jamesk65
Member
Hearing traffic from Trenton FD on the Mercer County 500 system talkgroups 520 and 518. I thought they were going to buy space on the NJICS 700 system? Anyone confirm they are going to the county system instead?
Trenton FD
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I haven't been keeping up with it but we understand that County offered services including equipment but the final plan was going to be the state system. They are still being repeated on 460.575 PL 103.5 as they have been for well over 22 years. They sound good too.
I'm retired from The Trentonian for years now and really don't listen too much anymore. There is a thread about this already on the New Jersey forum secondary to their nxdn vendor dropping service because of a disputed bill.
I'm retired from The Trentonian for years now and really don't listen too much anymore. There is a thread about this already on the New Jersey forum secondary to their nxdn vendor dropping service because of a disputed bill.
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Yep that's Trenton Fire Department. What they did on the nxdn system was dispatch calls on F1 and then they would switch to F2, if there was more than one fire call they would switch to F3... I don't know how many talk groups they have on the county system but they had at least five on the nxdn system. If there wasn't any other fires going on then that is F2.
I can confirm TGID 518 as Trenton Fire 1 and TGID 520 as Trenton Fire 2.
Just to add I heard from a source that they will be sticking with Mercer County TRS. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
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So as I was saying above the way they do it is dispatch on F1 and then switch to F2 for Ops. If there's two events going on at the same time then they switch to F3. That happens fairly often but it's not that often they have three events going on at one time or 4 so F4, 5 + 6 might take a while to confirm. F5 was always administrative, F6 might also be so you might hear activity on them even when there's no fire call going on.
It certainly makes sense that they would stay on the county system.
As I was saying now that I'm retired from The Trentonian I don't listen too often.
It certainly makes sense that they would stay on the county system.
As I was saying now that I'm retired from The Trentonian I don't listen too often.
Since the submitted list was a bit of a mess, I've asked the submitter for clarification. Perhaps this is what was meant to be submitted, it makes logical sense for the 6 fire talkgroups (349 is in the system already as Trenton FD TRS Patch, I assume from the MPS system)
349 - Fire Special Ops
518 - Fire 1
520 - Fire 2
522 - Fire 3
524 - Fire 4
526 - Fire 5
528 - Fire 6
349 - Fire Special Ops
518 - Fire 1
520 - Fire 2
522 - Fire 3
524 - Fire 4
526 - Fire 5
528 - Fire 6
For whatever it's worth, the state recently deleted the Hamilton site off of the WQYN253 license. The plan was to combine the West Trenton site with a new site at Troop C HQ, using the 700 MHz frequencies allocated to Mercer County, to form a two-site simulcast.
If the state nixed that plan, that could certain account for Trenton deciding to use the county's system instead.
It's also possible that the state could simply use the existing West Trenton frequencies at Hamilton instead of the county's frequencies, so if anyone lives in the area and wants to take a ride over to Troop C HQ, a search of 769-775 with the antenna off the scanner/receiver would be helpful in figuring out if anything is on the air there.
If the state nixed that plan, that could certain account for Trenton deciding to use the county's system instead.
It's also possible that the state could simply use the existing West Trenton frequencies at Hamilton instead of the county's frequencies, so if anyone lives in the area and wants to take a ride over to Troop C HQ, a search of 769-775 with the antenna off the scanner/receiver would be helpful in figuring out if anything is on the air there.
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Actually talk group 349 was created at the start of the 500 MHz County system to repeat the 800 MHz analog trunked fire department system introduced in Trenton in 2000. When that 800 MHz system rapidly deteriorated about 7-8 years ago and was not repaired, the fire department used their old frequency, pre-2000... 460.575 pl 103.5. The police who were part of the same failed 800 MHz system but were digital could not use their old UHF frequency because it had been allocated to Hopewell police so the police used 460.600 pl103.5 which was the old fire F2 pre-2000.
That went on for I'm guessing about six months while the nxdn system was slapped together. It was a troubled system from the beginning but better than the police and fire only having one frequency each.
Again, never heard anything on 349 listening to the county System since it began, all day, everyday when I was the chief photographer at The Trentonian. It is certainly worth monitoring to see if anything pops up.
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The paper is only a shadow of what it used to be, I started there in the late 80s. I loved that job and if I was independently wealthy and could pay my bills I would have done that job for nothing LOL.
It certainly helped that I was an experience monitor for decades and understood all of the systems and frequencies.
No checks, I took the one-time payment buyout on my pension
It certainly helped that I was an experience monitor for decades and understood all of the systems and frequencies.
