Data on the air. How's it encoded?

[C222]

Originally Posted by Don Rotolo

Being heard on a scanner, I'm guessing it was in the 150-160 MHz range, which fits with paging.

Yup, it transmitting at 152.840 and the paging idea makes sense. It's still transmitting loud and clear today at noon. It also seems busier. Also my loacation is: CM97as if that helps.

edit: Also, it seems that the paging Modes have "noisy" data encased between beeps. At the moment, POCSAG 512 baud looks the most promising.

edit again: i got an application that decodes POCSAG and it works intermittently. I have recieved some interesting text. The morse also came again and said: WPVQ32E22

[DonRotolo]

OK, that all fits.

Go to the FCC page I quoted in Post 4, type in WPVQ32 and hit Search.
I chose WPVQ322 and found it is registered to Cook Telecom in San Francisco, authorized frequencies between 152.825 and 152.855 for service CP (Part 22 VHF/UHF Paging).

POCSAG is by far the most popular paging protocol, and the fact that you can decode ANY data proves that you have the right one - if it was something else you'd get nothing.

Originally Posted by Don Rotolo

OK, that all fits.

Go to the FCC page I quoted in Post 4, type in WPVQ32 and hit Search.
I chose WPVQ322 and found it is registered to Cook Telecom in San Francisco, authorized frequencies between 152.825 and 152.855 for service CP (Part 22 VHF/UHF Paging).

POCSAG is by far the most popular paging protocol, and the fact that you can decode ANY data proves that you have the right one - if it was something else you'd get nothing.

Speaking of POCSAG, we have some of that up here and there might be a couple of channels I should probably get serious about decoding

Now I have several scanners since I work in news but my only Computer is my laptop, Asus F3 series.

To properly decode do I need a desktop, sound card and source audio have to be from the discriminator tap on the scanner or can I actually grab it out of the headphone jack on the scanner and into the computer via the microphone input jack?

I'm not to sure about all this on a laptop, on a desktop I have read it's quite easy to do via the soundcard now.

thanks
m