Programing our NC State Troopers

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orbital

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I just purchased a BC246T and am new to trunking. I live in Cabarrus County and I've programed the Cabarrus and Mecklenburg county Talk Groups on the Motorola Type II SmartZone system. I am unaware on how to program our NC State Troopers. Could someone point me in the right direction on this matter. I saw the post on the Viper sticky and am confused. Do I need to deal with this Viper stuff to program NC State Troopers?

I had a SC150B for nine years which was a non trunking scanner so all this trunking is slowly but surely being learned. Thanks
 

kg4pbd

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You are talking about three separate systems, all can have the SHP on them:

Conventional low band frequencies (see the database) are still in use.

Charlotte TRS has SHP talkgroups to cover Mecklenberg and Gaston Counties.

And lastly the statewide VIPER system.

I would suggest you set up one system using the low band frequencies. In Mecklenberg Troop H the base side is on 42.38 (includes Union County)/mobiles are 42.58. Cabarrus is Troop E and the base side is 42.94/mobiles are 42.68. You can go ahead and load all the conventional frequencies from the database but those four should work close to home.

Troop H is on the Char/Meck TRS, talkgroups are 2352 (Mecklenberg) and 2384 (Gaston).

VIPER is new and I'm not too knowledgeable on the system. There is a VIPER site in Concord but I haven't heard any traffic on it lately. There is a VIPER thread here you can look at also.
 

orbital

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Thanks for the information..... I'll have to add those Conventional low band frequencies to my scanner. Yeah the Viper system is a little confusing. Since I'm new to trunking it's hard to take it all in. Thanks again for the info......

I do have a quick question..... I went to the data base and found these conventional freq.

Cabarrus County:

42.94000 ___ State Highway Patrol Base (Crosspatched to Concord TRS) FM
42.68000 ___ State Highway Patrol Cars FM
42.22000 ___ State Highway Patrol Tac FM

If I enter these talkgroups below will I recieve the the same coverage as the conventional.

Cabarrus County System:

2544 ___ HIGHWAY PATROL 1
2576 ___ HIGHWAY PATROL 2
 
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kg4pbd

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I don't monitor Cabarrus however it's probably the same setup as Char/Meck.

Troopers carry 800mhz portables that are on the talkgroups you mentioned, on the Cabarrus TRS. The base side (42.94) is carried over the TRS. You'll always hear the base side on the TRS. You'll only hear the trooper's responses if they are using their portables. If they are in the car and use their low-band radio you won't hear them on the TRS.

I don't know where Cabarrus is with deploying VIPER. Some of the other guys here are up on that and hopefully they will chime in to let you know.
 

orbital

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I entered in the trunking freqs and you are correct, you can only hear the base station. I would like to hear the full conversation but I have no idea how to get the cars. I'm hoping someone will post and clue me in on this. Thanks for your help, I'm at least getting the Base now.
 

KE4ZNR

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orbital said:
I entered in the trunking freqs and you are correct, you can only hear the base station. I would like to hear the full conversation but I have no idea how to get the cars. I'm hoping someone will post and clue me in on this. Thanks for your help, I'm at least getting the Base now.

You will only hear the Car->Dispatch one of two ways:
1) On 800Mhz if the trooper is out of his crusier using his 800Mhz to talk to dispatch
or
2) On Low band VHF (42.xxxMhz)...to hear the low band VHF you would need to either be near the trooper transmitting back to base or have a good Low Band VHF antenna setup...
Hope this helps!
Marshall KE4ZNR
 

orbital

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KE4ZNR said:
You will only hear the Car->Dispatch one of two ways:
1) On 800Mhz if the trooper is out of his crusier using his 800Mhz to talk to dispatch
or
2) On Low band VHF (42.xxxMhz)...to hear the low band VHF you would need to either be near the trooper transmitting back to base or have a good Low Band VHF antenna setup...
Hope this helps!
Marshall KE4ZNR

So In other words I should set up 2 systems...... The 1st system for the MOT trunking and the 2nd system as a conventional so I can add the 42.xxx

I may not hear the car unless their very close but there is a chance I could hear both side setting up this way.
 
