Wednesday, September 29, 2010

170.3375 MHz in Dallas - TSA?

I have received some reports of a new P-25 digital channel being heard in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex.

Reports are that 170.3375 MHz, NAC001 has been heard with clear traffic that seems to make references to possible TSA operations at DFW Airport in Grapevine.

This frequency does not appear in the previously known TSA frequency assignments, however, DFW Airport had always had some non-standard TSA radio operations. 169.1625 MHz and 169.1875 MHz have previously reported as being used but the TSA at DFW. Apparently they were concerned about TSA frequencies used at Dallas Love Field would interfere with operations at DFW.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

New Federal VHF Trunking - Update

I recently posted that listeners were reporting many new VHF P-25 trunking sites starting to go live in the northern Virginia and Washington DC areas. Some additional information has been posted.

Here is what we know so far - The trunked system is showing a System ID of 010, WACN of BF58A, and at least 7 sites found so far. Only one talk group has been reported so far, TG 9301 doing radio checks.

168.2625 - Site 6-001
168.4875 - Site 8-001
168.6250 - Site 6-001
168.8250 - Site 6-001
168.8875 - Site 10-001
169.6000 - Site 2-001
170.6250 - Site 3-001
170.6625 - Site 1-001

170.8625 - Site 14-001
170.8750 - Site 2-001

170.9125 - Site 3-001
171.2750 - Site 2-001
171.5375
171.6250 - Site 7-001
171.7750 - Site 4-001
171.9875 - Site 11-001
172.0125 - Site 12-001
172.6250 - Site 5-001
172.6375 - Site 12-001
173.9000 - Site 14-001

So who does this system belong to? There is some evidence that this is the new National Capitol Region overlay of the Justice Department's Integrated Wireless Network (IWN). Although this system is utilizing a different System ID and WACN than the original IWN sites, this may be the next step to expanding the system to different regions of the country. Most of these frequencies are from the same new allocations and Justice Department allocations pool that the legacy IWN sites are using.

In the Justice Department budget requests for 2011, one of the major goals of the IWN is listed as,
"... the first Region 1 IWN implementation is scheduled to go live (e.g., receive authority to operate and begin transition of users to the new system) in the National Capital Region (Washington, D.C. and proximate areas), in late 2010."

The document this quote came from is available here:
http://www.justice.gov/jmd/2011justification/pdf/fy11-lewc-justification.pdf

More information as it becomes available.