Source for data, FCC ULS or scanning?

K7XRL

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Just curious how the database is being developed and how updates and additions are handled. Is it up to individual users to submit new data as it is discovered? Or are there people tasked with actively updating the data on a schedule?

I feel like it's possible some of the county and local level data is incomplete for my area. If I wanted to identify frequencies that might be missing from sites in trunked systems, what is the best way to go about it? Scanning for them within a set range of frequencies, or searching the FCC ULS for licensed frequencies in my area?
 

Whiskey3JMC

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Just curious how the database is being developed and how updates and additions are handled. Is it up to individual users to submit new data as it is discovered? Or are there people tasked with actively updating the data on a schedule?
Users "in the know" do the research to gather confirmed data & submit database updates. Database administrators are tasked with adding submitted info to the database, reaching out to users for clarification on submissions to ensure accuracy, etc. Confirmed data can't be obtained from database dumps from ULS or any other source, it needs to be confirmed by listeners in order to appear in the RRDB.

 

a417

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Just curious how the database is being developed and how updates and additions are handled. Is it up to individual users to submit new data as it is discovered? Or are there people tasked with actively updating the data on a schedule?

I feel like it's possible some of the county and local level data is incomplete for my area. If I wanted to identify frequencies that might be missing from sites in trunked systems, what is the best way to go about it? Scanning for them within a set range of frequencies, or searching the FCC ULS for licensed frequencies in my area?
This has been widely discussed in many local, and site wide forum threads on RR in your last 9+ years, as the esteemed dude @Whiskey3JMC has elaborated on.

Find something, verify/validate it, reference something (like ULS, etc) and submit it.
 

K7XRL

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Okay well the reason I ask is that there appear to be some changes or inaccuracies in the labels on some of the conventional frequencies in my county's database. These are conventional frequencies that have some of the same traffic as the NXDN system.

I have met the county radio guy and he's sort of aloof and unapproachable, so he's probably not a likely source for info on how the county systems are set up, in spite of the fact that he probably knows all of the answers to questions I have on this stuff. I might be able to get some info from the neighboring county (that shares the NXDN system) through a friend of a friend.
 

RaleighGuy

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I have met the county radio guy and he's sort of aloof and unapproachable, so he's probably not a likely source for info on how the county systems are set up, in spite of the fact that he probably knows all of the answers to questions I have on this stuff.

Most radio guys do appear to be that way, perhaps because the information isn't public and they either out right refuse, or play dumb. Probably the worst source of info is the radio guys working for a department.

Okay well the reason I ask is that there appear to be some changes or inaccuracies in the labels on some of the conventional frequencies in my county's database. These are conventional frequencies that have some of the same traffic as the NXDN system.

If you find inaccuracies, and you can verify the correct information, please submit it to the database, that is how the database populates the info, from members like you that want the best info available for others.
 

a417

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Okay well the reason I ask is that there appear to be some changes or inaccuracies in the labels on some of the conventional frequencies in my county's database. These are conventional frequencies that have some of the same traffic as the NXDN system.

I have met the county radio guy and he's sort of aloof and unapproachable, so he's probably not a likely source for info on how the county systems are set up, in spite of the fact that he probably knows all of the answers to questions I have on this stuff. I might be able to get some info from the neighboring county (that shares the NXDN system) through a friend of a friend.
I know some administrators will submit their agencies info themselves, some won't. YMMV. The county radio guy is "aloof and unapproachable" because it's literally not his job to do what you are asking him to do, or what you think he should do. He's allowed to be himself, so let him be. If there was an agency directive from the county to disclose information to RR for the greater good, he'd be an amazing asset. In your case, probably not the best idea to meddle in the affairs of dragons, unless you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Labeling is literally the most subjective thing on here, as I've seen individual agencies list channels as whatever suits them at the time - and have almost no consistiency on an agency level - much less a RR level. Whomever knows what it does, when it's submitted, basically gets creative license to name it - unless the DB admin here decides they know better.

This is a well traveled road over the last 9+ years, look and see...
 

K7XRL

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I know some administrators will submit their agencies info themselves, some won't. YMMV. The county radio guy is "aloof and unapproachable" because it's literally not his job to do what you are asking him to do, or what you think he should do. He's allowed to be himself, so let him be. If there was an agency directive from the county to disclose information to RR for the greater good, he'd be an amazing asset. In your case, probably not the best idea to meddle in the affairs of dragons, unless you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Labeling is literally the most subjective thing on here, as I've seen individual agencies list channels as whatever suits them at the time - and have almost no consistiency on an agency level - much less a RR level. Whomever knows what it does, when it's submitted, basically gets creative license to name it - unless the DB admin here decides they know better.

This is a well traveled road over the last 9+ years, look and see...

