MSCommNet Thread II

[W1KNE]

Correct. On all Harris P25 trunked systems, all frequencies can act as CC. There's no official primary or alternate control channel.

[KD1SQ]

Now that I'm located where I can receive three different MSCOMMNET sites, a question arises -

I'm wanting to accumulate Group and TG data as job one. No decode audio at this time. Can Unitrunker, if equipped with multiple RTL sticks...

...receive and decode more than one system simultaneously?

...do a good job with the data if doing so?

It'd be nice to be collecting data from Cyr, New Sweden and No. 9 at the same time. Or will it require separate instances of Unitrunker to do anything like that?

Anyone?

[KD1SQ]

...uh, make that user ID and TG data...

[ME343]

As of recently I have noticed Kennbec SO is being rebroadcast on CommNet via TG 816. I'm not sure if it was a permanent thing or not. They are still on their normal channel as of now.

[schwab]

Oxford County Sheriff is currently patched to TG 35128 for an ongoing incident.

[MrSvenSven]

I see a recent FCC license for a location in Portland with callsign WRNN324 and frequencies 171.1625, 172.3125, and 172.6250.

I ran a search of the entire 148-174Mhz VHF band and did not find any new control channels on the air yet.

[ME343]

Bringing an old subject back to life. Talkgroup 2451 is Confirmed as Capital Police. Testing was being done on 10/29/22. Unsure when full switchover will be complete.

[KD1SQ]

Where I live I can get good copy from Cyr Mountain, New Sweden, No. 9 Mountain. Reasonable on Ashland, poor on St. Francis and Houlton.

I run a three RTL-SDR dongle setup. One dongle is set up for No. 9 (Four channels!) the second one is set up for MPSRN in Grand Falls (again, four channels) And the third dongle is out there purely as voice to be grabbed by either of the signal dongles.

Seems to work very nicely.

Lee

[Cole0209]

Anyone know details on Site 101? Seems to use the same NAC as Ossipee (3DE) but RSSI/SiteID 101. I am picking it up on OP25 from the Coastal York area. Looks to be carrying primarily RCC South Pri and Troop G Pike.

CC is currently on 172.31250

Other Frequencies:
152.06000
171.16250
172.62500

Adjacent Sites:
Site 35
Site 83
Site 41
Site 61
Site 33
Site 67
Site 77
Site 87
Site 43
Site 85

[schwab]

Based on those frequencies, this is probably the new site in downtown Portland.

[W1KNE]

On the MSCommNet system, we have listed the six conventional sites as trunking sites. Are these sites strictly just two channel conventional repeaters that act as patches?

It's an unusual setup and I was curious how they actually worked with the trunk...

[schwab]

On the MSCommNet system, we have listed the six conventional sites as trunking sites. Are these sites strictly just two channel conventional repeaters that act as patches?

It's an unusual setup and I was curious how they actually worked with the trunk...

They are solar-powered trunk sites, but without a continuous control channel. These are my observations from monitoring the Greenville site last year:

"MSCOMMNET: The solar-powered site on Moose/Squaw Mtn in Greenville seems to have 160.140/$80E as a 'primary'; it's usually carrying Zone 3A/TG 731. 160.350/$80E seems to carry traffic on other TGs; I heard some 1700 units talking on this freq. (I don't remember which agency uses the 1700 callsigns and I can't find it in the wiki. Fire Marshalls maybe...?). Nothing heard on 154.680/$80E, I would guess that this is used if the first 2 freqs are busy. I'm at a loss as to how the system can deal with affiliations and direct radios to specific frequencies without a control channel, but it seems to work somehow. The only frequency at the Big Spencer solar-powered site (172.775/$80E) was carrying Zone 3A traffic."

[ecps92]

So the Solar all seem to use the $80E NAC ?? or are these so only in confirmations , that the original NAC for most of the system was $80E before migrating to unique NAC's per site....

They are solar-powered trunk sites, but without a continuous control channel. These are my observations from monitoring the Greenville site last year:

"MSCOMMNET: The solar-powered site on Moose/Squaw Mtn in Greenville seems to have 160.140/$80E as a 'primary'; it's usually carrying Zone 3A/TG 731. 160.350/$80E seems to carry traffic on other TGs; I heard some 1700 units talking on this freq. (I don't remember which agency uses the 1700 callsigns and I can't find it in the wiki. Fire Marshalls maybe...?). Nothing heard on 154.680/$80E, I would guess that this is used if the first 2 freqs are busy. I'm at a loss as to how the system can deal with affiliations and direct radios to specific frequencies without a control channel, but it seems to work somehow. The only frequency at the Big Spencer solar-powered site (172.775/$80E) was carrying Zone 3A traffic."

[schwab]

So the Solar all seem to use the $80E NAC ?? or are these so only in confirmations , that the original NAC for most of the system was $80E before migrating to unique NAC's per site....

I've only ever monitored the Big Spencer and Big Moose solar sites, and those were both $80E.

[ecps92]

-k Thanks

I've only ever monitored the Big Spencer and Big Moose solar sites, and those were both $80E.

[W1KNE]

I'm at a loss as to how the system can deal with affiliations and direct radios to specific frequencies without a control channel, but it seems to work somehow.

To be honest, that is quite unusual. The fact there is no control channel, makes me think there is no actual affiliation happening and/or trunking going it. It's just conventional P25 with a TG. All conventional P25 channels have a talkgroup. Usually "1" but I've seen "65535" on one system before. I suspect the radios in that zone can do both trunking and conventional. How a site number is assigned, must be by paper only and there is no actual OTA site number transmitted.

Because these sites are not actually trunked, perhaps they should be listed in a different part of the page?