WHICH MOSWIN TOWERS TO INCLUDE?

[rbritton1201]

I have several MOSWIN towers that my SDS200 receives, as follows:

1. St. Clair 700 Tower (5 bars of Signal Strength)
2. Weldon Spring Tower (3 bars of Signal Strength)
3. Imperial Tower (3 bars of Signal Strength)
4. Shirley Tower (2.5 bars of Signal Strength)

I seem to be receiving traffic from the areas I want to monitor, mostly via the St. Clair Tower and the Weldon Spring Tower. I also have the other Towers programmed into the scanner, the Shirley Tower and the Imperial Tower, and occasionally, the scanner seems to stop on the Shirley tower or the Imperial Tower when traffic is received. I only programmed the Imperial and Shirley Towers into the scanner thinking that if MSHP cars that are in closer proximity to those Towers, I might receive them better via those Towers, if the Weldon Spring and St. Clair Towers don't pickup their transmissions.

What I'm trying to understand is whether I would pick up those cars that are nearer to the Imperial or Shirley Towers any better than if I only had the St. Clair 700 Tower and the Weldon Spring Tower programmed into the scanner, versus having all four Towers programmed into the scanner. I don't know if these Towers are all linked anyway, and I would pick up cars that are closer to the Imperial Tower and the Shirley Tower any better than through the St. Clair 700 Tower and the Weldon Spring Tower. When the scanner stops on the Imperial Tower or the Shirley Tower, it seems as though the cars are physically in areas where the St. Clair Tower or the Weldon Spring Tower would have picked them up anyway.

I'm trying to decide if I should delete the Shirley Tower and Imperial Tower from the programming, so that the scanner will scan more efficiently, and still pick up the same traffic. I'm wondering if all four of these towers are somehow linked anyway, and to have the Imperial Tower and Shirley Tower in programming is simply redundant, and not necessary.

 

[AC0RV]

If I could I would use all of the Towers. I would also use the GPS unit that Uniden sells. The GPS will help in selecting the towers closet to the location of the User's Scanners.

But if you do not could do so. I would select the tower are near me. Also I would use the Control Frequencies as well.

 

[stlouisx50]

I have several MOSWIN towers that my SDS200 receives, as follows:

1. St. Clair 700 Tower (5 bars of Signal Strength)
2. Weldon Spring Tower (3 bars of Signal Strength)
3. Imperial Tower (3 bars of Signal Strength)
4. Shirley Tower (2.5 bars of Signal Strength)

I seem to be receiving traffic from the areas I want to monitor, mostly via the St. Clair Tower and the Weldon Spring Tower. I also have the other Towers programmed into the scanner, the Shirley Tower and the Imperial Tower, and occasionally, the scanner seems to stop on the Shirley tower or the Imperial Tower when traffic is received. I only programmed the Imperial and Shirley Towers into the scanner thinking that if MSHP cars that are in closer proximity to those Towers, I might receive them better via those Towers, if the Weldon Spring and St. Clair Towers don't pickup their transmissions.

What I'm trying to understand is whether I would pick up those cars that are nearer to the Imperial or Shirley Towers any better than if I only had the St. Clair 700 Tower and the Weldon Spring Tower programmed into the scanner, versus having all four Towers programmed into the scanner. I don't know if these Towers are all linked anyway, and I would pick up cars that are closer to the Imperial Tower and the Shirley Tower any better than through the St. Clair 700 Tower and the Weldon Spring Tower. When the scanner stops on the Imperial Tower or the Shirley Tower, it seems as though the cars are physically in areas where the St. Clair Tower or the Weldon Spring Tower would have picked them up anyway.

I'm trying to decide if I should delete the Shirley Tower and Imperial Tower from the programming, so that the scanner will scan more efficiently, and still pick up the same traffic. I'm wondering if all four of these towers are somehow linked anyway, and to have the Imperial Tower and Shirley Tower in programming is simply redundant, and not necessary.

I made a long post about this. yes, the cars activate the towers that their radios tell are on the air. kinda like cell phones, but they link to what they can rx/tx and that site gets activated. Towers are not really linked like a repeater system but do repeat from a Dispatch /car radio.
So yes, if you want to hear as much state as possible, program what sites you can hear.

