System 14C in California

[KevinC]

Not my neck of the woods, but I noticed an update to system 14C in California adding a second zone 5 site 4 and zone 5 site 5. If these sites are wide-area on the same core that's not possible. Are they maybe in site-trunking or ASTRO Express sites? Or does anyone know for sure?

I guess they could have another core with no inter-zone link and they reused the same zone and site numbers, but that would seem counterproductive to me.

 

[AM909]

I'm about to submit some more info on that system, which I've been paying a lot of attention to in recent days. There are a number of discrepancies with the database and other strangeness.

 

[KevinC]

I'm about to submit some more info on that system, which I've been paying a lot of attention to in recent days. There are a number of discrepancies with the database and other strangeness.

Did you submit the newly added zone 5 sites?

 

[AM909]

These ones that just happened, no.

 

[KevinC]

These ones that just happened, no.

 

[inigo88]

I guess they could have another core with no inter-zone link and they reused the same zone and site numbers, but that would seem counterproductive to me.

There are multiple duplicate RFSS 5 sites in the San Diego area that belong to separate systems, both IDing as BEE00 14C. Come visit sometime and bring your scanner and you will be able to receive multiple duplicate sites from the same geographic location at the same time (note the site NACs are different between the two systems). Therefore your separate core / zone controller theory appears to be the most likely.

 

[KevinC]

There are multiple duplicate RFSS 5 sites in the San Diego area that belong to separate systems, both IDing as BEE00 14C. Come visit sometime and bring your scanner and you will be able to receive multiple duplicate sites from the same geographic location at the same time (note the site NACs are different between the two systems). Therefore your separate core / zone controller theory appears to be the most likely.

Wow! Not to get off-topic, but talk about the government wasting money with all those separate cores.

Thanks for the info.

 

[officer_415]

I'm about to submit some more info on that system, which I've been paying a lot of attention to in recent days. There are a number of discrepancies with the database and other strangeness.

I am going to split the duplicate sites off to a separate system, as they should be. Please hold off on submitting any more updates for this system until I have a chance to do that.

 

[AM909]

I took some captures of the 380 band from up the hill a little ways with a better shot down towards San Diego, where most of those sites are. Having some trouble getting to decoding them, but will try to do so next week.

 

[officer_415]

I created a separate USMC West system (linked below) and deleted those sites and corresponding talkgroups from the DoD 14C system. That should address the issue of the duplicate RFSS/site numbers. I also noted in the system description that it is a separate system from the DoD 14C system, so hopefully other DB admins will not try to merge it with the DoD 14C system in the future.

US Marine Corps Installations West (14C) Trunking System, Various, Multi-State

US Marine Corps Installations West (14C) Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

On the DoD 14C system, I also changed the RFSS 6 sites back to RFSS 5 (they were changed to 6 to address the duplicate site numbers). Now that the USMC sites have been moved to their own system, there are no longer duplicate site numbers.

 

[AM909]

@mlangeveld: It looks like they are split correctly now, based on my logs of 9 sites and 13 more identified via neighbor lists. Good job! Before I submit my list and the suggested changes, a couple questions:

There are sites that have more than one primary CC designated. Is there a reason for these?

There are a number of sites that are currently using a CC that is designated as either alternate or non-CC. In the time I've been logging this system (about 9 months) every few weeks, I think I've only seen two sites change their CC permanently, so it seems reasonable to designate the current CCs as primary if they are not, right?

 

[AM909]

There is also a potential issue with the neighbor list formats. Some are formatted in the way they are shown in DSD+: RFSS.Site e.g. RFSS 5 site 23 is shown as "5.23", which I believe is the way it should be, as there can be no confusion about which is the RFSS and which is the site number.

Others are formatted (almost) as the note at the top of system page says: RRss where RR is the zero-padded RFSS and ss is the 0-padded site number, e.g. RFSS 5 site 23 is shown as "0523" (or actually without the leading zero as "523"). This can be confusing and it's not clear how it would handle three-digit site numbers in a non-ambiguous way (e.g. SCE 5AA, though now that I look at some of those sites, they are confusing, too). Is it even possible to have neighbors with a different RFSS (and can we eliminate the RFSS from the neighbor list entirely)?

 

[AM909]

I submitted ticket 236327 (subject to change if the answers to the above are not what I expect).

 

[officer_415]

There are sites that have more than one primary CC designated. Is there a reason for these?

There are a number of sites that are currently using a CC that is designated as either alternate or non-CC. In the time I've been logging this system (about 9 months) every few weeks, I think I've only seen two sites change their CC permanently, so it seems reasonable to designate the current CCs as primary if they are not, right?

The primary vs. alternate CC setup in the DB is pretty arbitrary, it should really just be CC vs. non-CC. Some systems rotate through all the possible CCs regularly, others stay on one CC for years. The important thing for DB purposes is that CCs are marked (primary or alternate doesn't matter) so people won't lose the system if it switches to a CC that we have as a voice-only channel.

If you've seen a site on a CC for an extended period of time, it seems reasonable to designate that as a primary CC.

There is also a potential issue with the neighbor list formats. Some are formatted in the way they are shown in DSD+: RFSS.Site e.g. RFSS 5 site 23 is shown as "5.23", which I believe is the way it should be, as there can be no confusion about which is the RFSS and which is the site number.

Others are formatted (almost) as the note at the top of system page says: RRss where RR is the zero-padded RFSS and ss is the 0-padded site number, e.g. RFSS 5 site 23 is shown as "0523" (or actually without the leading zero as "523"). This can be confusing and it's not clear how it would handle three-digit site numbers in a non-ambiguous way (e.g. SCE 5AA, though now that I look at some of those sites, they are confusing, too). Is it even possible to have neighbors with a different RFSS (and can we eliminate the RFSS from the neighbor list entirely)?

There's no firm DB policy regarding formatting of neighbor lists, which is probably why you've seen them listed in different ways. For smaller systems, I usually just list the site number (no RFSS). For larger systems, I usually list them as 5.23 or 5-23 to try and make it clear that 5 is the RFSS. I agree that 523 or 0523 are more confusing, but seeing as there are no 3-digit site numbers on this system I don't think it's a huge problem.

 

[AM909]

I submitted ticket 236327 (subject to change if the answers to the above are not what I expect).

... and done. Thanks @mlangeveld!

I'll try to get to playing with DSD+, SDRTrunk, and Unitrunker to see if they can handle the multiple primary CCs ok.

I'm guessing the apps won't deal correctly with what is essentially two different systems with the same SID (14C), even though we now know they can be distinguished by NAC (all the old sites are NAC 140 and the new sites are NAC 14C). I guess users have to choose which one they want to listen to or have multiple configs.

 

[officer_415]

Any idea on the location of some of these unknown sites, such as 5.14 on the USMC system?

 

[AM909]

Me? Not really, sorry. I'm omni and mobile. I had a 10,000' rock right behind me for that session, so I can only guess that "new" site 14 (the only unknown location CC I heard) is somewhere south of 34 degrees. It was maybe a couple dB weaker than old site 25 (San Clemente Island), FWIW.

Perhaps some of the nice folks in San Diego can be of help.

 

[B]

Wow, thank you both, mlangeveld and AM909 for all the hard work! Truly appreciated!