SCE Coverage of Ventura County

[iscanvnc2]

Here in the city of Ventura on my 396P2 I receive two sites I’ll refer to as “A” & “B”.
A displays 2-3 bars, Site “01", and a 935.7625 control channel.
B displays 5 bars, Site “0192" and a 936.8625 control channel.

The RRDB SCE listing shows
Site 146 (92) Hall Mountain, Ventura County 935.7625 control channel.
Site 92 (5C) Site 1-92, Los Angeles County 936.8625 control channel

The RRDB site numbers in decimal begin with “081" and progresses single digit. There is no “01".
My “B” carries many, many times more Ventura county related conversations than “A”.

Hall Mountain is in the foothills just above mid-city Ventura where the city has some of its transmitters. That location wouldn’t cover much of the county. It makes more sense for Site 1 -92 to be in Ventura County, likely on South Mountain. The elevation is 2,000 feet.

If my “A” is indeed Hall Mt, why does my 996P2 display site 01?

Just curious (confused?)

 

[Randyk4661]

The Edison system is a very large system that covers from the Nevada state line to the pacific ocean. It is also not well mapped out on Radio reference and contains errors. If site B works for you then listen to that. On my site in Orange County, I can hear crews from as far as away as Santa Barbara. Many of the sites are tied together and cover system wide. From my house I can hear six different repeater sites which all have OC traffic on them. One time when an edison crew was in the neighborhood, I used close call to find the site they were using for my area. When they keyed the radio and after a frequency search I found they were using Site 91. Sierra Peak I believe.
Basically if you have a good site to listen to, use that and don't worry about what Radio Reference say it might be, it could be old information.

 

[iscanvnc2]

Randy
Thanks for your comments. I realize the complexity of the system. Still it's fun to try to figure sites out.
You mentioned hearing Santa Barbara crews; I haven't. There must be a site in SB County though none is listed in the DB.
On the Ventura site I've heard OPS in Antelope Valley, Redlands amongst others with Ridgecrest being the furthest. It rarely happens, but it does. Computer error; human error, both? Anyway, it's interesting.
I've heard OPS 29, 48 & 33 from Orange county.

 

[Randyk4661]

Edison is one system I have put some time into make some sense of. Yes it is interesting. I keep thinking it has some characteristics of a simulcast system. I'm guessing that certain sites can be utilized for crews from other areas that are brought in for disasters to communicate back to the home office when needed or for traveling between said disaster.
Anyway I'm not done figuring out the Edison system.

 

[es93546]

I'm near the end of the line for the SCE system, both in terms of their radio system and the actual grid. Conway Summit is the furthest north site in the system. As far as I know the repeaters only carry traffic if a user's radio is powered up somewhere in the reception area of that site. I'm lucky that the closest site to me, Mammoth Mountain is always on because SCE has an office in town. They must leave a base radio on all the time. The District 85 (Inyo-Mono Counties) "Troubleman" or operations talkgroup carries traffic from other areas in the system. On the older P1 system I heard a lot on the D85 op talkgroup from the areas in the utility's Northern Area. I used to hear Ventura, Santa Barbara, Central Valley and Lancaster/Palmdale areas quite frequently. They always called "Northern DOC" (dock) when calling this DOC and 10-15 years ago they just called "Ventura DOC." DOC stands for Distribution Operations Center.

There is a distribution station located west of Bishop and for some reason they don't call it "Bishop," referring to its geographical location, as is the case for all the other substations. They call it "Control." I don't think I've ever heard traffic from other substations on the Control talkgroup. Once they went to Phase 2 I did not listen until I picked up a BCD325P2 scanner last fall. Now they just call "DOC" without naming which of the 4 they have or at least had when I listened to them on Phase 1. The DOC's were the Northern in Ventura, Eastern in Mira Loma, Southern in Santa Ana and Western in Dominguez Hills. I wonder if they have consolidated all of these DOC's into one. On the Phase 2 system they patch other talkgroups with the D85 ops talkgroup and sometimes talkgroups from other districts are transmitted up here. I hear Hesperia, Visalia, but don't hear Santa Barbara and Ventura anymore. I'm guessing the 4 "DOC's" have been consolidated and the patch talkgroups in a manner that I can't figure out.

I've never heard any traffic, on the older Phase 1 system and now on the Phase 2 system Field Service Representative talkgroups. Not once, not even a blip. Has anyone else heard anything on these FSR talkgroups?

Basically if you have a good site to listen to, use that and don't worry about what Radio Reference say it might be, it could be old information.

I disagree. We need to figure this system out. We need to fill in the actual location of all of those "1-xx" sites. We need to actively monitor the radio traffic. If the Radio Reference database is old information then we need to change it. The point is not just to listen to systems, the point is figuring out systems and making the RR DB as accurate and up to date as we can. Others here have done that to bring the SCE system information to the point it is now at. We need active members as there are far too many who are quite passive and want others to do the work.

 

[es93546]

My post was long so I didn't want to add this above. I've found listening to utility radio systems essential. I've lived in rural area small towns for 43 years now. When the power goes out, which happens more in rural areas, I want to know what is going on. During storms, both lightning in the summer and winter snowstorms, listening to utilities gives you information on how intense the storms are. Mono County can have some very intense and significant snowfall. I missed hearing SCE so much that I bought a radio I really don't like, but it is quite useful for Phase 2, non simulcast systems.

 

[iscanvnc2]

es93546 asked if anybody has heard any FSR talkgroups. Here in Ventura I’ve heard the following:
12049 FSR 34 Ontario
12053 FSR 31 Redlands
12071 FSR 35 Thousand Oaks
12079 FSR 39 Ventura
12091 FSR 36 Antelope Valley

 

[es93546]

es93546 asked if anybody has heard any FSR talkgroups. Here in Ventura I’ve heard the following:
12049 FSR 34 Ontario
12053 FSR 31 Redlands
12071 FSR 35 Thousand Oaks
12079 FSR 39 Ventura
12091 FSR 36 Antelope Valley

Thanks! Why I haven't heard anything on FSR talkgroups up here and over a period of about 15-20 years is a mystery to me.

 

[LAflyer]

If anyone has additional system info, please submit it to the Db.

As es93546 mentioned, the Db is almost entirely in the hands of RR members, so your submissions are appreciated and helps move the ball forward for the benefit of everyone.

 

[es93546]

On the subject of just hearing the mobile units on Troubleman talkgroups call "DOC" without referring to the Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western DOC's, what are you all hearing in southern California? I assume no matter what area you are in, you just hearing something like "DOC (dock), 3914" if you are in SCE District 39 (Ventura), for example. A regional approach to establishing operations centers made sense, but centralizing the whole thing makes sense from an economic standpoint. The 4 DOC's could all handle each others functions in case anyone of them went down due to a disaster, so maybe SCE found that staffing all of them 24 hours a day didn't make much sense.

Trying to find out info on utilities, especially large ones, is tricky. As I understand it there are some federal laws that address the security of electric utilities that make is a crime for employees to share information. I suppose that makes it not only more challenging, but more fun trying to make sense of it.

I used to travel in southern California much more frequently and could monitor down there. I found that I could listen for a few days and find a lot about systems sufficient to submit changes to the database. However, the deaths of some older family members as well as a couple of friends has found me with no reason to go down there. My wife and I lost some friends in Ventura County in the last 5 years and we used to visit them every year or two. Now with Covid-19 we haven't traveled since Christmas 2019 and that was to Arizona, so we haven't been in L.A. County since April of 2012. I grew up in west L.A., moved away in 1972 and used to travel there at least once a year, but no more. Ah, getting older is so much fun!