Palm Beach County Pager Frequencies?

[samster96]

Hello,

I am interested in monitoring / decoding radio pager messages (POCSAG, FLEX, etc.) I am wondering if anybody knows of any frequencies used in Palm Beach County.

I already know of 453.1500, which is what Palm Beach County Fire Rescue uses for their POCSAG pager dispatching, but I was wondering if there was any other ones that are known (e.g. FLEX on 900 mhz.)


Thanks!

 

[Voyager]

Be careful what you post, and make sure you understand the ECPA before doing so. Would be a shame to see a post made come back to be used against you.

 

[samster96]

Be careful what you post, and make sure you understand the ECPA before doing so. Would be a shame to see a post made come back to be used against you.

How so? From my understand the ECPA only applies to the government tapping hard wires, and excludes pagers. The frequency that I posted is actually listed on this website, so I don't see any issue with that.

 

[haleve]

RR Police At It Once again, LOL.

How so? From my understand the ECPA only applies to the government tapping hard wires, and excludes pagers. The frequency that I posted is actually listed on this website, so I don't see any issue with that.

If you've violated any RR TOS, I'm quite sure a moderator would have contacted you by now, anyway's I am heavily into monitoring fire comms' here in South Florida & would like to be able to decode the PBCFR paging protocall, is there some way I can see a digital readout of their dispatches? Feel free to PM me & welcome to the site.

 

[samster96]

Eh, I'll post it up here in case anybody else is looking to get into it as well.

I'm still new to this so I'll share what I know. I'm still working out the kinks.


The frequency that I have listed above is, as I said, the frequency that PBCFR apparently sends out their pager tones. The tone is "encoded" (if you will,) in the POCSAG format.

Now, how do we decode this? There is a program called PDW that is used to decode a variety or pager formats (POCSAG, FLEX, etc.) It can receive the signal in one of several ways.

The first, simplist, but probably least effective way is to run a 3.5mm audio cable from your scanner to your computer via line-in. The trouble with this is that you need to adjust your volume controls on both your scanner and your computer so that it is as high as it can go without clipping. Getting that sweet spot can be frustrating, but I've managed to do it. But like I said, it is very touchy. I have yet to get it just right on my Uniden BCD396-XT

The second method is to use a discriminator output of your scanner, if it has one. I believe what the discriminator does is essentially bypasses the analog audio output of the scanner, and just gives you the pure output. I think that may be a poor description, but I'm not 100% sure about how else I can describe it. Not very many scanners come with it I believe. Most of the time I think it is some wiring job that the owner has done to their scanner to give it that functionality.

You can also send the signal via serial / RS-232 cable if your scanner supports that, but I have not been able to get that to work on my Uniden BCD-396XT as of yet.

The third way that I know of (but have not tested yet,) is to get a software controlled radio that plugs into your computer via a software-controlled receiver. I happen to come across this one that was listed on Amazon that I found on this blog page talking about how to set it up with PDW. I am hoping that since there should be no analog distortion from an audio cable, that this will work great out of the box, but I will report back when I get it set up.


Hope that gives you a good brief intro into how to get started with this stuff. Believe me, there is plenty of Googling and reading to be done here. But once its set up right it can be pretty cool. The videos on that blog page show a good example of what it looks like when all properly setup.

 

[Voyager]

I'm sure you will continue anyway, but in case you might be interested...

In 1994 the ECPA was amended to prohibit interception of communications considered "not readily accessible to the public" and includes RCC frequencies such as those used by many paging services. Unless these are tone-only paging services, they are considered not "readily accessible" and interception is prohibited under the ECPA.

Specifically (not relevant parts snipped):

(16) “readily accessible to the general public” means, with respect to a radio communication, that such communication is not—
(D) transmitted over a communication system provided by a common carrier, unless the communication is a tone only paging system communication; or

It also prohibits interception of Cellular, Broadcast IFBs, STLs, RPUs, and the like, and even cordless phones. It has a lot more reach than just wire tapping. The 1986 version only prohibited Cellular. The other services were added in 1994.

So far, you haven't talked about such paging services, but it appeared you were about to, as most POCSAG and FLEX transmissions are made on frequencies where the ECPA prohibits interception (and not just by the federal government, but by anyone).

That said, feel free to incriminate away if you so desire.

 

[RadioSquad]

Everybody just needs to do their own research and not ask the whole world on how to do something.

When you don't ask the whole world and wanna be radio comm techs that think they know everything and all of the laws then you won't be critisized for every move you want to make.

There is so much information on PDW and discriminator taping your radios that a monkey can figure it out.

 

[samster96]

Interesting to know. If I understand correctly from your post and some brief research, a "common carrier" would be a private company (such as ATT, Verizon, paging company, etc.) who would maintain and distribute the pages, and a cellular signal would obviously be a digitally encrypted signal that not even a scanner would be able to receive.

