008 and 8009 and so on. Then I have collected RID's for PD 1001-1149 with no gaps and about 177 more below that range. I've seen the pattern like you said in the main PD units and others like TAC RIDs and Vice and how they stick to other TGIDs mostly. Some very small groups of 5 or so RIDs that I can't place and never will probably. Then all the RIDs keep to a certain range per TGID. So just seeing a RID can point me to the right TGID most of the time.

I still keep them all in a excel sheet and make note in a book of who talks to who more. Why? some people might ask. Well, I don't know. I mainly wanted to try to get the right info on RR for this system. Nothing more. All I really listen to on the system if Fire. I have more fun listening to what goes on in the rest of the county since I can monitor 90% or more of that thankfully. Its more fun to listen to the county since I can follow fire, ems and pd. Here in town, just fire and ems. I'm being impatient though and need to sit back, relax and enjoy listening.

 

[Forts]

Haha yeah, I do the same thing. Why? Dunno... it's just interesting and it's a challenge. Problem is chances are you will likely never know if some of your guesses are correct or not. But, at the same time if I look at UniTrunker and I see that 2 or 3 of the not-so-regular groups are active then I've got a pretty good idea something is getting ready to go down somewhere. And usually a day or two later there will be a story in the paper about a raid on a grow op or something....

 

[GTR8000]

It's unfortunate the UniTrunker doesn't store affiliation history beyond a few hours. With the older versions of Trunker (and Trunk88) (none of which work on a P25 system by the way) a log was kept of ALL affiliations. You could then go back thru that data and see exactly which radios have been on which groups, or which groups a particular radio had been on. Was very handy to see which ones were associated with each other.

Well, it sort of does, actually. Go to the Info tab of the Site window and enabled the History Log. That will output a daily csv file of all the activity you're seeing in the Call History window. You can then import that into Excel and comb through it. Just FYI the timestamp uses UTC time, so you'll have to convert it to local time if need be.

UniTrunker | Log Files

 

[Forts]

Good to know... Thanks!

 

[tilt404]

I think my problem here might of been yet another case of something haunting my PSR800. It got all messed up yesterday and stopped receiving, then told me it was running firmware 1.0 for the second time since I got it a little over a month ago. So reverted back to the previous firmware, uninstalled the EZ Scan software again back to version 1 and updated. Deleted all my trunk systems. Slowly importing them again now and not having the same problem anymore.

 

[tilt404]

I confirmed that the system I was listening to here wasn't doing patches, my scanner was messed up yet again and causing it to display and the strange behavior. I went back to the previous firmware also and ditched the beta that was recently released. It has too many problems for my liking. Now the PSR800 is working well. Displaying about 75% RIDs again compared to none before. Picking up things a lot better even. No more patches showing on the display and TGID numbers swapping around. Seems like the card gets corrupted so easily, but since I got this scanner around a month ago and I've been trying to get it set up the way I want, I'm programming a lot each day adding and deleting. Things are bound to get messed up I guess. I'm closer to being done now though so I hope with me programming less, it will get corrupted less.

I deleted all my trunk systems and started over. Went through every conventional frequency and confirmed it. Uninstalled the software and started over with that too. All is well now and the scanner is working great. I just hope it stays that way now.

 

[tilt404]

I finally understand it now that I got it working with unitrunker properly. I see the patches show up in the call history and under the patch tab, but they show up on that tab live and then disappear after the patch is over, so that's why I never noticed before I guess. But seeing them on the call history finally explained to me what was taking place and I'm so grateful I understand now. Sorry I've been so dumb all along. I've been trying to learn as I go though. It's hard here with no one in town to talk with.

I attached a file showing how the one TGID added the others, so I guess that meant one dispatch was sending out their message through the other TGID's as well? Makes sense to me now though. I'm impressed at how unitrunker shows every RID in the call history also, unlike the GRE PSR800 I have does. It rarely shows the RID on the display or in the audio file data. Sometimes I know the TGID isn't on long, but every one is logged in the call history so this is going to help a lot.