washington county request

[joescanner]

Can someone out in western washington county (sites licensed at Tophill, Timber, North Plains, and Buxton) plug these in and see what, if anything, you get?

851.875
852.3375
852.625
853.4125
853.875
866.875
867.3375
867.625
868.4125
868.875

Obviously, both pre- and post- rebanding frequencies, I expect if anything happens it will only be on one set of 5 frequencies.

Thanks!

 

[radiotweester]

I've got activity on these freqs.
851.875 852.3375 852.625 853.4125 853.875
They are all are being sent out with a PL of 107.2 (scanner could be catching the 105.88 tone?).

I initially heard WCSO and Beaverton PD, but after listening for a few hours now, there's all sorts of Wash Co Agencies (including St. V Hosp) traffic and I've heard Clackamas county SO and Fire traffic.

It sounds like these channels are trunked because the channel/agency keeps switching, but there's no steering data on the freqs, only the PL tone...

I'm not really sure what the purpose is serving unless it's a test of the transmitters???

Just a few minutes ago it all went silent with a dead carrier. Still had the PL on the signal. After about a minute passed it went back to the trunked voices.

I'll update if I hear anything new.

..

 

[joescanner]

I've got activity on these freqs.
851.875 852.3375 852.625 853.4125 853.875
/.../
It sounds like these channels are trunked because the channel/agency keeps switching, but there's no steering data on the freqs, only the PL tone...

Interesting. voice, but no control channel. Rumor has it that this is/will be an additional smartzone site for western washington county.

FCC Callsign WQCZ401 Details

please do let the board know if you hear anything different. thanks for checking it out!

 

[radiotweester]

It's really weird because only SOME of the voice transmissions are being passed from the main trunked system on to these freqs.

It also sounds like multiple locations sites are operational as there's a fading effect sometimes and full quieting other times (when the signals on the main TRS sounds full quieting).
I'm guessing I'm hearing Round Top & Buxton as full quieting.

 

[GregFromOregon]

Will they hold on to the 866-868 licenses now that the 851-853 are up and running? I thought thats what the whole rebanding thing was about, to get rid of public safety above 861. Aren't the 851-853freqs just the rebanded 866-868freqs?

And I have the Washington County Simulcast freqs programmed in(which I just noticed changed again) for my WaCo bank. Am I missing transmissions because I don't have other "sites" frequencies programmed in as well? Won't it lock on to one control channel and go from there? It seems like I don't understand some of this as well as I should.

 

[radiotweester]

Will they hold on to the 866-868 licenses now that the 851-853 are up and running? I thought thats what the whole rebanding thing was about, to get rid of public safety above 861. Aren't the 851-853freqs just the rebanded 866-868freqs?

And I have the Washington County Simulcast freqs programmed in(which I just noticed changed again) for my WaCo bank. Am I missing transmissions because I don't have other "sites" frequencies programmed in as well? Won't it lock on to one control channel and go from there? It seems like I don't understand some of this as well as I should.

I can only guess that the rebanding is why the lower freqs are active and not the 866-868 uppers???
I'm not sure which simulcast freqs you're refering to? If it's the ones 851-853 listed previous on this thread, they don't yet seem to have any trunked data associated with them. They are just conventional repeaters that are transmitting random agency traffic. It's almost like it's just randomly sampling...

It seems like 853.875 has had a LOT more activity than any of the other channels today.

To make sure you're getting "everything" I'd make sure you have the main 4 control channels programmed (859.2375, 859.7375, 860.2375, 860.7375)

 

[DickH]

Will they hold on to the 866-868 licenses now that the 851-853 are up and running? I thought thats what the whole rebanding thing was about, to get rid of public safety above 861. Aren't the 851-853freqs just the rebanded 866-868freqs?

And I have the Washington County Simulcast freqs programmed in(which I just noticed changed again) for my WaCo bank. Am I missing transmissions because I don't have other "sites" frequencies programmed in as well? Won't it lock on to one control channel and go from there? It seems like I don't understand some of this as well as I should.

