Wexford County Gone to MPSCS?

[nvanw27]

I've listened to Wexford County Fire/EMS Dispatch for about a year. It's on 159.105 and I can receive it quite well from my home in Eastern Grand Traverse County.
However, the past few days, I haven't been able to hear anything. No voice, tones, nada. This morning I was in Cadillac and I saw the Fire Truck from station 600 pass through town with lights and sirens, but never heard them get toned.
As of a few weeks ago, stations 100, 300, 500, 700 and 1000 had a vast majority of their department members on 159.105. Could they have issued all new radios, programmed them, and trained their department members on the new system in that short amount of time? I seriously doubt that could've happened, but with all the silence recently, it might be the case. The eDispatch feed for City Fire has not recorded any calls in almost 72 hours, but i'm pretty sure that was monitoring MPSCS, since the tones sometimes had DTMF following them, which was not broadcasted on 159.105
Does anyone in the area of WexCo with an MPSCS-compatible scanner know if they've switched full time over to that system??

Thank you,

NVanW27

 

[nvanw27]

Quick update: EDispatched logged someone saying "Test 12345" after toning out the Edispatches station.

 

[Ronaldski]

In the mpscs database wiki is this link, wexford and digital paging.

https://www.michigan.gov/documents/mpscs/MPSCS_Paging_111717_606390_7.pdf

Let us know if there is anything head on the VHF otherwise we can at least set that to deprecated status in the database.
Was your second comment using 159.105? Any of their other frequencies listed we have being used as yet?

Wexford County, Michigan (MI) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference for Wexford County, Michigan (MI)

www.radioreference.com

 

[nvanw27]

In the mpscs database wiki is this link, wexford and digital paging.

https://www.michigan.gov/documents/mpscs/MPSCS_Paging_111717_606390_7.pdf

Let us know if there is anything head on the VHF otherwise we can at least set that to deprecated status in the database.
Was your second comment using 159.105? Any of their other frequencies listed we have being used as yet?

Wexford County, Michigan (MI) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference for Wexford County, Michigan (MI)

www.radioreference.com

Not sure what the eDispatches system monitors. I didn’t have my scanner on when that was toned, but I’ll keep this thread posted if I hear anything

 

[Golay]

I'd take a look at the fire truck. Do you see any 800 antennas on it?
A 16" or so antenna with a pigtail curl in the middle of it? Or some little "hockey puck" type antennas?
Maybe a 3" vertical antenna (kinda doubt that one, but there are a couple fire trucks near me with that).
Myself that's the first thing I would do. Google "800 MHz mobile antennas" to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

 

[krokus]

I've listened to Wexford County Fire/EMS Dispatch for about a year. It's on 159.105 and I can receive it quite well from my home in Eastern Grand Traverse County.
However, the past few days, I haven't been able to hear anything. No voice, tones, nada. This morning I was in Cadillac and I saw the Fire Truck from station 600 pass through town with lights and sirens, but never heard them get toned.
As of a few weeks ago, stations 100, 300, 500, 700 and 1000 had a vast majority of their department members on 159.105. Could they have issued all new radios, programmed them, and trained their department members on the new system in that short amount of time? I seriously doubt that could've happened, but with all the silence recently, it might be the case. The eDispatch feed for City Fire has not recorded any calls in almost 72 hours, but i'm pretty sure that was monitoring MPSCS, since the tones sometimes had DTMF following them, which was not broadcasted on 159.105
Does anyone in the area of WexCo with an MPSCS-compatible scanner know if they've switched full time over to that system??

Thank you,

NVanW27

When Washtenaw County made the transition, each agency sent at least one person to become an instructor. They were responsible for training their department, before the cutover date. The training was started months ahead of time.

 

[nvanw27]

Alright, update. Not sure if this is good or bad, but i've been hearing "Testing 123" every few minutes for the past 15 minutes or so. I also heard the PTT tone similar to the one the Dispatch radios made when they were keyed up. My thoughts is that they're doing something similar to Kalkaska or Benzie counties - all fire ops are on the MPSCS, but dispatch still talks and/or tones through VHF. I'll keep this thread posted if I hear anything different. Wish me luck

 

[nvanw27]

Well, I contacted a family member who is on a fire department in Wexford County that used 159.105 and he said that his department is now using state radios, and they don't like them as much.
Thanks for the help, and i'll let you guys know if anything happens on 159.105.

 

[jack3726]

nvanw27, what is the status on Wexford and Benzie Counties for PD and FD now.

 

[nvanw27]

nvanw27, what is the status on Wexford and Benzie Counties for PD and FD now.

Benzie County is fully on the MPSCS, the old fire dispatch channel is used for voice announcements after tone ONLY.

Wexford County is fully on the MPSCS, no analog channels are used.

 

[emt_micah]

It was just "explained" to me that Wexford County assigned different TGs to each dept for tone out. This doesn't make sense as they only have so many available channels in the towers.. Can anyone shed some light on this? I also understand they re did ALL the fire department apparatus. numbering.

