Worcester County and Ocean City systems

[troymail]

I was in Ocean City over the past few days and noticed (again) that the systems seem to be fairly well "tuned" to limit signal to the areas of coverage -- that is -- it has always seemed to be fairly hit and miss to be able to pick up Ocean City signals from the Berlin area. For the most part I can pick up Worcester County from inside Ocean City but there seem to be some dead spots along Coastal Hwy. But I was noticing the same drop in reception after driving up into Delaware -- I seemed to start losing signal north of Bethany Beach (I turned around at the Indian River bridge).

I'm using my PSR500 with a RS 800Mhz antenna inside my F150 while driving and just carrying it around while at my parent's place in Berlin. The radio generally sits in the console cup holder between the seats (I did notice a bit of an improvement when I picked the radio up and held it in the windshield area).

Does anyone have any thoughts on the coverage and distance/reception quality under similar conditions?

Just always wondered.

 

[ka3jjz]

In the car, you've got an awful lot of metal that's going to shield you out. Better to use a mobile antenna in that case. You're really biasing your mobile results on a worst case scenario. It's really asking too much of a scanner and a duckie, even the RS model.

73 Mike

 

[troymail]

In the car, you've got an awful lot of metal that's going to shield you out. Better to use a mobile antenna in that case. You're really biasing your mobile results on a worst case scenario. It's really asking too much of a scanner and a duckie, even the RS model.

73 Mike

Sure - but I do it all of the time.... there just seems to be something different about the OC area systems (other tan the fact that they are EDACS and 99% of the time I'm listening to Motorola systems).... and as I said, it some cases I'm talking about being out of the vehicle.

 

[pasadenamd]

I have to agree with you. I was in Ocean City in the begining of Septemer. I was using my PSR-500 also. I thought the coverage and audio reception varied throughout the city. When I was on the Beach around 100th St, I could hardly tell what they were saying.

 

[wildbillx]

Now I hear the O.C. Edacs system 50% of the time in Cape May, NJ using my pro97 with 800mhz ducky. But never really get the Worcester county unless I use my yagi at 20ft.

 

[ocguard]

Ocean City's sole transmission site is the tower at 65th street with directional antennas pointing north and south. There are three receive sites, one at 65th Street, one in the south (southern-most water tank) and one in the north (not sure exactly where). For these reasons, your statement is correct that OC's system is really designed to handle comms in town only. There are some dead spots in town, mainly due to the big steel/concrete buildings and all the cell sites. Before the transmitter was moved to 65th Street, it was located in Ocean Pines, leaving LOTS of dead spots, causing many users to employ dipole antennas for portables.

I'm usually pretty religious about changing from the Worcester System to/from the OC system appropriately as I cross the bridge. Most fire, PD, and EMS talk groups are carried on both systems.

It's too bad the PSR500/Pro-106 can't do multi-site roam on EDACS systems. I'd really like to see how the scanner handles this. But the fact is, even city and county radios don't roam. The users must switch manually (as far as I know) when the go between systems.

EDIT: I also monitor using a Pro-106 with the RS 800 antenna. Occasionally, I have to remove the 800 antenna and use the stock antenna because the 800 antenna seems to induce over-mob from the town's copious cell sites.

 

[baydog]

When we are in Rehoboth, and the leaves are off the trees, I can generally receive Worcester on my PSR500 with the 800 mhz antenna but the signal is weak and often fades in and out. With OC, the phase of the moon and where the Chessies are lying on the living room floor have to been just right to even have a chance to pick up the that system. I can't hear either system on my BC396.

Because reception is iffy, I stick with the TRS Fire/EMS patch for both systems.

David

 

[Dispatcher308]

Troymail

You have to realize the systems are designed to cover a region, county, city, town etc. The Ocean City system does cover OC really well, but not out into the county by design as ocguard was stating with the directional antennas. Worcester County's system has 95% portable coverage thru out the County (doubtful), when in OC and on an 800mhz portable which is optimally tuned for 800mhz (unlike a scanner which has a wideband/loose receiver) has great coverage in Ocean City and they don't have many gaps, also Worcester County's System design in to provide coverage for their own County not Sussex, so that is why you loose the system the further you go into Sussex.

Just trying to explain!

 

[EDACSTECH]

You might think that Ocean City would be an easy place to provide radio system coverage due to the small footprint, but after installing and loading 800MHz trunked systems for more than 25 years, I don't think I have ever had any area with a greater challenge. This is due to several factors that include the land being very flat and surrounded by water. The noise floor is a moving target and weather conditions result in many sources of co-channel interference in addition to all of the local noise. Things happen in Ocean City that I have never seen elsewhere. We designed a single TX site in the very center of town after looking at other design scenarios. To direct the signal to where it was most needed, resulted in directional antenna(s) with down tilt. We could have used high gain omni antennas that would allow us to extend our talk-out range well into Delaware or inland to Salisbury at the cost of over shooting our response area. We first built the site this way per the M/A-COM cookie cutter engineering plan. We now provide the highest level of signal where we can get it from a single site & use the Worcester County system for extended coverage when we cross the bridge out of town. Now that most users operate hand-held radios and need in-building reception, the days are gone when you just try to get a high gain narrow beam signal to blast out over the horizon.

 

[troymail]

Thanks for the responses (the right people chimed in!) -- the answers were in line with what I expected...and make alot of sense.

 

[OldsDoug]

Good topic! I've been curious about this myself and it's nice to know what's behind it all. Special thanks to Ed!