I mentioned last week in a post on the programming thread I might have an issue to bring up on G5 programming. I have worked this for a week now and all I can say is “Wow, this has been a great deal of ‘fun’”.
I bought one of the G5B (380-430 MHz) pagers so I could listen to a couple of nearby bases. Being retired USAF, it is now kind of fun, though I wish I could have had something like this when I was active duty. Shoot, even the old Regency 1500 would have been ideal it has been that long.
I have eight DOD bases within 40 air miles of my house, five within 20 miles (or reception range). Most of those systems are on a common DOD Wide Area Communications Network (14C) though it covers 96 installations in 20 States from Maine to California along with the District of Columbia.
Programming the G5 to receive individual sites on this system has been an absolute nightmare. First six of the sites near me are misidentified in the RRDB (decimal settings above 255). I’ve reported those to get them fixed (sic). What it appears hear is they joined the RFSS and Site ID into one number (e.g. RFSS 2 Site 81 became Site 281). The G5 converted that to a wildcard “FF”.
I set my original sites using the RRDB BEE00 and 14C WACN and SysID then the RFSS and incorrect SiteID. None of them worked. I set the RFSS and SiteIDs to wildcards and still they would not lock on.
Next I set up a test profile with several zones where I set each site using different combinations of WACN, SysID, RFSS, and SiteID. The first zone I used all wildcards and set the knob to TG Monitor (more on that in a bit). This kind of worked. The first knob position had a site with the lowest SiteID AND Control Channel frequency (purely accidental that I did it that way). It worked and so did the other knob positions for the different sites, only they were all the SAME SiteID and Control Channel as the first knob position.
Changing to another zone where I had set the RFSS to the RRDB value. This zone worked for all the sites. I set my primary profile to that and tried again. Nothing worked, all were ‘out of range’.
The other zones in my test profile also worked, though changing my primary profile to one of those settings again did not work.
What it seems like is the G5 will work once it has received the correct information for a site, even if you are in a different zone and different frequency system alias (with different WACN, SysID, RFSS, or SiteID) set. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. The G5 seems to ignore the entered control channels in some cases.
I finally got my various bases(sites) working setting everything to all wildcards (though one time I thought I had those settings, it didn’t work). Though when I look at the site information in the G5 ‘table information’ it is displaying the values shown in the RRDB (less the offending ‘2’ for the SiteIDs). Yet when the PPS is set to the specific values, it will NOT receive the system.
Back to my setting of TG Monitor. I had set each of the knob positions for a base to TG Monitor to make it easier to find activity. With the one Frequency Alias problem where each base locked onto the lowest control channel, I was still receiving Talk Groups from ALL the nearby bases.
When I finally was able to get each base to receive its control channel and still had TG Monitor set on, I was still getting TG’s from ALL the near by bases on the 14C system. Part of this I can attribute to the possibility of their POSSIBLY being a single dispatch center, though I would have thought they would dispatch on the individual base TG.
Now I kind of expect this on a system that is shared by multiple jurisdictions. My home county or York County VA shares its trunked system with three other municipalities and a State run college. So TG Monitor for York County gets the other three systems too
I have NOT been able to sit out long enough with my 396 in ID Search mode to determine if this is a system or G5 issue. Hopefully next week.
I bought one of the G5B (380-430 MHz) pagers so I could listen to a couple of nearby bases. Being retired USAF, it is now kind of fun, though I wish I could have had something like this when I was active duty. Shoot, even the old Regency 1500 would have been ideal it has been that long.
I have eight DOD bases within 40 air miles of my house, five within 20 miles (or reception range). Most of those systems are on a common DOD Wide Area Communications Network (14C) though it covers 96 installations in 20 States from Maine to California along with the District of Columbia.
Programming the G5 to receive individual sites on this system has been an absolute nightmare. First six of the sites near me are misidentified in the RRDB (decimal settings above 255). I’ve reported those to get them fixed (sic). What it appears hear is they joined the RFSS and Site ID into one number (e.g. RFSS 2 Site 81 became Site 281). The G5 converted that to a wildcard “FF”.
I set my original sites using the RRDB BEE00 and 14C WACN and SysID then the RFSS and incorrect SiteID. None of them worked. I set the RFSS and SiteIDs to wildcards and still they would not lock on.
Next I set up a test profile with several zones where I set each site using different combinations of WACN, SysID, RFSS, and SiteID. The first zone I used all wildcards and set the knob to TG Monitor (more on that in a bit). This kind of worked. The first knob position had a site with the lowest SiteID AND Control Channel frequency (purely accidental that I did it that way). It worked and so did the other knob positions for the different sites, only they were all the SAME SiteID and Control Channel as the first knob position.
Changing to another zone where I had set the RFSS to the RRDB value. This zone worked for all the sites. I set my primary profile to that and tried again. Nothing worked, all were ‘out of range’.
The other zones in my test profile also worked, though changing my primary profile to one of those settings again did not work.
What it seems like is the G5 will work once it has received the correct information for a site, even if you are in a different zone and different frequency system alias (with different WACN, SysID, RFSS, or SiteID) set. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. The G5 seems to ignore the entered control channels in some cases.
I finally got my various bases(sites) working setting everything to all wildcards (though one time I thought I had those settings, it didn’t work). Though when I look at the site information in the G5 ‘table information’ it is displaying the values shown in the RRDB (less the offending ‘2’ for the SiteIDs). Yet when the PPS is set to the specific values, it will NOT receive the system.
Back to my setting of TG Monitor. I had set each of the knob positions for a base to TG Monitor to make it easier to find activity. With the one Frequency Alias problem where each base locked onto the lowest control channel, I was still receiving Talk Groups from ALL the nearby bases.
When I finally was able to get each base to receive its control channel and still had TG Monitor set on, I was still getting TG’s from ALL the near by bases on the 14C system. Part of this I can attribute to the possibility of their POSSIBLY being a single dispatch center, though I would have thought they would dispatch on the individual base TG.
Now I kind of expect this on a system that is shared by multiple jurisdictions. My home county or York County VA shares its trunked system with three other municipalities and a State run college. So TG Monitor for York County gets the other three systems too
I have NOT been able to sit out long enough with my 396 in ID Search mode to determine if this is a system or G5 issue. Hopefully next week.