This also means you will hear state more because if an area has no trooper on, you won't hear state, but since you will have many tower's, you will hear them.

 

[sonm10]

If I could I would use all of the Towers. I would also use the GPS unit that Uniden sells. The GPS will help in selecting the towers closet to the location of the User's Scanners.

Only when mobile.

When using as a base, one or two towers should be used. Generally, all towers within a given county will transmit the same traffic, with some unique exceptions. If you live near an adjacent county, you can program a tower from that county, given that its within listening range. So I would use (1) tower from home county and (1) tower from any adjacent counties.
It takes 1.5 seconds per site to decode the control channel before moving on. The more you scan, the more you miss. Also limit the number of conventional objects being scanned as well. It takes time to scan those as well.

 

[llzel]

To jump in, I have a G4 700/800 only. So I have the St Louis City North site programmed, but not Weldon Springs. So if there are no troopers on the city north tower yet some are broadcasting on the weldon springs tower, I won't hear them?

 

[kruser]

To jump in, I have a G4 700/800 only. So I have the St Louis City North site programmed, but not Weldon Springs. So if there are no troopers on the city north tower yet some are broadcasting on the weldon springs tower, I won't hear them?

That is correct.
I monitor both sites and a lot of the Troop C traffic heard on the Weldon Spring and/or Imperial VHF Moswin sites is not heard on the STL City 800 MHz Site 201. Same thing goes for STL City users on the VHF Moswin sites. In most cases, the city radios or talkgroups are denied access to the VHF Moswin sites if they happen to try and affiliate with one of the VHF sites such as Imperial, Weldon Spring or New Hope.

 

[rbritton1201]

Back in the day, I've handled law enforcement radio traffic where on a weekend there were 100 cars on one radio. It gets way out of hand. You can barely get cars assigned to calls at that rate, and there's little time, if any, for running license plates, subjects, etc...

Nowadays, they have CAD/DATA where I assume they can do that stuff from their patrol cars. But, really, there's just a limit to what is humanly possible when you're the one handling the radio traffic, and trying to keep officers safe and accounted for, etc...So, I assume there's a maximum number of radios subscribed to the towers. It's either that, or have multiple dispatchers handling the overload.

What I wonder is how, for example, St. Louis City cars are denied access to Weldon Spring's tower, and they have an incident that takes them outside their assigned tower, how they might communicate. I suppose that's what Interoperability is for...

That is correct.

I monitor both sites and a lot of the Troop C traffic heard on the Weldon Spring and/or Imperial VHF Moswin sites is not heard on the STL City 800 MHz Site 201. Same thing goes for STL City users on the VHF Moswin sites. In most cases, the city radios or talkgroups are denied access to the VHF Moswin sites if they happen to try and affiliate with one of the VHF sites such as Imperial, Weldon Spring or New Hope.

 

[rbritton1201]

My setup is strictly a base station setup...I have one SDS200 scanner connected to a DPD Omni-X antenna for receiving the adjacent County to the North of me that is entirely on digital, which is St. Charles County (S.L.A.T.E.R.), and one SDS200 scanner attached to a Discone for the County where I live, Franklin County. The Discone works fine because the County where I live uses a VHF repeater, and remote receivers for obscure areas of the County, and their base station is only about 2 miles away from me as the crow flies. The MOSWIN tower is probably about a 1/2 mile from me for the two departments that are on digital, MSHP and Washington PD, so the Discone receives those transmissions just fine. The Discone even receives the Weldon Spring tower pretty well here in Union, Missouri, three bars, and I don't seem to miss any of the transmissions off the Weldon Spring MOSWIN tower. The Discone receives the Shirley MOSWIN tower as well, all the way down in Washington County, Missouri.

I have two servers set up via ProScan, and I access the traffic via my cell phone for times when I'm mobile. The only thing I object to with respect to the cell phone feeds is that there is a pretty long latency that doesn't provide a smooth and immediate result when I use the cell phone to try to control the scanners. I wish ProScan would come up with a fix for that, if it's even possible. It may not be possible when marrying independent technologies all together, Samsung Android cell phone, ProScan, and Uniden.

