Two STARS Sites Moved to Wiki

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gesucks

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What is the purpose of that? If people want to program the system they will have no idea these sites exist if they are not listed in the DB entry?
Are these sites that have been confirmed on the air?
If the only reason they were pulled from the DB that they do not support location based scanning?
 
dtscho

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We've been told by the lead database admin (Tom Swisher) that sites need to have a county assigned to them. If the county is not known, it's supposed to go in the Wiki.

Dave
 
LeSueurC

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dtscho said:
We've been told by the lead database admin (Tom Swisher) that sites need to have a county assigned to them. If the county is not known, it's supposed to go in the Wiki.

Dave
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Better enforce it site wide. You might as well take out the 2 mobile sites for STARS too, ya know since they don’t have a location...
 
freqhopping

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Seems like a stupid policy to me. If they're not in the DB then they won't be included when someone imports it to their scanner right? Which means they likely will not know it exists and can't listen for it to figure out where it is.

Had I not read this post I wouldn't know there are known sites somewhere that I could program in my scanner, but they're effectively being hidden.

Just pick one of the counties where it's possible to receive it. I'm not digging through a wiki to figure out what sites need a true location discovered.
 
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Policies that hinder can/should be changed.
Having a tower site with unknown location on the wiki makes sense, but having it on the DB also makes sense also.
So why not on both.

Agreeing with comments above, how can we know to try to track a site down if we do not know it exists.

We know that site 1-32 is some where south west of Richmond, probably in the vicinity of Amelia County.
How do we know that? Because some folks discovered the CC and investigated and determined where the signal is strong.

Many of us did not even know that the wiki entry exists, or do not frequently look at it.
Thus, useful info is basically "hidden" from us.
i suspect that is not what authors of the Handbook were seeking to accomplish.

Again, why not on both spots?
 
dtscho

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I'm not empowered to change the policy - that's something you'd have to take up with Lindsay or Tom.

It sounds like some of you have a fairly good idea where site 1-32 is. Maybe someone who's willing could take a "field trip" to nail down the exact location. Any VSP or VDOT offices in the area that might host a STARS site or hosted analog legacy systems? That would be a good place to start.

Dave
 
W4UVV

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dtscho said:
I'm not empowered to change the policy - that's something you'd have to take up with Lindsay or Tom.

It sounds like some of you have a fairly good idea where site 1-32 is. Maybe someone who's willing could take a "field trip" to nail down the exact location. Any VSP or VDOT offices in the area that might host a STARS site or hosted analog legacy systems? That would be a good place to start.

Dave
Click to expand...
---------------

ALL:

Obviously, few if any, VA RR members have read or remembered my past posts for each new active STARS site during the past 15 years now to do what is a revelation. With the possibly of 1 or 2 monitors in Div 2, Div 3, Div 4, or Div 6 few private visits from a few monitors (Joe Avery in Roanoke, for one) ever made any such day trip and followup trips. If they did, few posted their results on RR from PRO96COMM. Often I requested that monitors within a day's driving distance to and return from a new STARS site(s) area go mobile with a scanner, laptop with PRO96COMM software installed and let PRO96COMM log the frequencies, including "neighboring frequencies", TGs, and return home with the appropriate PRO96COMM STARS site text file which can be posted on the RR VA Forum.

If PRO96COMM's analysis is not used for the target STARS site's entries, it then is on the site monitor's unproven speculation as to what he guessed as a correct CC or voice frequency, etc. The data provided should only consider his best guesses as speculation and not confirmed like a PRO96COMM analysis.

The least poorly documented STARS sites continue to be in Div 4 and a few in Div 6 beginning with the I77 Rest area STARS site just inside the VA/NC border and moving north to Big Walker Mtn. in Bland Co., then west and south west to the Norton and southwest to the last Wise Co. STARS site near the VA/KY line.

It also is possible that one or more older STARS sites infrequently has had a new voice frequency added or deleted by the techs. It definitely has happened on the Waverly STARS site because I ran PRO96COMM which logged and identified it as another voice frequency. If time permits, at least a yearly on site visit using a PRO96COMM scan will confirm a frequency change one way or the other.

Let's have a monitor mobile with a scanner installed within driving distance to/from a poorly documented target STARS site and have his scanner site lock on the CC and using a laptop with PRO96COMM software installed to do a site analysis. Then save the PRO96COMM analysis to the text file it created and post it later on RR VA forum.

This is old news now dredged up as new! As I mentioned, I posted numerous requests in during the past 15 years frequently on this subject. I finally gave up as it resulted being a waste of time. Few, if any monitors were interested then in 2005 and have continued through the years to those uninterested now in 2020.

Maybe that non-interest now will change. I hope it does. Many of the RR STARS frequencies now attributed to Div 4 & Div 6 I would not trust as being 100% correct.

Remember, if you cannot run a PRO96COMM software analysis on you laptop, it is not considered a 100% site confirmation. It only is a "best guess" speculation.

John
W4UVV
 
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gesucks

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W4UVV said:
---------------

Remember, if you cannot run a PRO96COMM software analysis on you laptop, it is not considered a 100% site confirmation. It only is a "best guess" speculation.

John
W4UVV
Click to expand...
Hate to break your bubble but there are plenty of software programs out there that decode the P25 Control Channel messages beside PRO96COM and do it just as well if not better. Maybe you have not gotten much interest since you only want the data from the software you like best. Some people even get the data from sources besides OTA decoding.
 
dtscho

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gesucks said:
Hate to break your bubble but there are plenty of software programs out there that decode the P25 Control Channel messages beside PRO96COM and do it just as well if not better. Maybe you have not gotten much interest since you only want the data from the software you like best. Some people even get the data from sources besides OTA decoding.
Click to expand...
Yes, I use DSD+ Fast Lane all the time and highly recommend.

Dave
 
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