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i'm not aware what freqs are used in your specific area, but in many parts of NC the SHP uses UHF mobile repeaters to get the signals back from the car to the base...and the cars can be heard repeated on these freqs throughout a specific county ( Onslow/Duplin uses 458.000...Carteret/Craven uses 457.050 ) check your county database for any NC SHP repeaters in this range in your area.....just an idea !
 

jeffmulter

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>> in many parts of NC the SHP uses UHF mobile repeaters to get the signals back from the car to the base ...

Orbital - To add to Barefoot's comments, it may be impossible for an NCHP car in an outlying district to communicate with the troop dispatchers when they are a significant distance away.

The NCHP uses remote transceivers - and, sometimes, just receivers - to listen for the cars on the 42 MHz frequency assigned to the district. The remote, which is located on a tower, mountain or other high point, then retransmits the signal to the dispatcher. Sometimes this is done by a midband (72 - 75 MHz), UHF or microwave radio link, or by a wired connection.

The dispatcher can communicate back to the NCHP car in the reverse manner, although the frequency or a radio link back to the remote will varied from the remote-to-dispatch link.

There are no midband or UHF radio links between Monroe NCHP dispatch or Salisbury dispatch and the remote site for the Mecklenberg and Cabarrus County transmitters.

The NCHP radio landscape is changing quickly, but there may still be some midband remote links in other areas of Troop E, although they may be in use on a secondary basis.

Troop F also had some midband and UHF links, and there was a midband link for the remote on Anderson Mountain (Hwy 16 and Hwy 150 on the Lincoln Co / Catawba Co line) serving Troop H cars in Gaston and Cleveland Counties.

Barefoot - Both of the links you mentioned were paired at one time. The Wilmington to Jacksonville side was 453.000 / 141.3, and the New Bern to Newport link was on 72.84 / 85.4 ? . There was also another link running from New Hanover Co to E-town on 72.84 / 94.8. ... don't know if it could be heard off the side of the antenna on a "good" day ?
 

orbital

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Well, I guess we'll just have to hear one side of the conversation at least while their in the car. What troop would be considered Cabarrus County and Mecklenberg? I may just lock out the other freqs. so I just recieve local talk when trunking.
 
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jeff
tnx...rgr on the "off the side on a good day"-- HI HI !! the 457.050 Newport link ( mis-labeled in the database as 'Emerald Isle Area' ) has amazing directivity and a null off the side--as you'd want for a point to point link--you can drive under the newport tower and hear the signal full scale in newport and once you drive about 100 yards further west it's GONE ! zip-nada....

( the 458.000 Jacksonville link to Etown, on the other hand, has an extremely broad--almost omnidirectional--pattern, giving wide area reception in surrounding counties, even here to the east ! )

the activity may be dwindling or almost non-existant but it's nice to know whats out there and program it in just to fill those occasional gaps in both coverage and information ! i had never looked at the files for what was active in the charlotte/west nc area, but didn't want him to overlook the slim possibility that UHF mobile links might still be lurking out there !

73
barefootdipole
 
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jeffmulter

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>> the 458.000 Jacksonville link to Etown ...

I thought I had read previously that it had been re-oriented. At one time, the link terminated at the NCHP office located on Hwy 17, coming out of Wilmington.

>> i had never looked at the files for what was active in the charlotte/west nc area ...

There were a number of midband links in place in the districts that comprise Troop H, prior to its creation. Troop H was carved out of parts of Troop B, E and F ... I'm not sure which Troop covered Moore County.

Last I heard, only two links were still in place in Troop H ... and they might be obsolete now. One connected a remote in Carthage (Moore Co) to the microwave system at Ellerbe (Richmond Co). The other was the Anderson Mountain remote.

Orbital ---

If I wanted to monitor NCHP communications in Cabarrus County, I would program three systems in my scanner:

--- NCHP conventional
--- NCHP Viper site
--- Concord / Cabarrus Co trunked site

Even if there are talkgroups on the Concord / Cabarrus Co trunked system for Salisbury dispatch to communicate with Cabarrus NCHP units, there will be times when NCHP officers from outisde the district - who won't have the Conc / Cab system in their radios - will be working, training or passing through the area.