Only when mobile.

When using as a base, one or two towers should be used. Generally, all towers within a given county will transmit the same traffic, with some unique exceptions. If you live near an adjacent county, you can program a tower from that county, given that its within listening range. So I would use (1) tower from home county and (1) tower from any adjacent counties.
It takes 1.5 seconds per site to decode the control channel before moving on. The more you scan, the more you miss. Also limit the number of conventional objects being scanned as well. It takes time to scan those as well.

 

[llzel]

That is correct.
I monitor both sites and a lot of the Troop C traffic heard on the Weldon Spring and/or Imperial VHF Moswin sites is not heard on the STL City 800 MHz Site 201. Same thing goes for STL City users on the VHF Moswin sites. In most cases, the city radios or talkgroups are denied access to the VHF Moswin sites if they happen to try and affiliate with one of the VHF sites such as Imperial, Weldon Spring or New Hope.

Time to trade my G4 for a G5

 

[llzel]

What I wonder is how, for example, St. Louis City cars are denied access to Weldon Spring's tower, and they have an incident that takes them outside their assigned tower, how they might communicate. I suppose that's what Interoperability is for...
[/QUOTE]

I wondered the same thing, so If a city detective car is in St Charles, they're unable to contact the city dispatcher?

 

[kruser]

What I wonder is how, for example, St. Louis City cars are denied access to Weldon Spring's tower, and they have an incident that takes them outside their assigned tower, how they might communicate. I suppose that's what Interoperability is for...

I wondered the same thing, so If a city detective car is in St Charles, they're unable to contact the city dispatcher?

Being as St Charles is on Slater, a patch would be created for the Moswin user.
Patches will fall in the 65xxx talkgroup range when created and they are usually temporary so if the patch drops, it will be created again but usually on a different talkgroup.
If you monitor the Modot motorist assist guys on the Slater system, they will always show up on a random 65xxx talkgroup but after a time, the talkgroup will change.

As far as radios or talkgroups being denied on certain sites, that's all decided and done at the administrative level. I think dispatchers can still create temp patches if needed though in most cases.

I heard a fire or ems incident along the Missouri river at Howell Island once.
Monarch FPD was the primary agency as it was mostly on the STL County side of the river.
A fire department from the St Charles area also responded but on their counties side of the river.
Both are on Slater but one is on the St Charles Slater system while the other was on the ST Louis County Slater system.
They could not communicate between the two different systems.
The commander of Monarch asked that a patch be created so they could speak with the St Charles fire district crew but dispatch came back and said it could not be done. That seemed very strange. This was less than a year ago when I monitored that.
So they ended up using cell phones even though they could probably shout at each other across the river! I know they could see each others helmet lights as they mentioned that on air.

 

[rbritton1201]

I imagine it could be done, and that it was probably set up by the technicians...but these systems are getting so darned complicated that the average radio operator just didn't know what to do to make it happen. I expect the manuals are probably three feet thick, LOL!

The commander of Monarch asked that a patch be created so they could speak with the St Charles fire district crew but dispatch came back and said it could not be done. That seemed very strange.

 

[nick1427d]

I think this has been mentioned before but once you understand how they are SUPPOSED to work, trunking systems are not really that complicated.

MOSWIN being a statewide system only has a limited number of frequencies that can be allocated to the sites throughout the state. You see them repeated in different areas but not near each other. For example the Imperial site frequencies might be used again somewhere out west. Because there are limited number of frequencies per site it also means that it limits the amount of users that can talk at any given time on any one site. As radios attempt to transmit they are granted access by the controller, if they are denied or get "bonked" they get put in a queue of sorts until one of those frequencies is released by another user. Remember when they "key up" they are asking for a voice channel (frequency). These trunking systems are in fact just repeater sites with a bank of repeater pairs, the control channel is the link between the system and all the fancy stuff and the radios. When you key up you're just keying a repeater and getting whatever frequency the controller gives you. If everyone needs to talk at same time, you're fighting for one of those frequencies.

