Travis County 700mhz Site (1A7/BEE00)

[Russell]

Here's something interesting. I'm picking up a P25 site in northern Travis County on 769.20625 reporting System 1A7, WACN BEE00. This is the same SID/WACN used by Harris County Regional P25 and Parker County P25 in North Texas. Looks like borgnet has reached the Capitol. The signal is very strong (99%) and reports as Zone 2, Site 1, one voice channel on 769.66875 (alternate control). No voice traffic, yet.

 

[Russell]

Add a voice channel 773.04375, I didn't catch the CWID.

 

[fwradio]

Interesting... Some of the discussion in the Parker County thread seems to indicate that they may have finally connected to the Harris County switch. I will plug in Unitrunker and see if anything has changed with Parker County, such as Zone assignments.

 

[redhelmet13]

Interesting... Some of the discussion in the Parker County thread seems to indicate that they may have finally connected to the Harris County switch. I will plug in Unitrunker and see if anything has changed with Parker County, such as Zone assignments.

I have been running Pro96Com in the past week or so during the evenings... No indication of anything new on Parker Co so far.

 

[Russell]

Gotta laugh, the CWID is still "CHANGME". There are two additonal voice channels with 4 TGs and 6 radios logged. The TGs don't seem to line up with the Harris County P25 system or I don't see the logic in 3 of the TGs recorded being used in Travis County. (For now) I'm also going to assume this is a Simulcast Layer on multiple towers rather than an individual tower site as this is the way the Austin/Travis County P25 system is set up. I should be able to confirm this by going mobile and observing the signal strength between towers. It doesn't really make sense to set this up on the North Travis tower only. I don't hear any other control channels and no neighbors are being reported.

Russell

 

[bpckty1]

Correct me if I'm incorrect, but, didn't Harris County get permission to use State of Texas freqs when it started the P-25 700 MHz system? If so, could the 1A7 be the State's system ID instead of Harris County's, and the systems going on-line with that ID are also using State of Texas freqs? One thing that makes me think this is the large number of frequencies recently being licensed to Harris County.

 

[Russell]

That would make sense to me as the State's license appears to be a "band" license with no specific frequencies licensed. I would think coordinating frequency usage under band licenses would be problematic. I understand there is a coordinator but I'm not familiar with procedures and tracking.

 

[ericcarlson]

What talkgroup IDs are you seeing?

 

[Russell]

1424 is the only one the comes close to making sense; there are a lot of dead keys and less than 10% are encrypted. The others are 2030, 1238, and a couple more I can't remember right now as I'm not in front of that PC. 1238 was the one that made the least sense to show up in Austin from Bay City.

 

[ericcarlson]

I'm hearing that this site is being put it in for TXDOT for some reason, so the 1424 does make sense in that case.

 

[ericcarlson]

I'm also hearing that Zone 2 is not actually networked with Zone 1 for the time being, so theoretically it could have it's own set of talkgroups for now. Also, the following was on the Harris County Commissioners Court agenda for August 25:

Request for approval of an agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation for use of the county’s 800 MHz public radio system.

-Eric

 

[Russell]

Yes, it's currently in Site Trunking mode only and reports no neighbors. The TGs have dwindled to one, 1424, and it is encrypted full time now. Similar to Harris County. The number of radios has also dropped to one. I'm thinking they're waiting on a circuit. I'm not convinced that it's in Cedar Park, I still think it's on the NW Austin tower (off MOPAC) and simulcast on other Travis County/Austin towers. Cedar Park is in Williamson County.