Brevard County Rebanding

[kf4sek]

The latest I have heard is that the rebanding will be completed by August 31. This update comes from the East Central Florida Scanner Page.

[ElroyJetson]

Well, maybe. The radio techs went in to do a firmware update on the Palm Bay site about two weekends ago late one night, (planned outage) and they had to revert to the "old" firmware version because the system wouldn't work with the new firmware. Typical M/A-Com "We let our customers
be our beta testers" nonsense.

It is my sincere hope that Harris will put a stop to that sort of thing and thoroughly test new firmware for
all radios BEFORE releasing it to the field. Put a stop to the general rule "If you haven't updated your
M/A-Com firmware this month, you're out of date" that has pretty much defined the past few years.


I'm not putting the system down. It's good. But it seems that their firmware engineers are playing
a never-ending game of "whack-a-mole". Every time they hammer one glitch down, another pops up.
Fix one thing, something else in the firmware breaks.

Maybe they should let Sun Microsystems do their firmware.

Elroy

[kf4sek]

I know what you mean, Elroy. I was listening that night and they planned for a 3-hour upgrade time when consoles would be down and dispatch centers had to be on back-up. I was surprised to find out they had to pack it up after about an hour. I would have been angry. The poor radio techs. Going in to start the process and getting nothing accomplished. Hopefully they were on the clock and getting paid for the work.

[ElroyJetson]

I'm sure they were on the clock. I can imagine their frustration. I know most of the CII techs working Brevard County and they're a good bunch of guys, very knowledgeable, too.

Elroy

[khvfdff]

Wirelessly posted (LGE-VX9900/1.0 UP.Browser/6.2.3.2 (GUI) MMP/2.0)

if i program all the sites in as seperate systems will i be able to monitor all sites from titusville?

[ElroyJetson]

Probably not. Only the agencies that work across the whole county are carried on every site, such as BCSO and BCFR.

Palm Bay isn't on the Rockledge or Titusville sites, if I'm not mistaken. Melbourne isn' t on Titusville.

Titusville isn't on Palm Bay or Eau Gallie.

Cocoa Beach isn't on Palm Bay.

Et cetera...

Elroy

[khvfdff]

Wirelessly posted (LGE-VX9900/1.0 UP.Browser/6.2.3.2 (GUI) MMP/2.0)

ok. Will i be able to hear the other sites from titusville?

[ElroyJetson]

That's going to be entirely dependent on your antenna installation and receiver sensitivity.

Put a good high gain yagi up 40 feet and you'll be able to pick up the Palm Bay site if the
antenna is pointed correctly.

Rockledge shouldn't be much of a challenge to receive. Eau Gallie will need a little more work,
and Palm Bay will need a good antenna setup.

On a portable radio, you might get Rockledge from Titusville but Eau Gallie is probably out of the
question.

Elroy

[kf4sek]

I can get Eau Gallie at night sometimes. It is noisier than the Titusville and Rockledge sites, of course. I guess it depends on where I am at the time and how good conditions are.

[kf4sek]

Originally Posted by ElroyJetson

I'm sure they were on the clock. I can imagine their frustration. I know most of the CII techs working Brevard County and they're a good bunch of guys, very knowledgeable, too.

Elroy

I have never met any of them in person. I can imagine the training those guys go through to know what they know. My head would probably explode knowing half of what those guys know.

[ElroyJetson]

I heard an interesting message on the system today on countywide. It was a message to all PSAPs (Public Safety Access Points, meaning all public safety agencies) that an unknown logical ID had been
logged on the system on one of the alert channels, alert 1 I believe.

This isn't unknown. There very well could be a working radio or two in the county that are outside of the
county's control.

But what's interesting is that they didn't give the LID of the radio, but instead its ALIAS, which was for a BCSO patrol car. (Sorry, I don't recall exactly which one it was. I tried but my memory is not perfect.)

If they gave an alias for the LID, then they MUST have assigned that alias earlier to a specific LID.
But now they're calling it an unknown LID.

Sort of strange. I see two practical possibilities: A retired radio was powered back up by someone
to see if it worked, or someone programmed his own radio outside of the system and neglected to
ensure that it could not transmit, and picked that particular LID at random, most likely. With the
system having roughly 12,000 user IDs and just 16,380-odd valid LIDs, the odds of any given LID you
choose at random being an active one is about 3 out of 4.

It does show that they are watching the system closely for rogue radios. Anyone who may choose
to use a radio to scan should be extremely careful to avoid giving the radio any transmit capability
without authorization. If you want the ability to call the police in a real emergency, stick to the
conventional mutual aid channels. They will work for that purpose.

I have EDACS customers. I have the ability to program onto any EDACS system. But I never, EVER
program transmit capability into a radio without specific authorization, radio by radio.


Elroy

[gcr33]

I wonder why they did not just shut it down? If it was legit there would have been a call to the radio shop in minutes. If it's not it might just be a brick!!!

[ElroyJetson]

Rebanding of the Brevard system has been pushed back so it's not done until hurricane season is over, late in September. Apparently there are concerns that rebanding will introduce some technical difficulties which may compromise system availability and subscriber performance until they're worked out, and it's better to do this AFTER the hurricane season is gone.

This is sensible.

Also, given that there MAY have been a very substantial change regarding the county's primary radio service contractor's status in light of the acquisition of M/A-Com's two-way radio business by Harris Corporation, this may be an additional reason for rebanding to be delayed a bit.

[gcr33]

The hurricane thing sounds really fishy. Funny in other parts of the state plans are still in progress and some are done or being done.

Maybe they ran out of bread for the GE toaster radio system?

[ElroyJetson]

Brevard's EOC website (Yes, they have their own page) outlines the amended retuning schedule, in some detail.

Personally, I think it's actually a very smart thing to wait for the end of hurricane season to do the retuning and switchover. They've touched something like 12,000 radios so far in phase 1 of the rebanding project, and it would be too much to ask for a job of that magnitude to not show a few problems when the changeover is actually done.

I have no doubt the CII techs have exercised proper due diligence but there WILL be problems, and
radios that didn't get the first touch. Better to not have that happen during hurricane season.

The (possible) handover from CII's responsibility to Harris responsibility may also be a factor.
(You may be aware that I've picked up info that strongly suggests that CII's been kicked out by Harris,
but this is very much UNCONFIRMED and should be treated as an unsubstantiated rumor. Do not place any value on it until someone can post come confirmable information.)


Elroy

[gcr33]

Anyone in the CII area? If so take a look around their yard during the day and see if there are trucks in the yard? It's Harris's backyard so perhaps they want to play with it themselves.

[ElroyJetson]

Possibly.

I do know that since I first heard word of this possible change, I have not yet heard a single transmission
on any of CII's talkgroups. Usually they're very busy, especially in the morning and around quitting time.


Elroy

[ElroyJetson]

The Eau Gallie site (AKA Lansing site) has been rebanded. The system is operating on the rebanded frequencies.

Elroy

[Bill1426]

Here are the New Freqs and Location for the Melbourne Antenna.

10 853.8875
11 852.4000
12 852.6500
13 852.7875
14 852.9000
15 852.1125
16 852.2875
17 852.1500c

Thanks to the
East Central Florida Scanner Website

[DeKP]

I'm a little confused. Does this mean I should go into freescan, change the freqs & re-program for that site?
tnx,
keith