In order to limit the number of frequencies getting used/tied up by outside units, roaming into/out of service areas they will tie certain talkgroups to certain sites. You don't want a city police unit on District 1, transmitting/affiliating on City simulcast AND MOSWIN Imperial/Weldon Spring/St Clair. Why because when ANYONE on District 1 talks, it gets rebroadcasted over ANY other site that has a MOSWIN radio, on District 1, and affiliated to that site. When that happens it also ties up those frequencies at those other sites. So one frequency being used becomes several. It's simply a bad use of frequency resources and is really unnecessary.

Therefore, typically, the only talkgroups that are truly statewide are interops or travel channels. Travel channels are in place so that if a unit travels outside of their service area they can have a channel that will affiliate to any tower and allow them to talk back to dispatch or whoever. More than likely the State Patrol talkgroups will affiliate to most MOSWIN sites because they roam around so much but even then they might be programmed to desire affiliation to certain sites to sort of force the radio to stay on a specific site as long as possible.

SLATER is no different. A St. Charles unit, on a St. Charles talkgroup shouldn't be able to affiliate to SLATER North via a St. Charles talkgroup because then it would tie up a frequency on St. Charles SLATER AND SLATER North. If St. Charles and Monarch need to talk to one another then they needed to pick the same talkgroup to talk on. That example was, in my opinion, just an operational mistake. All the fire radios on SLATER have each other's talkgroups. I also know that a SLATER St. Charles talkgroup will work, albeit not as well reception wise, on a radio well within the boundaries of St. Louis County. If a St. Charles unit is coming into the county on a call, then they should be switching to a St. Louis County talkgroup anyway.

As far as determining which talkgroups will be "broadcasted" over which site. It's unfortunately a matter of just monitoring and seeing what you hear. Even that may not be all the time. If you want to "hear" a certain talkgroup over St Clair for example, then a subscriber radio has to be turned on, on that talkgroup AND affiliated (connected) to St. Clair. Once that unit moves somewhere else and their radio affiliates to another tower and no other radio is on that talkgroup and on St. Clair then you won't hear it anymore via St. Clair.

If I were wanting to monitor a Troop C talkgroup and wanted to make sure I heard it all the time and never missed anything, I would monitor Weldon Spring, since that is near Troop C headquarters. Just like if I wanted to monitor STL City fire, I would monitor the city simulcast. Does the City fire channels sometimes broadcast over the METRO sites used by METRO link, yep, but not all the time. Will city fire be broadcasted over SLATER, negative.

Patches are kind of complicated because it depends on how they are set up. You basically have 2 flavors. You can patch 2 or more channels by simply connecting them together by repeating the traffic over each other or basically repeating the audio. This sort of patch is basically just rebroadcasting the traffic over another talkgroup and again will tie up more frequencies. It's a horrible way to connect things as it will tie up a lot of frequencies real quick depending on how many patches you have activated.

A console patch, on a dispatch console connected to the controller will create the patch within the system or site and will patch the talkgroups together but only tie up one frequency. Typically you don't see console patches between systems or even sites within systems. I wouldn't be able to console patch SLATER and MOSWIN without tying up frequencies on both systems so they typically don't like to set that up. Point to Point here in St. Louis MIGHT be patched permanently but I'm not 100%. Dispatchers also have a tendency to accidentally leave patches open after they are needed without people knowing, so those frequencies are constantly being tied up for no reason after the incident/need for it has passed. Patches are meant to be temporary.

Some places have system patches via something called ISSI but that is usually reserved for cross system interops. SLATER, MOSWIN, and STARCOM can be patched via ISSI and some interops are permanently patched via ISSI currently.

Hope that helps

 

[kruser]

I think this has been mentioned before but once you understand how they are SUPPOSED to work, trunking systems are not really that complicated.

Great explanation Nick.
Your entire post is most informative for those that may not fully grasp the trunking concept.

