TxWARN system in Austin

[jmayson]

I have a GRE PSR-800 which programs itself off RadioReference.com. Under Travis County it gives the option to load the TxWARN system. So I did and it's great. I hear all sorts of stuff on it. The only problem is I don't know what I'm listening to. I don't see any sites on RR anywhere near me. My radio says I'm hearing the Lindale site which is up by Tyler.

I haven't figured out how to display the frequency I'm hearing. In the meantime does anyone know what I'm hearing?

 

[texasemt13]

This could be a problem...

I'm a little miffed as to why you'd be hearing anything from TxWARN in Travis County. As far as I know, and as you stated, there are no TxWARN sites in Travis County. That being said, the RR database will affiliate trunking systems (specifically P25 TRSs) with Travis County if they are using a state license or are using the state master switch (P25 gateway if you will). One instance of the aforementioned circumstances would be the Middle Rio Grande TRS. I'm not sure if either pertains to TxWARN or not. Someone in the know might chime in on that.

I hope it's not doing what I suspect, which is monitoring the TxWARN Lindale frequencies, and decoding other information. Some of the frequencies for that site are shared by the GATRRS, the first I noticed was 851.4125 from GATRRS Simulcast 1. 853.2500 is shared on TxWARN Lindale and GATRRS Creedmoor. If this is the case, there is a deeper problem.

 

[loumaag]

Let me say there are some problems with not understanding that you can put any system in the PSR-800 and if a local system is using a CCh frequency that happens to belong to the that system it will be received mis-identifying everything you hear. This has always been the situation and can happen if you hand program something. There was a great problem on the Louisiana/Texas border with Orange Co. and one of the systems just on the other side of the border. Although they did not share the same CCh frequencies, they did share some frequencies and if you had all of the frequencies loaded for both systems, things could get confusing as you drove across the border. The solution was pointed out to the manufacturers a long time ago, use the actual system ID for Motorola and P25 systems as another data point and only allow those systems identifying to actually come through when loaded. There was some interest in that but it is obviously not included in any of the brand new (PSR-800 or AFAIK the HP-1) scanners. For systems that aren't identified by sysID, then allow any; that is the current situation on all scanners now.

As for TxWARN in Travis county. At the beginning of the month there were at least two systems mentioned in the database in Travis Co., that were identified as something else but in fact when put in the DB were advertising the TxWARN SysID and WACN on the CCh. They are both apparently off the air and are hidden in the DB now. It was obvious testing and probably should never have been placed in the DB to begin with. However, that does not explain why Travis Co. is included in the list of counties for this system. As pointed out, there are no sites in Travis Co. in the TxWARN P25 system. Maybe someone took the TxDOT system (depreciated) from Cedar Park and since it was advertising as a TxWARN system they included it. It is not worth the effort to figure out what but I will see what I can do to remove Travis Co. from the lineup.