TAMU TRS Down?

[mfn002]

I turned on my scanners this morning and discovered that I wasn't picking up the CC for the TAMU TRS. I checked the new HCRRS freq's, but nothing. A search of the 850-868 band also revealed nothing. I was only able to find the College Station and Brazos County CCs. I also searched the 700 band, and again found nothing. Did I miss something?

 

[bpckty1]

Since school is out for a couple of weeks, they may be down for maintenance/upgrading. Try listening to the conventional freqs, 866.0125, 866.5125, 867.0125, 867.5125, and 868.0125 (if rebanding is in progress,drop the MHz by 15 MHz, and check those, too) and see if there is any activity, or they may have moved their operations (law enforcement) to the Brazos County TRS, talkgroup 51600.

 

[nosliwmj]

I've been hearing them on the College Station system on TG 32368 at times through the day. I dont usually listen to TAMU too much, but noticed the extra traffic on that talkgroup.

 

[mfn002]

32368 is UPD's backup channel. They tend to use this when they take down the system for maintenance, but this is usually for 15 minutes at the most, and usually happens around 10 or 11 pm in the last week of December. I do find it kind of odd that it has been down for so long.

 

[rattlerbb01]

Can anyone run Unitrunker on it when it comes back up? I don't know what my reception will be like since my scanner set up has changed rooms recently. Unitrunker should give us a hint if anything changes.

 

[mfn002]

I suspect they took the system down so they could install the new HCRRS equipment on the tower; but I'm not entirely sure of that.

 

[partyguy816]

What is UniTrunker?

 

[mfn002]

What is UniTrunker?

Unitrunker is a program that analyzes trunked systems.

As of this morning, the system is still down, and UPD is still using their CS TRS backup channel. Haven't heard any activity on the new 700 system. Not a control channel to be found. Just to make sure, I searched the entire 760-800 band, and found nothing.

 

[rattlerbb01]

Yeah, I passed through going to work today, and no CC. Will be in BCS all day tomorrow as well, we'll just have to keep tuned in. I am curious how many voice channels from TAMU's license they are going to pitch in to the new system. You can have 770 and 850 channels all on the same tower work seamlessly as a single site. The newer radios cover both bands.

 

[partyguy816]

I think trying to use UniTrunker is WAY over my head. I guess I'll just wait for you all to figure this stuff out.

Is there some unitrunker for dummy's around here? LOL

 

[texasemt13]

partyguy,

Look here for a good explanation of UT.

Actually, the 396XT would be able to show you so much about a TRS. I enjoy running UniT on EDACS systems (especially multiple sites of a wide area TRS). It can really show you a lot.

The newer versions have a great screen (that I mostly sit on- called "Call History") that show all the frequencies in the trunked system (in my case it's usually 10-13) and the type of activity going on on each frequency. The CC is a different color, then the alternate CCs (if any), which are different colors from typical voice frequencies. It shows you whether the frequency is handling voice (private or group), or data (nothin more than the word "data"- it can't interpret the data, just recognize that type of call). Below the frequency lineup it shows you the actual history, with a timestamp (which units call, associate or login and to what talkgroups). It can really open your eyes as to how busy a TRS may be (especially if you only focus on a certain agency or type of traffic).

 

[mfn002]

TAMU TRS Back Online

Up and running again as of 6 pm last night. Nothing appears to have changed (no new TGs, etc).

 

[rattlerbb01]

Ahh, okay. Well, I am all set up in my new redone back room, so I will see what kind of reception I get and maybe run unitrunker tonight.

 

[davidbond21]

I think trying to use UniTrunker is WAY over my head....Is there some unitrunker for dummy's around here? LOL

About 2 years ago that was my exact same frustrating position. And while I'm not in any way an expert with it, I can now get tons of info from it on a system and it's users and find relationships between them and channels that I might not have otherwise. And presently I even use UniTrunker in conjunction with a number of receivers and a radio to listen to a ProVoice/ESK EDACS system, which would pretty much be impossible to listen to otherwise without having an actual authorized radio on that system.

If you're serious about scanning and learning about trunking, this is one excellent tool to do that with. And it's free!