No checks, I took the one-time payment buyout on my pension
robbinsj2
Member
According to my notes, back on the old Trenton 800MHz system the fire department had talkgroups for Fire-1 through Fire-6 then also Fire Special Ops, Fire Chiefs, Fire Training, and maybe Fire Maintenance. I'm pretty sure I confirmed Special Ops back in the day (not so much Chiefs, Training, & Maintenance).
So I would rather guess that now Fire Special Ops is not the nominal patch talkgroup. But I left the area before the city switched to the private network and I never monitored it, maybe they consolidated talkgroups during that transition or the recent transition.
I read what you copied/ pasted to be F5=526; Special Ops=528; F6=349. Although I guess my same rationale for Special Ops not being 349 would apply to Fire 6, so <shrug>.
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Yes the 800 MHz trunked 800 system had many more talk groups for the fire department. Man that was a long time ago
. Since talk group 349 on the county system was never used to my knowledge we don't know what that connection was meant to be, maybe some kind of interop.As far as the F1 through F6, we are comparing that to the nxdn system that started around 2015 until the vendor and the city had a dispute over lease payments. That system used the F1 through F6.
Even though we had handheld trunk tracking scanners for the 800 MHz Fire Department, it was so much easier just to use the rebroadcast of the 800 MHz system on 460.575 so you could listen to all of the UHF police frequencies like Hamilton, Ewing, until it went p25 encrypted on their own system, Lawrence, Hopewell, West Windsor and Princeton without having to roll through the 800 MHz trunking fire system.
Just an interesting note, mayor Doug Palmer gave both our paper and the broadsheet down the street Motorola RX only digital radios in 2000 so we could hear the police. My how things have changed.
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Database updated. As more city talkgroups pop up on the county system, I'm sure more submissions will be forthcoming.
Also need to know the status of the MPS NXDN system. Someone just submitted a ticket that it's "off the air", however before I go setting the entire system to deprecated status, I'd like to confirm that it has been shut down. There are a lot of talkgroups on that system that would need to find a new home, and so far we've only gotten reports of fire moving to the county system.
Also need to know the status of the MPS NXDN system. Someone just submitted a ticket that it's "off the air", however before I go setting the entire system to deprecated status, I'd like to confirm that it has been shut down. There are a lot of talkgroups on that system that would need to find a new home, and so far we've only gotten reports of fire moving to the county system.
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My only contribution can be at this time... they will probably stay on the county's system if all accommodations are made.
We broke the system down and listened on DSD on laptops mounted in our cars when the system was introduced.
I would think that there is some kind of ongoing negotiation (litigation?) between the City and the vendor who supplied the city with nxdn. I can only remember it was a major problem when the nxdn system was introduced and multiple complaints of officer safety were broadcast ON THE AIR every day by the officers themselves, every day, day after day, month after month, year after year.
The system was not listed under Trenton it was listed under the vendor. Within a year or so some locals did break the system down and published it in the database even though the talk groups were wrong and or missing. Someone streamed it and of course it was immediately encrypted as ALWAYS promised by top LE. Someone didn't get the memo.
GTR800... I would tread lightly on changes in the database but these new talk groups on the 500 megahertz County system seem pretty solid, not specific but, good enough to publish. You certainly know best.
We broke the system down and listened on DSD on laptops mounted in our cars when the system was introduced.
I would think that there is some kind of ongoing negotiation (litigation?) between the City and the vendor who supplied the city with nxdn. I can only remember it was a major problem when the nxdn system was introduced and multiple complaints of officer safety were broadcast ON THE AIR every day by the officers themselves, every day, day after day, month after month, year after year.
The system was not listed under Trenton it was listed under the vendor. Within a year or so some locals did break the system down and published it in the database even though the talk groups were wrong and or missing. Someone streamed it and of course it was immediately encrypted as ALWAYS promised by top LE. Someone didn't get the memo.
GTR800... I would tread lightly on changes in the database but these new talk groups on the 500 megahertz County system seem pretty solid, not specific but, good enough to publish. You certainly know best.
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What I can say is the one time I listened and confirmed Trenton Fire 1 and Fire 2 on my SDS scanner it appeared each unit had a unique Radio ID which tells me these channels are likely not patched over from some other system or channel.
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I can't confirm that the nxdn system is still operating because there were frequency changes made and since I never used nxdn for fire because it was rebroadcast on the UHF Channel I didn't bother to find out the new frequencies.
I will say this that the rebroadcast on 460.575 sounds so much better now than it did when it was on the nxdn system.
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