 

[rbritton1201]

Trunked systems seem to me to be much more complicated in design than a simple repeater system. As a listener, I prefer to listen to analog repeater systems than a digital trunked system. Digital trunked systems often sound garbled in comparison to well designed analog repeater systems. In my opinion, these trunked systems are hyped to these agencies as state of the art, but most agencies across the United States don't need them. The politicians that opt to go with them are pressured to be "state of the art," when most areas of the Country only need a properly designed repeater system, which would be much more cost effective, and yield clearer sounding radio traffic. I can understand where in highly populated areas of the country they benefit from digital trunked systems, but most areas of the country are not highly populated areas requiring the features of digital trunked systems. In my opinion, the push by the manufacturers is to sell digital trunked systems to every agency they come across, which is simply to help their bottom line, and they do so at tax payer expense. The politicians don't know better, but we do, don't we? Going to digital trunked systems anywhere and everywhere has escalated the cost of our scanners by about 800%. Of course, that's not an agency's consideration, but if most of the geographic area of the USA is rural, what is the benefit of trunked digital over a decent analog repeater system for those rural areas of the country? For example, for Reynolds and Iron County, Missouri to spend the money to switch everything over to digital trunked radio is ridiculous! I didn't say that making the switch will never be appropriate, but to make the switch in areas of the country where population centers consist of only a couple thousand people is a foolish expenditure of tax payer dollars.

 

[kruser]

As a listener, I prefer to listen to analog repeater systems than a digital trunked system.

I'm with ya on analog systems!

I spend a lot of time scanning or searching the common scanner bands for analog systems still on the air.
My best luck are systems still on analog in Illinois which seems to still have a fair amount of users. Missouri still has a fair amount of analog as well but my reception range drops off quicker due to our terrain.

 

[rbritton1201]

Yep, there is no comparison to the listening pleasure via analog versus digital. You know, we can understand how digital trunked systems work, and we triumph over getting everything setup with our scanners to receive trunked digital systems. But, nothing is simpler than programming an analog scanner to receive analog transmissions, or programming an amateur VHF/UHF transceiver to operate via an analog repeater.

Conversely, I have amateur radios that operate on DMR, which is digital technology, and that is much more difficult to program from scratch than my analog transceivers. That's what I meant about digital trunked systems being more complicated.

I have one observation as an illustration...Isn't it interesting that Missouri State Highway Patrol still has their analog system operating, and they test it with their cars every Sunday morning. I'm not sure their confidence level in digital trunked radio systems is all that great. If they had a strong confidence level in digital trunked radio systems, it seems like it would be awfully expensive to maintain a completely separate analog system.

I'm with ya on analog systems!

I spend a lot of time scanning or searching the common scanner bands for analog systems still on the air.
My best luck are systems still on analog in Illinois which seems to still have a fair amount of users. Missouri still has a fair amount of analog as well but my reception range drops off quicker due to our terrain.

 

[nick1427d]

Trunked systems seem to me to be much more complicated in design than a simple repeater system. As a listener, I prefer to listen to analog repeater systems than a digital trunked system. Digital trunked systems often sound garbled in comparison to well designed analog repeater systems. In my opinion, these trunked systems are hyped to these agencies as state of the art, but most agencies across the United States don't need them. The politicians that opt to go with them are pressured to be "state of the art," when most areas of the Country only need a properly designed repeater system, which would be much more cost effective, and yield clearer sounding radio traffic. I can understand where in highly populated areas of the country they benefit from digital trunked systems, but most areas of the country are not highly populated areas requiring the features of digital trunked systems. In my opinion, the push by the manufacturers is to sell digital trunked systems to every agency they come across, which is simply to help their bottom line, and they do so at tax payer expense. The politicians don't know better, but we do, don't we? Going to digital trunked systems anywhere and everywhere has escalated the cost of our scanners by about 800%. Of course, that's not an agency's consideration, but if most of the geographic area of the USA is rural, what is the benefit of trunked digital over a decent analog repeater system for those rural areas of the country? For example, for Reynolds and Iron County, Missouri to spend the money to switch everything over to digital trunked radio is ridiculous! I didn't say that making the switch will never be appropriate, but to make the switch in areas of the country where population centers consist of only a couple thousand people is a foolish expenditure of tax payer dollars.

