P25 traffic on Matsu wide area

[northernsw]

For the last couple of days, all I hear is P25 on the 154.295 wide area repeater in the Palmer area. It's unencrypted and decodes fine on my AOR radios and I would guess my unidens as well although I haven't reconfigured them yet.

I'm curious if this is a permanent change and how it impacts the analog tac frequencies and other repeaters like 154.220.

This may certainly idle a number of my analog radios. I miss hearing the paging tones already.

 

[aps_ak]

Hey, its nice to see someone else in these forums monitoring. My guess is that this is a permanent change. Whether it will remain clear or not is anyone's guess, but with the numbers of agencies being dispatched on this channel, the coordination required to get everyone encrypted may be more extensive. I am in Anchorage, so can't confirm the TAC frequencies. There is old guidance from some fire communications authority that fireground communications are recommended to be analog, but that also may be outdated. Your best bet is just to monitor and submit anything you may come across.

 

[northernsw]

I hear a lot of radio checks happening on 154.295 so it seems they are still getting used to the change. I'm curious if 154.295 will be a hybrid with both p25 and fm like 166.300 in Denali NP.

I could see core Matsu area being p25 and the outlying areas being fm.

Matsu is going to be interesting to monitor to figure all of it out.

 

[aps_ak]

A duplex system would be interesting, though I don't think it is likely. It's common for NPS conventional frequencies still to this day, but I'm guessing this is a full move to digital for all agencies using the Areawide Fire channel. Most of them already have ALMR (and therefore digital) capable radios, as they can operate on "Dispatch 1" - ALMR Talkgroup 13601 in certain situations. My Unitrunker has been logging quite a few new MSB radios on ALMR in this past week, so I am guessing they are closing the gap on non-digital radios.

Since you're in the valley, I would be curious if other repeaters and TACs will be/are digital at this point. Definitely report back if you can..

 

[northernsw]

I heard unencrypted p25 traffic on the 154.220 repeater this evening. I'm not sure whether that one is in Sutton or Butte. I haven't heard any traffic yet on the simplex tac frequencies.

 

[aps_ak]

Its probably the Sutton repeater, there doesnt seem to a 154.22 repeater in the Butte area. If you catch the NAC, let me know or feel free to submit. It's not likely that I'll be able to confirm these myself anytime soon.