Trip to the Outer Banks logs

[murrayustud]

Just got back from a trip to Duck, NC. I monitored Viper until just past Plymouth, NC when it vanished. Most everything from Plymouth on east was on UHF with some VHF. I scanned all 800mhz viper ranges while on the Outer Banks and got nothing..this with the Pro 2096 and an inline amp and an elevated feed 800mhz maxrad antenna. The only active 800mhz I could find was business commercial except for lots of Virginia stuff coming in with the ducting that was going on...I could get VA Beach's 800 system & Chesapeake's as well. From Raleigh to Plymouth the most interesting thing monitored was EastCare Medflight out of Greenvile, NC on 463.175. I did manage to finally monitor Rocky Mount's 800mhz city system which was audible all the way east of Tarboro. Washington County and Tyrrell county were all still on 460mhz range for law enforcement and VHF high for Fire/Rescue with the usual chatter. We drove up to Carova Beach in 4x4 territory and monitored Currituck county on the listed channels in the Database with most activity being on Beach Lifeguard 154.355. There were lots of sheriff's on ATV's on the beach (someting I hadn't seen on my trip 2 years back) as well as the Lifeguards.The busiest frequency was 156.800 channel 16 Coast Guard with Navy Warship #99 sending manuever messages and Coast Guard group Baltimore and Hatteras taking reports of mariners in distress. Dare county rescue was active on 155.280 the old "State Rescue" channel and Fire 155.925 North. Considering it was June the beaches were pretty dead and other than Coast Guard and a few minor rescue calls there wasn't a lot of radio traffic. What I did find interesting was the lack of Amateur radio activity...I had all the local repeaters plugged in and managed to only make 1 coontact on the Columbia 146.835 machine...Oh, almost forgot...NCSHP Williamston was quite active on Viper all the way through Washington County, talkgroup 1424 I think...then all the Dare & Currituck traffic was on lowband 42.92 dispatch..headed back down there for a longer stay June 17th.....

 

[ScanDaBands]

Excellent and interesting info - thanks.

Question , was VA Beach using the Motorola Type II Smartnet or were they working the Project 25 Standard they've been testing ?

Last time I was in that area NORFOLK was constantly going with shootings , I never thought I'd say this as a scanner listener but I actually locked that system out a few times just so I could hear something else.(Chesapeake,Va Beach,James County,etc.) Can you imagine that.

That's also a good area for Mil Air (at night mostly)

 

[murrayustud]

Excellent and interesting info - thanks.

Question , was VA Beach using the Motorola Type II Smartnet or were they working the Project 25 Standard they've been testing ?

They were on the Moto Smartnet system...as well, I noticed that VA State Police were still on VHF frequencies, there wasn't any activity on the "Stars" VHF Trunked system that I could hear..

 

[ScanDaBands]

They were on the Moto Smartnet system...as well, I noticed that VA State Police were still on VHF frequencies, there wasn't any activity on the "Stars" VHF Trunked system that I could hear..

That system is going very slow to be implmemented (STARS) , very good info in the Virginia Discussion group on that.

0159.1650 D5 CHESAPEAKE 146.2 FM
0159.1350 D5 CHESAPEAKE 127.3 FM

for VHF VASP in that area.

Not that you'll get them over in the Carolinas but you might.....YORK and JAMES counties - APCO25 systems. Some encryption though.

 

[murrayustud]

Oh, I received 159.135 all the way down to Oregon Inlet--traffic stops in the Chesapeake area, dmv checks, etc. Funny though Thursday afternoon I was getting Kansas & Missouri HP on 42 mhz and 800mhz was strong for miles then Friday the opening was gone and even some local stuff was hard to hear....it was cool listening to the skip on lowband, we heard tornado watches, traffic stops, etc all Missouri, my fiance heard them & she thought tornado watch..humm.not even a cloud in the sky...

 

[CCHLLM]

The Hatteras 145.15/PL131.8 repeater is the most used, it seems, and the ham side will really crank up when there's weather involved. Several of the repeaters have IRLP and/or Echolink capability. There are linked receivers in Rodanthe and Avon for the 515 repeater, IIRC, and the Ocracoke UHF repeater is linked to the 515 also. There'll be a good deal of activity on the UHF repeaters which are linked to one of the Columbia UHF repeaters. obra.aginet.com will get you started on the ham stuff in NENC and OBX by following the additional links provided. I've been witness to the many times that the ham system on Hatteras Island has been used to dispatch emergency services when the county's system(s) went down.

Everyone needs to get over expectations that VIPER will replace anything down that way in the near future due to money availability and build-out time. Indications are that law enforcement could be going 800 in the future when the state gets their 800 system on line, but fire/rescue will remain on VHF, with maybe some mutual aid channels linked to VIPER. At present, it looks like there'll be 4 or 5 800 trunking sites in Dare that can be called VIPER with maybe three additional that won't be. Don't have any current info regarding the current plans, but we need to remember that not all sites have to be VIPER. They just have to be linked by some means to VIPER sites to accomplish VIPER operation.

 

[jeffmulter]

The plan offered to the Dare County Commissioners last fall called for the state to build three Viper sites within the county ... no matter whether the county wanted to join Viper, or not.

I believe the locations were Bodie Island (5 frequencies), Stumpy Point (5 frequencies) and Kitty Hawk (10 frequencies).

