Sacramento P25 system

[mcjones2013]

It appears there might be some radio issues today. Looks like maybe 16/30 channels are active on Site 12. SRFECC has moved its fire units over to CAFIRE1 for radio operations. Other law enforcement units in the field are reporting intermittent issues.

 

[mcjones2013]

Roll calls happening on the national calling/interop channels and California-only channels. The digital conventional C-TAC channels are already having radio checks.

 

[gmclam]

There was definitely some sort of "outage" overnight. I heard traffic on Direct 15 and a mention at one point that the problem had ended. It sounds like it has happened again.

 

[mcjones2013]

Direct 15 is CAFIRE1D. According to Cal IFOG, they should be labeling it as such. CAFIRE1D in repeater mode is CAFIRE1, on Carpenter Peak.

 

[CityNewsSupport]

Sac Police On The CTAC CHANNELS
West Sacramento Police On C-TAC 12
West Sacramento Fire On Yolo County Fire Green
Any Ideas On What The Issue Is With SRRCS?

 

[mcjones2013]

CALAW8 - Folsom PD
CALAW9 - Citrus Heights PD
CAFIRE1 - SRFECC City/County
8TAC91 - Elk Grove PD
CTAC 4 - SacRT Light Rail
CTAC 7 - Los Rios PD
CTAC 9 - Sac Sheriff East
CTAC 10 - Sac Sheriff West
CTAC 11 - UC Davis PD
CTAC 12 - West Sacramento PD
CTAC 13 - Sacramento PD East
CTAC 14 - Sacramento PD North
CTAC 15 - Sacramento PD South
CTAC 16 - Sacramento PD Central

 

[mcjones2013]

The system appears to be back in normal operation. Some agencies have switched back to their regular channels, some are still on the backup channels. I'm guessing they'll wait until the next shift change or when there's no more priority calls on their board to switch over.

 

[gmclam]

Direct 15 is CAFIRE1D. According to Cal IFOG, they should be labeling it as such. CAFIRE1D in repeater mode is CAFIRE1, on Carpenter Peak.

Including the list of CTAC names it shows how important names are in these times.In my statewide group I have CA FIRE 1 as 853.9875. In my Sacramento County group I have SAC FIRE DIR 15 as 853.9875. Clearly the same thing. In other words, it depends on where I am as to what the channel gets labeled upon reception. They're apparently listed in different places on RR and I've just carried them forward. It's also possible someone officially changed a name and I simply missed the change.

Regardless we're all hearing the same thing. Thank you for the list of what channels are being used by who. I'm not always looking at a display when stuff is received.

 

[clanusb]

In my statewide group I have CA FIRE 1 as 853.9875. In my Sacramento County group I have SAC FIRE DIR 15 as 853.9875. Clearly the same thing. In other words, it depends on where I am as to what the channel gets labeled upon reception. They're apparently listed in different places on RR and I've just carried them forward. It's also possible someone officially changed a name and I simply missed the change.

You aren't wrong. In our radios we have "Direct 15" and "Direct 16" in channels 15 and 16 respectively on our A, B, C, D, E, and T Banks.

CA FIRE1 is what we are to use when the system goes down. For those times we have a Radio Failure Level plan that we follow, thus the reason they tell us to switch to CA FIRE 1 in the "FL3" (Failure Level 3) bank. This last outage that occurred a few times has finally made aware of the issue of 1) The entire county switching to 1 repeated channel. 2) That channel also being listed and used as Direct 15 on incidents, and thus interference issues.

The outage was caused by some cables that were corroded and a few hardware modules that had failed and needed to be replaced.

 

[dirtrat]

The DIR channels are Simplex channels. The CFIRE1 channel is a repeated channel. Yes the DIR channel is a talk-around but they definitely aren't the same channel and that's why they are named differently.

 

[clanusb]

CAFIRE1= 853.9875

Direct 15 = CAFIRE1D (direct. So the repeater output. You will hear the output of the repeater when you are on D15. So yes, it can, has, and will cause issues on an incident assigned to D15 when CAFIRE1 is being used as the county command channel.

 

[CityNewsSupport]

Hello All
Question on mobile simulcast reception For The West Sacramento Police & Fire Department! I Am working with a Uniden BCD 996P2 Using A Laird Single Band 800MHz Phantom Antenna. My issue is I loose reception going West on I80 just after the Yolo Causeway! I have also noted some dead zones in the City Of West Sacramento. Is it just me or is West Sac bad for mobile reception? I should note this Scanner only has 800mhz systems programmed into it! Vallejo, Davis, West Sacramento and Sacramento City PD/FD all on separate systems.

