Cardiff shop/pub watch

[welshevo]

hey folks me again!! i was wondering if anyone knew if Cardiff town and shops etc have moved over to digital Radio? i did have the old analogue freq programmed into my old Motorola MT6000e but don't seem to be picking anything up from them anymore? i have noticed in "st Davids 2" they appear to have new radios with an LCD screen but then in other shops on queen street some have the older looking plain black Motorola, and some vertex standards? all confusing!!could anyone shed any light on this..... or any shop watch frequencies local ponty, Caerphilly, Cardiff?


thanks for looking

[Bruin]

My Bearcat BCT15X is in West Cardiff and this morning and yesterday afternoon I was listening to St Davids on 456.4500 talking about a flood in one of the units and on Shopwatch They were passing descriptions of a shoplifter on Monday afternoon.
What's your location and set-up?

[welshevo]

i have a handie (baofeng UVB5) and also an old Realistic Pro-2022... and various other motorola handies, im in tongwynlais... but not holding my breath lol unless i get an external mast haha

[neil57uk1]

Hi
Which of the Shopwatch frequencies was being used please.
Thanks

[welshevo]

neil.....ive added all the frequencies for cardiff shop and pub off the radioscanning 2013 list.... not rcved anything yet though.....

[welshevo]

i can confirm plenty of activity on Caerphilly - Wales - Storenet - 453.1000

very active most of yesterday eve and first thing this morning about 7am onwards very good freq to check out.....seems to be very powerful output also ....i was getting the feed in tongwynlais, whitchurch village, also llanishen, so pretty wide!! happy scanning folks i will update on the other shop watches later on today....

[Bruin]

453.6937 was active this morning and afternoon.

[welshevo]

Hey Bruin ....that freq you posted any idea who it was? is it Cardiff shop watch?? as Ive only got ...
im guessing my list with the exception of the caerphilly one is no longer used? any idea?? lol thanks

Shopwatch list from uk scanning forum....
Cardiff - Wales - 453.2250 459.7250
Cardiff - Wales - 456.6000 462.1000
Cardiff - Wales - 456.3500 461.8500
Cardiff - Wales - 456.6500 462.1500
Cardiff - Wales - 456.5250 462.0250
Cardiff - Canton - 453.7000 460.2000
Cardiff Bay - 443.1250 428.6250

[welshevo]

so after doing some rough tests i now confirm that cardiff town uses analogue and digital radios, some of the above freqs will provide the annoying digital noises and some will provide full speech ....i was getting charlie romeo... too next... etc so happy listening.!

[bigbloke]

just going to try and revalidate these, but 453.225 and 453.7 are both re-used in newport

453.7 is the celtic manor (CC1 / TG1 S1 & 2) which is LoS to cardiff so surprised if they re-used so close
DMR on 456.65 - CC 10 / TG 201187 / Slot 2 - source tbd
weak dmr on 456.525 - insufficient lock from here to get data - source tbd

regards

BB

[welshevo]

Now that is fantastic!! some Proper DMR locally! thank you....how did you source these? DSD decode? or pot luck!! anything interesting on any of the above? once again thank you !!

[bigbloke]

the main safenet is TETRA TMO on 422.550 MHz

the others sourced by detailed searches, industry knowledge , and deep dives on the Ofcom WTR (which gets a major open up
on 24/11/2014 - up to 80,000 extra licence details mooted) validated through detailed searches using the right kind of radios
which support long term logging to hard disk :-)

[welshevo]

Bigbloke-i would love too see what other Cardiff DMR freqs you have and judging by what ive seen so far its all pretty much guaranteed good listening and no Dud frequencies! id go as far as too say id happily pay you for a complete Cardiff list with DMR and analogue stuff from you...

[bigbloke]

Sorry Welshevo,

I dont have a cardiff specific list. Nor do I keep lists. Just personal Codeplugs.

with the exception of the WTR, which itself can be up to 24 months out of date or hold data for licences which
are still held but no longer in service (like 453.175 in Newport which is no longer used as the pubnet) every "hobbyist"
list I have seen is at least 3-4 years out of date. Some as much as 10.

What is needed is a "open spectrum" type project in the vein of open streetmap, based upon a web hosted database
and web front end.

For starters the legacy Proma DB should be disected / distributed to regional volunteers & sanitised so things where
separate entries conflict, are cleaned up.

e.g.

USER = CITY COUNCIL CITY = CARDIFF
USER = CARDIFF CITY COUNCIL CITY = SOUTH WALES

Should not co-exist, and any known legacy incorrect data can be eradicated (star of david bacon factory for instance ?) :-)

The mode fields should be expanded from:

<CTCSS> <CHANNEL><MODE>
to
<MODE><CTCSS><DCS><CHANNEL><CC><SLOT><TG>

this should be the basis of a re-worked online database that all members can read, and it will need to be augmented by a
NEW submission page (as things are found or licence owners identified) or a CHANGE submission page as errors/outdates
are discovered.

No submitted data should go into the database until validated by further regional "teams" of volunteers. But there should be an option to
display both validated and unvalidated content.

If I was the author of the "new" kimmySJ19 guide (Im not involved in any way JFTR) this is how I would have set up my
content gathering. And if I knew that this sort of approach was being used to fund the paper publication (as well as accounts evidence
that they truly operate not for profit) I might even buy the book myself

I find it amusing that WTR content becomes "intellectual property" of their group by adding a group name to a page ?? {shrug}

Regards

BB

[bigbloke]

right , ive freed up some kit to try and solve the outer cardiff storenet mysteries. This also gives
new starters an idea on searching for their own stuff.

I start with the WTR (google "Ofcom WTR")

453.225 / 459.725

interesting this one - everything on there now in the WTR is simplex on 453.225 - was it ever duplex ??

cardiff licences are:

quotient bioresearch
bro ederyn school
westra boarding kennels
a user in bedwas (I've discounted)

Based upon this I suspect there is no storenet traffic still on this frequency & will not search it

456.6 / 462.1

radio links comms and apex radio are licenced on here - both companies are PMR resellers so a good chance that there may still be a storenet. I will include this one

456.350 / 461.850

celtic manor newport (DMR)
momentive chemicals
lloyds tsb

I will not search this one - its solid with DMR locally - need to do this actually in cardiff

456.6500 462.1500

BT
Helical (property management co)
legal and general

you guessed - not searching this one

456.5250 462.0250

apex radio penarth / debenhams

guessing this is probably a penarth storenet (apex pmr resellers again) plus debenhams . I will check this one

453.7000 460.2000

Celtic Manor Newport
storenet security canton

I will include this one

lastly I do a wider WTR trawl of the UHF PMR bands in the bound area , and It throws up another interesting one

455.7875 / 461.0875

which is licenced to storenet systems and is based on newport road near argos

Now I set up the long term monitoring kit , which for me is a BCT-15 and a pc running BCTool

I program up a scan bank with my candidates from above, set CTCSS to search on all, and leave running for a few weeks with logging active

its important to make sure your log writing to disk is structured

Code: Select all

DATE
|
---------FREQUENCY-----------
|                           |
CTCSS 1                 CTCSS "n" 
|
|
mp3_file_with_%time%_%freq%_and_%sig% in the name

The latter is important because the filenames will tell you whether its a repeater output [all sigs same strength] or simplex [multiple overs different strengths]

now its like trawler fishing , sit back and see whats there to be analysed

catch you in a few weeks when the collection phase is done

regards

BB