Yellowstone Frequencies

[kf7yn]

The North Repeater is on Mt Washburn with a remote base near the NE Entrance. North covers Mammoth, Tower/Roosevelt, Lamar, Indian Creek and Norris.

West repeater is on Mt Holmes, NE of West Yellowstone and NW of Madision Jct. It was brought into service because there were dead spots in and around Madison/Firehole area on the old North repeater 166.375 freq.
West repeater covers Old Faithful, Madison and Northwest "Gallatin" area.

South repeater is located on Mt Sheridan with remote base on Top Notch and another near Bechler (SW corner of YNP) South covers Lake, Grant Village, Lewis Lake and both the South and East Entrances.

Scene of Action repeater isn't used often but sometimes active during major events such as visiting VIP. I also heard SOA on the air a year or two ago when two rival motorcycle groups came thru the park. That was... uh... interesting. If you will recall from the 1988 fires (I was there too) 167.150 was formerly Ch 5 and was in heavy use during the fires. The next year or two, it was used by student conservation association (SCA) who did a lot of renovation work.

So things have changed considerably since then.

Thanks for the update. I would like to get back there, I haven't been since I was on the fires in 1988. I would like to poke around east of Island Park along the Targhee NF/Yellowstone NP boundary where I spent the majority of my 5 weeks on the North Fork Fire.

Do you know where the north and south repeaters are located? How about the one labeled "West Repeater?" I'm assuming that the scene of action repeater listing is for a portable repeater, but don't know this for sure. Any observations there?

 

[MtnBiker2005]

Radio System - Yellowstone Wiki
http://www.yellowstonewiki.com/wiki/Radio_System

 

[ecps92]

Interesting to note that prior reports from PDFs found show the Repeater Pairs reversed from what this site shows. Nice use of the Wiki tho....

Radio System - Yellowstone Wiki
Radio System - Yellowstone Wiki

 

[PJH]

FWIW, P25 on/off is not a typical option thaty you flip with a switch as you could with enryption, repeater/simplex, etc. In addition, this is sometimes enabled thru a patch setup where analog users can talk to digital users or vice versa. We ran this setup until all users were able to purchase digital radios. In fact on one system we had a full time patch from a digital trunked system to an analog conventional repeater for about a year. You almost couldn't tell is was "mixed" until someone was in a fringe spot. Worked pretty well.

You do not lose range with P25 vs analog, this is a myth that has been proven time an time again (typically the opposite is true).

There are several fed systems thoughout the US that run a mixed mode operation, or mixed secure/clear setup for one reason or another.

 

[commstar]

You do not lose range with P25 vs analog, this is a myth that has been proven time an time again (typically the opposite is true).

Thank god it is only a myth, we thought we experienced a and easy 30% coverage loss form 25khz analog to P25. Guess we did not. The tech working the problem will be happy to hear this is everyone's imagination Good news, THANKS! Mike

 

[kf7yn]

Yeah the YNP backcountry rangers will be glad their decreased P25 range is only a myth too. Fact is, all digital modulation requires a higher S/N ratio.... unless the laws of physics have changed. Here is one of many articles that affirms it: http://blog.tcomeng.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/The-Great-APCO-Project-25-Boondoggle-Feb-2011.pdf

 

[PJH]

....and I bet if you compared the new system to the old its not apples to apples.

I find that many who complain are system high powered systems and when they upgrade they are required to comply with the new ERP regulations. No longer can you just throw a 125-150watt blowtourch repeater on top of the tower and not have to factor in height. We had to take our 125watt repeater and turn it down to about 70ish when we made the switch AND we still get more useable voice on the outbound side in places that we had very poor comms. Same radio, same cabling and antennas. Just lowered the power.

There are many factors involved, but generally speaking, RF is RF. Making the signal "digital" for the most part doesn't mean that the radio signal coming from that antenna at the speed of light go in any other direction or manner than an analog one. The transport of that signal is the same.

Much of this has to do with the data, and the data correction. If you have Motorola radios that can decode MDC1200, try this little experiment. Find a simplex channel, enable MDC ID and see how far you can talk before its intelligable. 9 out of 10 times, you will get the ID displayed when the voice is all static. Same concept with the digital voice.

Browse thru APCO International and the other industry and government studies on the subject.

 

[PJH]

That blog you posted, is just that from MT. There are many skewed items in there that are not exactly correct.

There is quite a bit of misinformation in that article. Such are "transit times", down times of certain systems (which was not the sytem, but the outside contracted vendors such as Verizon in the Philly one), the "P25 vocoder" is old (IMBE has been around, but being written in Feb 2011, AMBE has been around quite a bit and is a great codec).

Another is the jist of "needed to upgrade out of the box". Thats a descion that the customer made, not the failure of the vendor. Vendor says you need XYZ for the level of service that the customer wants. Customer says I am going going to by X and Z and still expects full performace of XYZ. Its not going to happen. I've been down the road many times. We we were putting our statewide system in, Motorola told us based on standard propragation studies that we needed X sites. State only wanted to pay for Y sites. We tried to cut costs, but ended up buying close the recommend amount (after doing some site moving adjustments where needed).

Its not a simple yes/no type of answer. But, this is getting off topic for this thread.

For the record, the P25 that was used when my buddy was a ranger up there, served them well. Otherwise they stuck on the old system. They want a full upgrade, but to do what they want, they cannot. It tough to just randomly put up sites in a NPS park without going thru a lot of reviews and hurdles. Took us out east 3 years to add two needed tower sites to have 90% coverage on our upgrade....all due to siting issues more than anything.

 

[commstar]

Based on your guidance we are migrating all of our site apples to oranges. You have saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars in new site development costs and hundreds of future hours tearing out hair out.

I am going to call a colleague in Canada who was having the same experience- i am sure he will be relieved also.

So, if I tell two more friends, and they all tell two friends, eventually all P25 coverage delusions will be quashed. That and the price of oranges will go up. Man, you have made me happy!

Fraternal Regards,
Mike

 

[burner50]

Oh my....