Thanks James

 

[chmsant]

Hello All
Question on mobile simulcast reception For The West Sacramento Police & Fire Department! I Am working with a Uniden BCD 996P2 Using A Laird Single Band 800MHz Phantom Antenna. My issue is I loose reception going West on I80 just after the Yolo Causeway! I have also noted some dead zones in the City Of West Sacramento. Is it just me or is West Sac bad for mobile reception? I should note this Scanner only has 800mhz systems programmed into it! Vallejo, Davis, West Sacramento and Sacramento City PD/FD all on separate systems.

Thanks James

Are you losing reception, or is your scanner not able to decode? There’s a difference.

The 996P2 and other similar-generation scanners have a really hard time in simulcast systems like the SRRCS unless you’re right on top of a tower. They weren’t built to handle the signal distortion of receiving the same signal from two locations at the same time. It messes up the decode, and what you get is choppy audio or just silence.

I’ve had no problems with my SDS100 out that direction, a scanner that is designed to handle that simulcast distortion.

Note that West Sac PD/Fire, Davis and Sac PD/Fire are all on the same system, the SRRCS. You may have the system duplicated in your scanner, with just the specific talk groups for those agencies programmed therein, but the signals are originating from the same sets of towers.

 

[gmclam]

I am using an SDS-100 (and often also a PSR-500) when mobile. On the SDS I am able to pick up the Sacramento system w/o issue at least as far west as Dixon, but as far north as Glenn county. I'll tell ya the antenna you're using and the scanner (model) make a difference.

 

[mcjones2013]

Davis, West Sacramento and Sacramento City PD/FD all on separate systems.

I don't want to tell you how to do your programming, but I would recommend putting these all into one SRRCS system. It will scan faster and *possibly* help with the issue you're having somewhat because then the scanner is not having to lock onto the same system three different times.

 

[gmclam]

I don't want to tell you how to do your programming, but I would recommend putting these all into one SRRCS system. It will scan faster and *possibly* help with the issue you're having somewhat because then the scanner is not having to lock onto the same system three different times.

I agree. To avoid missing traffic, the scanner should never leave the control channel. Of course, when a conversation happens, it will leave it, and during that time you'll (obviously) miss other traffic.

As a possible compromise, you could have one system with the Davis site only and another site with the Simulcast site (site 012). In this case though, you'd only hear what's associated with each site. And the scanner will still leave one control channel for another (which causes missing traffic).

 

[mcjones2013]

He *should* be fine putting everything under Site 12. DPD DSP1 ans DFD DSP1 both are on Site 12. I'm not sure about their tactical channels. I believe (when watching DSDPlus), Site 14 only allows Davis and UC Davis talk groups. SPD, WSPD (and others) are rejected when they try to affiliate with Site 14, but Site 12 on the actual field radios comes in well across the causeway.

 

[CityNewsSupport]

I don't want to tell you how to do your programming, but I would recommend putting these all into one SRRCS system. It will scan faster and *possibly* help with the issue you're having somewhat because then the scanner is not having to lock onto the same system three different times.

Awesome I will try that Thanks

 

[CityNewsSupport]

I agree. To avoid missing traffic, the scanner should never leave the control channel. Of course, when a conversation happens, it will leave it, and during that time you'll (obviously) miss other traffic.

As a possible compromise, you could have one system with the Davis site only and another site with the Simulcast site (site 012). In this case though, you'd only hear what's associated with each site. And the scanner will still leave one control channel for another (which causes missing traffic).

Thanks for the reply I am going to try using the suggestions you guy's have given me

 

[gmclam]

He *should* be fine putting everything under Site 12. DPD DSP1 ans DFD DSP1 both are on Site 12. I'm not sure about their tactical channels. I believe (when watching DSDPlus), Site 14 only allows Davis and UC Davis talk groups. SPD, WSPD (and others) are rejected when they try to affiliate with Site 14, but Site 12 on the actual field radios comes in well across the causeway.

I have all the sites programmed, but rarely see traffic come in on anything except site 12. I wasn't sure how the Davis site would work, but regardless know radios would need to be affiliated anyway. One reason I run multiple radios all the time is so that one doesn't ever leave SRRCS.