Picking up weird SIDS, I cant figure it out.

[reevejf]

Ok I was sitting in my moms house in Enterprise roaming on Alltel (444) ok nothing new there. well I took my 4400 and set it to PCS only and made it forbid to roam on Sprint (4103) just to see if something might pick up. Well this was about 2 in the morning (yes i was bored) and it picked up first SID 4654 1X Extended. I was thrown. The signal was weak and couldnt make a call but it stayed with it for about a minute. I just looked it up and it said thats Sprint PCS in Jax FL. Where on earth was I picking up a tower from? The pilot # was 40 if that helps. But it gets better!. After it started searching again it found SID 4160 Verizon PCS system. The nearest tower from that system is down in Destin FL almost 90 miles away.? How the hell? Theres no way that a PCS tower would be carrying 80 miles with tons of rural forests in the way. Again that system was weak and unuseable. I tried to get this back the next day and it woudlnt find it. It was just that night. Is this some testing going on? and if so where? Enterprise isnt near any Interstates and US 84 is the only highway I could see being covered. Verizon SID 329 ended 5 miles up the road. Even AT&T, Sprint, and TMobile stop covering past Enterprise going west. If anyone has any clues as to what I was seeing please let me know.

[Andy]

Originally posted by: jfr3021
Ok I was sitting in my moms house in Enterprise roaming on Alltel (444) ok nothing new there. well I took my 4400 and set it to PCS only and made it forbid to roam on Sprint (4103) just to see if something might pick up. Well this was about 2 in the morning (yes i was bored) and it picked up first SID 4654 1X Extended. I was thrown. The signal was weak and couldnt make a call but it stayed with it for about a minute. I just looked it up and it said thats Sprint PCS in Jax FL. Where on earth was I picking up a tower from? The pilot # was 40 if that helps. But it gets better!. After it started searching again it found SID 4160 Verizon PCS system. The nearest tower from that system is down in Destin FL almost 90 miles away.? How the hell? Theres no way that a PCS tower would be carrying 80 miles with tons of rural forests in the way. Again that system was weak and unuseable. I tried to get this back the next day and it woudlnt find it. It was just that night. Is this some testing going on? and if so where? Enterprise isnt near any Interstates and US 84 is the only highway I could see being covered. Verizon SID 329 ended 5 miles up the road. Even AT&T, Sprint, and TMobile stop covering past Enterprise going west. If anyone has any clues as to what I was seeing please let me know.

Hey,
sometimes the signal gets carried on for long distances, but you can't use it. A good example is myself when I still had Sprint. I went from Borrego Springs, CA to the Salton Sea(Sprint doesn't have any cellsites in the Salton Sea area at all). On the way you have to drive through steep canyons, etc. but my Sprint signal never went away. When I was curious as to what the heck was going on I tried placing a call, but it wouldn't let me with a 3 out of 4 signal strength(My cousin who also had Sprint at the time wasn't able to place calls either even though she also had a strong signal). I was explained on this forum that this happens with wireless signals: They can travel for long distances(I can't remember what the term used for this is), but you are not able to use the signal...
That would be my only guess as to what might happen. Try it again tonight.
I've never heard of PCS Signals traveling 90 miles though...I mean they can travel far, especially in desert/flat areas, but you also mentioned foresty landscape...wierd, really!!!!

[Gamer03]

Originally posted by Andy84094:

Hey,
sometimes the signal gets carried on for long distances, but you can't use it. A good example is myself when I still had Sprint. I went from Borrego Springs, CA to the Salton Sea(Sprint doesn't have any cellsites in the Salton Sea area at all). On the way you have to drive through steep canyons, etc. but my Sprint signal never went away. When I was curious as to what the heck was going on I tried placing a call, but it wouldn't let me with a 3 out of 4 signal strength(My cousin who also had Sprint at the time wasn't able to place calls either even though she also had a strong signal). I was explained on this forum that this happens with wireless signals: They can travel for long distances(I can't remember what the term used for this is), but you are not able to use the signal...
That would be my only guess as to what might happen. Try it again tonight.
I've never heard of PCS Signals traveling 90 miles though...I mean they can travel far, especially in desert/flat areas, but you also mentioned foresty landscape...wierd, really!!!!

That is weird.

This is just a suggestion, but maybe jfr3021's phone was picking up a signal that far away due to sun spots [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif[/img]

Really that is just plain weird.

[reevejf]

Yea I cant think of any logical explanation as to why it happened. My signal was at like 103 db and with a noise level of about 25.0, it was coming in about the same as the VZW signal 6 miels away on SID 329 that it cant quite lock onto. But the only thing I could think of is some sort of buildout that is going on and it was turned on low power for testing reasons, especially since I could only get it at 2 am and not during the day. Enterprise is a fairly populated town and alot of Verizon users work in Enterprise and have to roam on Alltel. So possibly VZW decided to put 2 or 3 PCS towers over here just to take away some of the roaming because PCS is the only license they have here. Literally the 800 Mhz coverage area stops two miles from the city limits. So my phone bounces back and forth between VZW and Alltel constantly. I would assume any buildout would be part of SID 329 and not 4160. As for the Sprint (4654) coming thru thats just puzzling. Thanks for the input though.

[SNSE]

When carriers do maintenance at night, expecially if they are cutting in a new switch, sites will go down for a while, and what happens is you will see a site you never thought possible. The reason for that, is when the sites go down, suddenly the noise floor is very quiet, and those distant sites don't have anything getting in the way of the signal. Under normal circumstances, they would just be noise to the regular site......Hope that explains it a little better.

[Gamer03]

Originally posted by SNSE:

When carriers do maintenance at night, expecially if they are cutting in a new switch, sites will go down for a while, and what happens is you will see a site you never thought possible. The reason for that, is when the sites go down, suddenly the noise floor is very quiet, and those distant sites don't have anything getting in the way of the signal. Under normal circumstances, they would just be noise to the regular site......Hope that explains it a little better.

Thanks for the explanation, SNSE.

I learned something new today. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img][img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

[Andy]

Originally posted by: Gamer03

Thanks for the explanation, SNSE.

I learned something new today. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img][img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

Wow...that's interesting, I definitely learned something new today also, but how is it possible that a PCS Signal travels 90+ miles over tough terrain???

[SNSE]

Without the local site blasting away, there is no home signal for you to lock on to. I have seen a TDMA site here, when AWS bounced daily, that was 40+ miles away. I couldn't make a call, but I could see it. No home SID to lock onto, and no interference in between. Terrain can do interesting things to a radio signal. Propagation of a signal is not just "line of sight" or "umbrella" coverage within a certain radius. A lot of things can affect how, how far, how well, and so on.

[NYCDru]

This has also been noted on planes flying low altitudes. You can SEE the signal sure and it is week....cause NOITH?ING is in the way.