With that being said, according to the FCC, this frequency is owned and operated by Palm Beach County, a government organization who doesn't offer its services to the general public. Thus, I don't think it would be considered a "common carrier." Therefore, my thought process leads me to believe that it shouldn't fall under being "prohibited interception."

Sorry if I seem to be argumentative, I'm kind of just more laying out my thought process here.

 

[Voyager]

Interesting to know. If I understand correctly from your post and some brief research, a "common carrier" would be a private company (such as ATT, Verizon, paging company, etc.) who would maintain and distribute the pages, and a cellular signal would obviously be a digitally encrypted signal that not even a scanner would be able to receive.

With that being said, according to the FCC, this frequency is owned and operated by Palm Beach County, a government organization who doesn't offer its services to the general public. Thus, I don't think it would be considered a "common carrier." Therefore, my thought process leads me to believe that it shouldn't fall under being "prohibited interception."

Sorry if I seem to be argumentative, I'm kind of just more laying out my thought process here.

You're correct on Palm Beach's frequency - it's in the Public Safety pool. There are frequencies assigned for RCC that include some 152 MHz, 157 MHz, and 454 MHz frequencies, for example. The FCC has a complete listing, of course.

Again, I will say that so far you haven't talked about such frequencies, but it appeared you were about to. I just wanted to make sure you knew about the revised ECPA before you said something that might come back on you.

It's amazing how many people don't know about what was added. As for Cellular being encrypted, it doesn't matter. The laws are still in place. It's outdated, but it's still there.

 

[haleve]

Works For Me

Eh, I'll post it up here in case anybody else is looking to get into it as well.

I'm still new to this so I'll share what I know. I'm still working out the kinks.


The frequency that I have listed above is, as I said, the frequency that PBCFR apparently sends out their pager tones. The tone is "encoded" (if you will,) in the POCSAG format.

Now, how do we decode this? There is a program called PDW that is used to decode a variety or pager formats (POCSAG, FLEX, etc.) It can receive the signal in one of several ways.

The first, simplist, but probably least effective way is to run a 3.5mm audio cable from your scanner to your computer via line-in. The trouble with this is that you need to adjust your volume controls on both your scanner and your computer so that it is as high as it can go without clipping. Getting that sweet spot can be frustrating, but I've managed to do it. But like I said, it is very touchy. I have yet to get it just right on my Uniden BCD396-XT

The second method is to use a discriminator output of your scanner, if it has one. I believe what the discriminator does is essentially bypasses the analog audio output of the scanner, and just gives you the pure output. I think that may be a poor description, but I'm not 100% sure about how else I can describe it. Not very many scanners come with it I believe. Most of the time I think it is some wiring job that the owner has done to their scanner to give it that functionality.

You can also send the signal via serial / RS-232 cable if your scanner supports that, but I have not been able to get that to work on my Uniden BCD-396XT as of yet.

The third way that I know of (but have not tested yet,) is to get a software controlled radio that plugs into your computer via a software-controlled receiver. I happen to come across this one that was listed on Amazon that I found on this blog page talking about how to set it up with PDW. I am hoping that since there should be no analog distortion from an audio cable, that this will work great out of the box, but I will report back when I get it set up.


Hope that gives you a good brief intro into how to get started with this stuff. Believe me, there is plenty of Googling and reading to be done here. But once its set up right it can be pretty cool. The videos on that blog page show a good example of what it looks like when all properly setup.

Thanks for your rapid & very informative reply, I have a little used scanner that is already been tapped, I also have a 3.5 mm cable but matching the scanner/PC volumes have been an exercise in futility, the software is already downloaded but if it doesn't work I'll get two Dongle Pro+ sticks that are required for SDR trunking & start from there, thanks again, you did a wonderful thing.

BTW: When in Florida I monitor everything fire related in Broward & Palm Beach Counties (Through Broadcastify), Miami-Dade's UHF conventional system since they were wise enough to dump that crappy Edacs trunked system they were relegated to & Florida Forestry, take care & again, welcome to RR.

 

[rapidcharger]

Paging is truly the deep web of the scanner hobby.

It's not encrypted but probably not the best idea to go talking about it publicly if decoding paging is something you like to do. Although I know someone who brought the insecure nature of this paging to the attention of their employer and were pretty much told to sit down and shut up and not concern themselves with it.

 

[FireRescueCapt]

Without getting too deep into the specifics so I don't get myself in trouble, there are no other paging systems used by PBCFR except for the UHF POCSAG one that you had described. Everything else is either done via computer line (DSL for station alerting and cellular for mobile/MDT) or voice over the trunked system. 453.75 is still used as a backup to tone alert the stations if the computer alerting (Locution) can't get through via the computer line, but this is only used rarely and is done automatically by the paging system. If you monitor it, you might hear a call go out once in a while.