Three more sites would be needed to provide "handheld" coverage to the county agencies ... at East Lake, Rodanthe / Waves, and Hatteras.

 

[CCHLLM]

And the now outdated (2002) projected handheld 800 mHz radio coverage report I have lists sites at East Lake, Stumpy Point, Kitty Hawk, Bodie Island, Rodanthe, Avon, and Hatteras. Of those, three are linked (VIPER) at Kitty Hawk, Bodie, and Stumpy Point. It shows the Hatteras Island sites at Hatteras, Avon, and Rodanthe can operate as normal in the VIPER system as long as the Bodie site is up. Worst case scenario, the Hatteras Island end of the system would be capable of operating as a three site trunking system. Just because the Bodie VIPER connection is out doesn't mean that the entire trunking system would not function in trunked mode, it just means that VIPER coverage (talkgroups) would be reduced in the Oregon Inlet area. The Dare portion (talkgroups) of the system would still be up so long as the sites themselves are working. That contingency is in there, I believe, because of past experiences with things being cut-off at the Oregon Inlet due to weather, bridge conditions, power failures, etc. Remember the bridge section being knocked down by the barge during a storm? I do, I was in Buxton at the time.

Those who have been to Hatteras Island are probably aware that all this contingency business may be moot in the face of a cat 4 hurricane. Even a direct hit by a cat 3 in the right places will make Hatteras Island look like the Bay St Louis, MS area after Katrina. If you haven't been there, you probably don't know how fragile the island is, and how tenuous its existence is in just a 60 mph Nor'easter.

The only thing that will speed up the process of new radio systems at that portion of OBX is for Dare and the adjacent counties to sign on soon, which will bring in the needed resources for more and faster infrastructure build-out. At present, it looks like the state money flow is west to east.

 

[fuzzymoto]

After last years trip to Corolla with the scanner I'm debating whether or not to take it this year. I heard a lot of VA Beach/Chesepeake activity, a ton of FRS/GMRS and almost no beach patrol activity, milair or marine activity. Perhaps it was just quiet when I was there or the stock antenna just isn't up to the task. You post makes me interested in taking it again this year.

 

[tglendye]

We're leaving on the 16th, and can't wait. I tweaked my file a couple of weeks ago for my Pro97. It'll go along for the ride:lol:

 

[jeffmulter]

http://www.radioreference.com/data/files/ct/1914/DareCoVIPER.pdf

>> Worst case scenario, the Hatteras Island end of the system would be capable of operating as a three site trunking system. Just because the Bodie VIPER connection is out doesn't mean that the entire trunking system would not function in trunked mode, it just means that VIPER coverage (talkgroups) would be reduced in the Oregon Inlet area.

Would that mean, though, that public safety units and NCHP cars would not be able to contact county EOC and NCHP Williamston (respectively) via Viper ? And that agencies on the island might have to revert to the current communications methods to re-establish contact with their dispatchers ?



My understanding is the county is connected to Hatteras Island agencies via both microwave and fiber optics, but I see nothing in the report to indicate how the state will provide redundancy on this let of the network.

The report does mention that there won't initially be any redundancy between the sites and the control in Farmville.

 

[CCHLLM]

That's the point, no apparent redundancy, and I don't know where the logic is in what I'm seeing, because something's missing in the info I have access to.

First of all, everybody needs to realize that VIPER is NOT the state 800 mHz trunking system. VIPER is the interoperability and control linking system that connects the 800 trunking systems together. Certain talkgroups are for mutual aid, some are for local use, some are interdistrict use, some are inter-troop zone, etc., etc. What the particular talkgroup's protocols may be determines whether it gets VIPER routing, or local trunk routing, or ACU1000 routing, or single site-to-single site routing, etc.

Oversimplification: ALL talkgroups are handled on the local system routing (unless otherwise programmed). The VIPER talkgroups get an additional routing connection which applies them to the VIPER linking protocols for routing to other points in the VIPER system. At the destination system, they are routed into the local routing system(s). The SHP comm centers and some local systems will have the capability to connect (patch) about any talkgroup/channel/whatever into VIPER at will.

If VIPER goes down in a particular system, the local trunking routing should remain unaffected and no one locally would see any change UNLESS the local routing IS the VIPER routing. That's where I don't know how the Dare system routing will be accomplished, and I imagine it will depend on whether or not Dare signs on, and to what degree the merging of system infrastructures takes. If the state user (SHP, etc) on a VIPER talkgroup can reach a VIPER site, then the problem will be moot, but if the state microwave link to a VIPER site goes down, then the talkgroup will only function on a local trunking basis. Guess I should say that I don't know if local routing and VIPER routing will be combined and possess simple elective redundancy, or if the local site routing and VIPER will be accomplished by parallel redundant (completely separate) site routing.

Is that confusing enough?

 

[BryanTheRed]

From Raleigh to Plymouth the most interesting thing monitored was EastCare Medflight out of Greenvile, NC on 463.175.

Welcome to my world, we will soon be on VIPER as well, just got the radio installed in the communications center and on the consoles, aircraft are next!

 

[murrayustud]

Welcome to my world, we will soon be on VIPER as well, just got the radio installed in the communications center and on the consoles, aircraft are next!

Where is this?????

Charles

 

[BryanTheRed]

EastCare