After rebanding the 866-868 freqs. will no longer be used by public safety.
You only need the 4 control channels for the Simulcast sites. (the ones radiotweester just gave you)
Those "other sites" are Intellirepeater sites and are only used by units affiliated with them.
Their function is to "fill-in" weak signal areas.

 

[joescanner]

Those "other sites" are Intellirepeater sites and are only used by units affiliated with them. Their function is to "fill-in" weak signal areas.

Although this is true of most of the systems in the database, notable exceptions are the Washington/Clackamas county system and the King County/Valley Communications/City of Seattle system (in Seattle, obviously).

Washington County's system is a pair (actually a triplet, and apparently soon to be quadruplet) simulcast system, with the bulk of Washington County's traffic on the "Washington County" zone, and the bulk of the Clackamas County traffic on the "Clackamas County" zone. There is also an East Clackamas County simulcast site (which is multiple physical sites) that acts as a "fill-in" site in Eastern Clackamas County, and the new site listed in the first post of this thread, which promises to be the same for Western Washington County.

Contrast that to Portland, which actually does have stand alone intellipeater sites that are used to augment signal in areas where the five simulcast sites cannot reach well.

There is a technological difference between an intellipeater site and a non-intellipeater site, but I am not able to adequately describe what it is fully; suffice to say that it includes different hardware at the physical site.

Listening to the radio technicians that were setting up the upgraded Washington County system chatter (on the radio) , it was clear (with the help of my friend Google) that this is not an intellipeater system *at all*.

A site (or zone, to use Motorola parlance) cannot be both Simulcast *and* an intellipeater.

Additionally, talkgroups can be specifically "steered" to specific sites, regardless of radios being affiliated to those talkgroups.. Portland has done this three times that I am aware of, and it is part of the system configuration.

 

[DickH]

Although this is true of most of the systems in the database, notable exceptions are the Washington/Clackamas county system and the King County/Valley Communications/City of Seattle system (in Seattle, obviously).

Washington County's system is a pair (actually a triplet, and apparently soon to be quadruplet) simulcast system, with the bulk of Washington County's traffic on the "Washington County" zone, and the bulk of the Clackamas County traffic on the "Clackamas County" zone. There is also an East Clackamas County simulcast site (which is multiple physical sites) that acts as a "fill-in" site in Eastern Clackamas County, and the new site listed in the first post of this thread, which promises to be the same for Western Washington County.

Contrast that to Portland, which actually does have stand alone intellipeater sites that are used to augment signal in areas where the five simulcast sites cannot reach well.

There is a technological difference between an intellipeater site and a non-intellipeater site, but I am not able to adequately describe what it is fully; suffice to say that it includes different hardware at the physical site.

Listening to the radio technicians that were setting up the upgraded Washington County system chatter (on the radio) , it was clear (with the help of my friend Google) that this is not an intellipeater system *at all*.

A site (or zone, to use Motorola parlance) cannot be both Simulcast *and* an intellipeater.

Additionally, talkgroups can be specifically "steered" to specific sites, regardless of radios being affiliated to those talkgroups.. Portland has done this three times that I am aware of, and it is part of the system configuration.

So if you are driving around Clackamas and Wash. counties, do you need to have all the sites programmed into your scanner to hear everything?

 

[joescanner]

So if you are driving around Clackamas and Wash. counties, do you need to have all the sites programmed into your scanner to hear everything?

My advice would be that if you don't want to miss any Clackamas County traffic, to have the Clackamas County control channels "active"; if you don't want to miss any Washington County traffic, have the Washington County control channels "active". If you're in a remote part of the areas, plug in those control channels (although the W Washington County stuff isn't "live" yet).

The "roaming" part of the SmartZone technology is still at play - you won't hear any traffic on a talkgroup that doesn't have a system radio affiliated with the zone you're listening to - but the traffic is pretty much segregated (possibly even more so now that Council Crest is gone from the Washington County simulcast zone; although I think Clackamas County probably gets a pretty good dose of RF energy from Bald Peak...)

 

[DickH]

My advice would be that if you don't want to miss any Clackamas County traffic, to have the Clackamas County control channels "active"; if you don't want to miss any Washington County traffic, have the Washington County control channels "active". If you're in a remote part of the areas, plug in those control channels (although the W Washington County stuff isn't "live" yet).