I do agree that a lot of it is just selling new technology under the farse that it will be 100% better. However as an end user and someone who relies on each of these new systems for mission critical ops I can tell you that it is better in many ways. Do I miss analog simplex or even a simple repeater, of course I do but I don't miss not being heard when I needed to be heard. As end users we obviously don't care too much if the scanners can hear better, we just need it to work on our end. I think the new digital systems sound and work better from an end user stand point HOWEVER I hate that it relies on so much infrastructure. I also hate that it's ALWAYS sold as an interoperability solution when in my opinion it makes it more difficult and complicated. If I need to talk to police, I have Point to point in Missouri or IREACH in IL, fire units I have MO mutual aid (154.280) or IFERN in IL or even IREACH again. I don't need anything fancy to do that.

There are several advantages to digital, and several advantages to trunked systems, whether you're a busy metro area, or rural. For one digital does actually have better range and is less affected by other rf interference than analog. It may seem more expensive and a waste of money but think of the agencies that no longer have to maintain their legacy systems. Why MSHP still maintains and tests their analog system, I have no idea other than most of these agencies retain some form of their older legacy systems "just in case". These trunking systems do fail. A lot of people don't even realize it because it usually doesn't stay down for very long but I can tell you it does happen. Hate it or love it these new systems have better "fail safe" and backup redundancy than the analog systems.

I'll maintain my stance that the #1 best fallback, failsafe, interop, shtf plan is good old analog simplex.
or cell phones.......lol

 

[stlouisx50]

Back in the day, I've handled law enforcement radio traffic where on a weekend there were 100 cars on one radio. It gets way out of hand. You can barely get cars assigned to calls at that rate, and there's little time, if any, for running license plates, subjects, etc...

Nowadays, they have CAD/DATA where I assume they can do that stuff from their patrol cars. But, really, there's just a limit to what is humanly possible when you're the one handling the radio traffic, and trying to keep officers safe and accounted for, etc...So, I assume there's a maximum number of radios subscribed to the towers. It's either that, or have multiple dispatchers handling the overload.

What I wonder is how, for example, St. Louis City cars are denied access to Weldon Spring's tower, and they have an incident that takes them outside their assigned tower, how they might communicate. I suppose that's what Interoperability is for...

I again believe its based on closest/strongest to their mobile transmitter. Like your cell phone does.

St. Louis city for MSHP uses the north tower and the south city uses the Jeff Co tower from my observation.

Weldon Springs tower seems like it was 270/370/64 and 70 from 270 west to Foristell.
Dont forget Troop C uses 2 TGS for dispatch depending on county/zones.

If you can pick the tower up, program it. If you dont want the tower, lock out the TG... Its better to have it ready for you in the event you want to hear it asap vs having to program it and missing traffic. You also have the other option to use a group of just Dispatch frequencies

 

[rbritton1201]

Thanks everyone very much for the "NUMBERS" tutorial, I'll give it a try next time I sit down to do some additional programming. I think the error I was making is that I was pressing the "E" button at the end of the sequence, instead of the CHANNEL button, so that's undoubtedly why the scanner was rejecting my Numbers entry.

So, back on the subject of MOSWIN towers to include in programming...my circumstance is a little different in that I have my scanner at my base station in the County South of the County I'm trying to monitor. I access the scanner using ProScan when I'm mobile. With respect to the P25 trunked system in the County North of me, it's a simulcast system. I'm picking up the towers within the simulcast system best that are closest to me. The towers I'm receiving show various signal strengths for each tower I'm receiving. I'm receiving signals off of two of the towers in the simulcast system particularly well, a full five bars, whereas the other remaining towers vary from 2 to 3 bars of signal strength.

Since the system is a simulcast system, would I be better off removing the towers from programming that have less than three bars of signal strength, and just leave the two five bar towers in programming? It's my understanding that if I'm monitoring a simulcast system, all the towers carry the same traffic, but due to the distance from some of the furthest towers, I'm only picking up two of the towers at five bars, and the rest show 2 to 3 bars of signal strength, and I assume I'm far enough away from the furthest towers from me that I'm not picking them up at all according to the data base information that reveals where the towers are located. I'm wondering if the scanner's efficiency would be improved if I removed the towers from programming that are showing only 2 to 3 bars of signal strength, so the scanner focuses on the two towers with 5 bar signal strength, so the scanner doesn't waste time scanning the towers that show lesser signal strength.