Those units will depend on the Viper system for contact with Salisbury, or with local NCHP officers. In fact, the Viper system have been used for communications related to the race activities at Lowes Motor Speedway during this weekend and this past week.
 

orbital

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jeffmulter said:
Orbital ---

If I wanted to monitor NCHP communications in Cabarrus County, I would program three systems in my scanner:

--- NCHP conventional
--- NCHP Viper site
--- Concord / Cabarrus Co trunked site

Even if there are talkgroups on the Concord / Cabarrus Co trunked system for Salisbury dispatch to communicate with Cabarrus NCHP units, there will be times when NCHP officers from outisde the district - who won't have the Conc / Cab system in their radios - will be working, training or passing through the area.

Those units will depend on the Viper system for contact with Salisbury, or with local NCHP officers. In fact, the Viper system have been used for communications related to the race activities at Lowes Motor Speedway during this weekend and this past week.

Thanks for the info...... Yeah I pretty much did just that.

I already had Cabarrus County programed so I added the Trunk codes for the NCHP.
I also set up a system for NC Viper and added NCHP trunk codes.
I'm not sure what you mean by NCHP conventional, could you describe?

So far it's worked well, I've been listening to them all weekend since the Race is going
on.
 

kg4pbd

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Conventional frequencies are the low band frequencies we mentioned earlier, i.e. 42.94, 42.38, etc.
 

jeffmulter

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Besides the low band conventional frequencies, I would also add 154.680, 155.445, 155.475, and the 800 MHz conventional ITAC channels.

Some folks might feel this is going overboard. In the case of 154.680 ... the high band repeater ... its use by NCHP units is reportedly decreasing, but other NC agencies can also access it. A few weeks ago, I heard a WRC officer contacting Salisbury on it after he had problems reaching his own dispatch on the WRC channels.
 

CCHLLM

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I might be wrong, but I think you're right, the Jax 458.000 site was re-oriented sometime back to pop the traffic to the microwave link that's at the Wilmington site. The Carthage link is still there, but whether or not it's operational, I can't say. Buck Mtn site (Uwharrie, Montgomery Co) Channels 11/12 is still UHF/Mid-VHF linked to Sow's Belly Comm Center, and the Troop D 70 mHz Summerfield site is still in service both ways. Over the years, several of the VHF/UHF links have been re-oriented to put traffic into the nearest micro site rather than try to make the haul all the way to the respective comm centers.

Originally, the comm center radio coverage areas didn't reflect the troop zone layouts, and a given center might work counties in as many as three troop zones. When I was at GSO in the 70s, we worked parts of Troops C, D, and E. Since then, the troops have gone from 6 troops to 8, the number of sites has greatly increased, and the radio coverage areas have been re-aligned to reflect the troop alignments. That means that some have been removed, many added, and some re-oriented.

Sow's Belly? That's just north of Corncob and Kanned Apples.
 

orbital

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jeffmulter said:
Besides the low band conventional frequencies, I would also add 154.680, 155.445, 155.475, and the 800 MHz conventional ITAC channels.

Hi Jeff.......

I have set up everything that has been mentioned thus far but I'm not sure what you mean by 800 MHz conventional ITAC channels. Are these what you are referring to ?

866.01250 : Nationwide 800 MHz Calling (UNCC TOWER)
866.51250 : Nationwide 800 MHz Tactical 1 (BABE STILLWELL FARM TOWER)
867.01250 : Nationwide 800 MHz Tactical 2 (UNCC TOWER)
867.51250 : Nationwide 800 MHz Tactical 3 (BELLHAVEN TOWER)
868.01250 : Nationwide 800 MHz Tactical 4 (TYVOLA TOWER)
 
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jeffmulter

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Yes, Orbital.

Any public safety agency licensed for 800 MHz can legally use the Itac frequencies in simplex mode ( such as 868.0125 transmit / 868.0125 receive ).

If any agency wishes to operate a repeater on one of the Itac channels, they have to be licensed by the F.C.C. for a repeater on that frequency, and the repeater has to be coordinated so as not to interfere with other repeaters on the same Itac channel.

So, you might run across NCHP units - or any public safety unit - operating on an Itac channel when working with other agencies, or as an adjunct to the regular means of communications.

In the Charlotte area, there have been some reports officers using Itac 4 for checking in for off-duty working assignments.

Unless you know an agency doesn't have access to the Itac channels, it's probably a good idea to include them in your conventional scan list.
 
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