The "roaming" part of the SmartZone technology is still at play - you won't hear any traffic on a talkgroup that doesn't have a system radio affiliated with the zone you're listening to - but the traffic is pretty much segregated (possibly even more so now that Council Crest is gone from the Washington County simulcast zone; although I think Clackamas County probably gets a pretty good dose of RF energy from Bald Peak...)

So I guess that means yes.

 

[joescanner]

Can someone out in western washington county (sites licensed at Tophill, Timber, North Plains, and Buxton) plug these in and see what, if anything, you get?

851.875
852.3375
852.625
853.4125
853.875

As confirmed today by Banshee, DickH and Myself, zone 4 has been added to the Washington County / Clackamas County Trunking System, Various, Oregon - Scanner Frequencies system

 

[wo0x]

west WashCo survey

OK, I'll do a new survey of the systems...
the TT activity stopped awhile ago. I reprogrammed everything since, not sure if i broke it or not... i'm hating RS scanners all over again :twisted:


CRESA @ Nicolai has gone silent, just sqlch burps then some data for a few seconds on 856.9875

855.7375 ** voice (my old standard for wccca)

851.8750 ** CW ID only
852.3375 ** voice
852.6250 ** voice
853.4125
853.8750 ** data, no tt
866.8750 ** data, no tt
867.3375
867.6250
868.4125
868.8750

 

[wo0x]

WCCCA west survey v1.1

851.8750 ** CW ID only
852.3375 ** voice
852.6250 ** voice
853.4125 ** data, no tt (this one just woke up)
853.8750 ** data, no tt
866.8750 ** data, no tt
867.3375
867.6250
868.4125
868.8750

 

[GregFromOregon]

Well, I was listening to the techs until the wife started vacuuming. They were talking about ch6 being ready to go. Also mentioned using ch1, ch2, ch3 as the CC's.

And can someone explain what the system ID (290F) and connect tone (105.88) mean/what they are for and how or if I use this info?

 

[joescanner]

And can someone explain what the system ID (290F) and connect tone (105.88) mean/what they are for and how or if I use this info?

The system ID is just a (not necessarily) unique identifier that Motorola assigns to each system when they are built-out in their lab prior to shipment to the end customer. It requires three pieces of data to program a "real" radio to work on a trunked system, the System ID (which you can't program into a radio with out the next piece); the system key (almost always very closely guarded by the system administrator to prevent rogue radios from being programmed onto the system); and the connect tone (kind of like a PL tone, but not quite).

For a scanner user, they are pretty much useless, unless you are searching a database (like RadioReference) for information related to a system ID. You can determine the System ID using Trunker and associated tools, as well as on most modern scanners. The connect tone is harder to obtain, but not impossible, usually visible if you watch the system status messages on Trunker, etc.

joe

 

[GregFromOregon]

Thanks Joe.

 

[DickH]

Stray Freq. and Talk Group

Has anyone running trunker noticed an odd freq. (859.5125) popping up from time to time? Along with it is a Clark county talk group, 42665. Before someone tells me its not a valid ID, it is 42656 + 9 status bits. That means it is a DES Encrypted talk group.
Anyway, I wonder how it gets onto Trunker. Any ideas?

 

[joescanner]

Although I don't deny it could exist, the only local system that I've ever seen employ encryption is the Portland system.

Even with the degraded signal from Washington County that I get out here in Gresham, I've never seen a "junk" frequency show up during tracking. It would be interesting to see the bits being processed to determine if they are being interpreted properly.

 

[DickH]

Although I don't deny it could exist, the only local system that I've ever seen employ encryption is the Portland system.

Even with the degraded signal from Washington County that I get out here in Gresham, I've never seen a "junk" frequency show up during tracking. It would be interesting to see the bits being processed to determine if they are being interpreted properly.

It could be some sort of computer glitch. Here's a screen shot. That freq. keeps popping up. Also 852.8875 is not in that license, but 853.4125 is, yet it's never shown up. It seems as if they (both Portland & WCCCA) just grab any old freq. they want and use it.
This screen shot was about 10 min. ago.