I met this guy in 2 different contexts, long before my very recent interest in the accuracy of the database. First, he is a member of the local amateur radio club. I attended some club meetings, but it wasn't what I expected out of an amateur radio club, so I quit attending. It was more social than technical, and very little actual radio was discussed. In any case, I mentioned in passing that I was thinking of setting up a fill-in APRS iGate because in my town, low wattage APRS transmitters like the 500 milliwatt trackers had trouble reaching the club's digipeaters. I don't know whether he misunderstood and thought I wanted to set up a digipeater instead of an iGate.

But he was super territorial and insisted that there was no need for that, and went on to explain that members of the club drove all around my town and got into the existing digipeaters just fine. Well presumably this was with mobile radios running higher wattage than a 500 mW tracker. And an iGate does not retransmit anything so no risk of packet collisions. He just was so quick to shoot down my idea that I came away from the encounter with a very bad impression. This guy had no tact whatsoever.

Anyhow the second time I met him, I had briefly been a part of the city volunteer fire department. He was asked to come explain how the radios worked to the department. I was interested to know how to use them for communication between individual firefighters instead of just communicating directly with dispatch. Specifically which frequency/channel we should use for the purpose. After about 45 minutes of pointed questioning, I don't think any of us came away with any knowledge we didn't already have. He somehow managed to answer our questions without conveying any useful information. However in that particular instance he absolutly WAS being paid by the county to share information about the county radio system, and still managed to give the impression that we (the fire department) were wasting his time. So yeah, I won't bother him anymore.

As for the last 9 years, I have had an account here for about that long. But I haven't spent a whole lot of time reading here since I have had other hobbies that were foremost in my mind. You mentioned this twice. I am a member of numerous online discussion fora, and they all seem to have their own "forum culture", along with accepted practices, etc. There is a common theme among forum members that love to point out when a topic has already been discussed in the past.

Well, I was not a party to those past discussions. Yes, the archives are searchable. But that is roughly equivalent to a person in a live conversation being directed to a library of audio recordings and being told to go have a listen to them, rather than engaging in conversation. You can imagine that might be a bit off-putting.

The same is true of text based conversations. Being told to go read some archived discussion is off-putting. In my many tens of thousands of online forum posts across perhaps 20 or so different websites, I don't think I ever felt the need to direct someone to search old posts, rather than engage them in conversation in the present. And if storage space is a concern, it should be noted that I did pay for temporary database download access, so I am supporting the site.

Now all that said, if it is site policy to refrain from asking questions that have already been answered somewhere else, I will "take the hint" and avoid doing so.
 

dave3825

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These are conventional frequencies that have some of the same traffic as the NXDN system.


Maybe post the system and inaccuracies for us to look at. Seen many conventional freqs throughout the database that are patched to trunked systems and that could explain duplicate labels .
 

K7XRL

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Maybe post the system and inaccuracies for us to look at. Seen many conventional freqs throughout the database that are patched to trunked systems and that could explain duplicate labels .

Carbon County

So that link is the County "root" level page in the database. If you scroll down there are the conventional frequencies. But it's been explained to me that many of the labels are just arbitrary because agencies change how they use them all the time.

I have heard the same dispatcher on more than one of these frequencies speaking to city police, fire dept, sheriff's office and EMS, so the labels are mostly interchangeable. But again, now that I know these labels are pretty arbitrary, my concern over accuracy is quite diminished. =)
 

dave3825

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These are conventional frequencies that have some of the same traffic as the NXDN system.

I have heard the same dispatcher on more than one of these frequencies speaking to city police, fire dept, sheriff's office and EMS, so the labels are mostly interchangeable.


If you look at the first 3 talk groups, it states that they are linked to the conventional freqs, so they would carry the same traffic.

1701138144922.png
 

K7XRL

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Whoops, this question belongs in a different section it seems.
 
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mmckenna

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The next question I have is, is there a way to determine which talkgroups will appear on specific sites? I have all of the Carbon NXDN sites grouped into one quick key. It seems like some of the talkgroups might not come through on all of the sites within the county. I'd like to eliminate redundancies by locking out sites I don't need, or at least move them to a different quick key. I definitely have the memories organized better than I did yesterday, thanks to a lot of helpful members here.

It would entirely depend on two things:
1. How the system is set up. Talkgroups may be routed to all sites, or just specific ones depending on the coverage requirements for the talkgroup/agencies that use it.
2. If an affiliated radio is connected to a specific site and needs access to a specific talkgroup.

Unless you know someone who specifically has access into the trunked system programming, not the radios, but the actual system itself, there's no 100% accurate way to know.
 

AK9R

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Whoops, this question belongs in a different section it seems.
Since you are the thread starter, you can request that the thread be moved to a more appropriate forum. Click the "Report" link at the bottom of any message to report the post or thread. That brings the matter to the attention of the moderators.

The thread has been moved to the Utah forum.
 
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