Thursday, September 22, 2016

TOUR THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

Hello and welcome back... I did a page a while back on the International Space Station SEE HERE

This video goes into more detail, and is a bit clearer...

I love videos like this.. :)


Friday, September 16, 2016

GRN (Government Radio Network) APCO BANDPLAN

Hello and welcome back... Found out about this by mistake...

I decided to reprogram my Uniden UBCD396XT Radio Scanner and make things a little more organized.

Upon programing GRN (Digital P25) into the radio i found that i was receiving towers from Kurrajong, & Gov Phillip Tower but not Glenbrook or Razorback (Picton).

Living in Springwood, NSW, my main tower is Glenbrook and wondering is the tower was not transmitting, i programmed in the control channel into another analogue radio and confirmed that it was, in fact.. still working.

Next step was to check settings and i noted that the two working channels had found its bandplan but the the two that was dead had no bandplan in place.

The bandplan is used to set parameters into the radio along with step frequencies as well.

You will find the bandplan in your Freescan setup. Once you load your setup, head the your GRN setup and click on the Base (or Tower), in my case its Glenbrook as a start.

There are 3 tables in front of you... Site Setup, Trunk Frequencies and APCO Band Plan. The APCO bandplan is what you want.

All your towers should have a Bandplan like the pic below.


If you try to enter the frequencies manually, the software will tell you that the 762mhz frequencies are out of band, just click OK. 

FREQUENCY(Mhz)     SPACING (Khz)
851.00625                       6.25
762.00625                       6.25
851.0125                         12.5
762.00625                       12.5
412.47500                       6.25
420.00000                       6.25

After setting the bandplan, I then plugged my radio into an outdoor antenna and Bingo..Glenbrook was now working (also did the same to Razorback and it too started to work)

So, if you are programming your radio and wondering why its not picking anything up... Check the bandplan.
Normally, it programs the bandplan automatically (as it did for Gov Phillip Tower & Kurrajong) but failed to do Glenbrook & Razoback.

Hope this Helps



NOTE = I have updated the 'How to setup GRN page  :)

Friday, September 9, 2016

PHONETIC ALPHABET

Hello and welcome back... The Phonetic Alphabet is used alot in radio, everything from Aircraft, Military & Police.

If you have ever wondered why Charlie is in India, Playing Golf while drinking Whiskey... Wonder no more. They were just using the Phonetic Alphabet.

A = Alpha / Alfa
B = Bravo
C = Charlie
D = Delta
E = Echo
F = Foxtrot
G = Golf
H = Hotel
I = India
J = Juliett / Juliet
K = Kilo
L = Lima
M = Mike
N = November
O = Oscar
P = Papa
Q = Quebec
R = Romeo
S = Sierra
T = Tango
U = Uniform
V = Victor
W = Whiskey
X - Xray
Y = Yankee
Z = Zulu

#Phonetic Alphabet