 

[bprevost]

It was just "explained" to me that Wexford County assigned different TGs to each dept for tone out. This doesn't make sense as they only have so many available channels in the towers.. Can anyone shed some light on this? I also understand they re did ALL the fire department apparatus. numbering.

By having each fire department/station with a different TGID this allows paging to that specific group. Doesn't matter the number of frequencies on the towers. You can have two (control channel and regular channel) or 30 plus channels the signal goes out on the control channel and the radios or pagers then switch to the proper channel to get the message.
By doing this you can dispatch one fire station to a trash fire and not dispatch the whole agency.
As for renumbering vehicles they may have been trying to follow a numbering system that is suggested by national/regional fire agencies. When switching over to a new radio system that might be the time to do this.
As for TGID number there is a limit I believe on the number of different TGID number available on the overall system and is probably 650000+. Most recent TGID I've seen is in the 28000 series to they have plenty of room to expend and a software solution could be used to expand that.

But I have a question for the group...can portables/mobiles transmit on these fire dispatch TG's? Example would be a fire commander hears the call and wants to tell his responding crews something special about the site they are going to?

 

[nvanw27]

I don't exactly see the point of re-numbering and completely removing the VHF system... the re-numbering is what really bugs me for some reason, don't exactly know why switching the radio system requires the county to re-number their entire fire and EMS fleet.
As for assigning talkgroups, Benzie County assigns talkgroups/ops channels for each multi-department tone, usually right before dispatch clears from tone they'll say "you have (ops channel name), usually to prevent EMS units and a possible fire from tying up the channel.

 

[krokus]

It was just "explained" to me that Wexford County assigned different TGs to each dept for tone out. This doesn't make sense as they only have so many available channels in the towers.. Can anyone shed some light on this? I also understand they re did ALL the fire department apparatus. numbering.

The TGs used paging are called PageGroups, or PG. They are processed slightly differently than standard TG, as they are mapped to the desired towers. When paging, multiple TG & PG can be sent at one same time, using one voice channel, which is called multicast. (Using Washtenaw as an example: If a box alarm is being dispatched, the PGs can be multicast for all the assigned departments/stations. So Pittsfield's all call, Ann Arbor Twp all call, Superior Twp all call, Ypsi City, Ypsi Twp station 3, & Ypsi Twp station 4, along with 81 Fire 1 & 81 Fire 2, could all be alerted with one transmission, on one repeater.)

Does that help?

 

[krokus]

But I have a question for the group...can portables/mobiles transmit on these fire dispatch TG's? Example would be a fire commander hears the call and wants to tell his responding crews something special about the site they are going to?

The PG can be added to the user radios, but are limited to radios the chief decides. (My assigned portable has my agency's PGs, which I have used for testing, as we got the pagers ready for use.)

 

[nvanw27]

That makes more sense. I can see how that would be helpful as opposed to a regular VHF system.

 

[krokus]

That makes more sense. I can see how that would be helpful as opposed to a regular VHF system.

The biggest problem we have had, has been an audio echo effect, between the two-way radios, and the delayed audio from the pagers. (Pagers buffer the audio, for the duration of the audio alert.)

 

[CaptainWillard]

I'm pretty new to this, but I think I have a pretty good handle on my UNIDEN BCD325P2.

Listening out of Frankfort.

19:30. Getting a Talk ID of 5006. (853.9500 dat). Looking up 5006 on MPSCS shows an encrypted Grand Traverse County Drug enforcement ID.

The traffic certainly points to some kind of surveillance going on east of Cadillac. A woman's voice using code names. She was in contact with someone else as they were driving around seemly tracking someone.

Could I possibly be picking up encrypted traffic?

Anyone else getting this? This seemed like a good place to post this.

 

[n3obl]

I'm pretty new to this, but I think I have a pretty good handle on my UNIDEN BCD325P2.

Listening out of Frankfort.

19:30. Getting a Talk ID of 5006. (853.9500 dat). Looking up 5006 on MPSCS shows an encrypted Grand Traverse County Drug enforcement ID.

The traffic certainly points to some kind of surveillance going on east of Cadillac. A woman's voice using code names. She was in contact with someone else as they were driving around seemly tracking someone.

Could I possibly be picking up encrypted traffic?

Anyone else getting this? This seemed like a good place to post this.

No you are not picking up encrypted traffic. Scanners don't have the hardware to decode encryption anyway. You could have a user that happened to have their encryption off on a particular radio hence only hearing one side of conversation. But now you advertised the talkgroup so I'm sure someone will pick up on that as people who run these systems monitor the forums.

 

[CaptainWillard]

True, I was only hearing one side of the conversation. I won't divulge TG again in this situation. I was surprised I was able to listen for over 3 hours; would have thought a fellow law enforcement agency would have picked up the traffic and alerted the officer that they were in the open.