System Scanning

[zerobleu]

Greetings,

In an attempt to increase interoperability between our EDACS system and an adjacent Motorola P25 system one of our user agencies has purchased licenses to program the P25 system into their P7100's. I am wondering if there is a way for our users to have our EDACS system selected but also be scanning the P25 system that is programmed into their radio? I've read through some of the help file in RPM and am slightly confused as the help files mention WA SCAN, ProScan and System Scan all referencing each other. We've been told this is not possible but I find it slightly difficult to believe and hope you all can help...

Thanks in advance!

[mitaux8030]

Not sure if I can help with scanning two systems, one P25, one EDACS.
But WA Scan is where you can specify 'neighbouring' systems to scan if you loose signal from your selected system. Don't know if you can specify a mix of systems with WA Scan though.
ProScan is a more intelligent auto-roam feature where the radio will sample other neighbouring systems and switch to the best one before the signal degrades too far. The difference between WA scan here is that WA scan needs to loose the signal before it jumps into action and when it does, it just selects teh very first signal it comes across; ProScan will work before the signal is lost and it will make an intelligent decision as to the best system to jump to. In theory. Again, I don't know if you can specify a mix of P25 & EDACS for your neighbour candidates.
System Scan is a generic term for ProScan, and its earlier derivitive ProSound and the later algorithm ProRoam. WA Scan can be thought of as a form of system scan, but the big difference is that the user can't turn off WA scan (if programmed).

[EnidPuceflange]

The biggest problem they are going to have is not radio based - it's back haul. Unless there's a path between the systems, the users on the P25T site will be isolated from the ones on the EDACS system, and they would have no indication that was the case. One solution is to run a mobile on a conventional interface from the IMC that's logged onto the P25T site, another would be to use the Network First stuff, but it's not a simple task to make it happen, and it is going to be expensive .

Anyway, that aside the radios don't as they stand support roaming between protocols - you can't just program it up using ProGrammer or RPM. I suspect that what MIGHT work would be to use an SC4 file and add the P25T site to the WA SCAN list of the EDACS site, and vice versa - but you'd have to work with TAC on that one.

[greenthumb]

Scanning multiple trunked systems is not recommended in a public safety environment since calls (or portions of calls) on the dispatch channel can be missed when the radio leaves the control channel of their dispatch system to scan a different one.

Neither ProScan or WA scan will help you since those are functions used in EDACS to scan between sites on an EDACS system. My understanding is that when a radio is using an EDACS system, the radio software does not support scanning a P25 system or roaming to a P25 system and vice-versa.

[Marty-Bishop]

No, the Macom/Harris radios can only scan one

Your options are;
1. Purchase scanners that can scan both P25 and EDACS.
2. Set up a patch using one talk group from the EDACS to on talk group on the P25 system.

[zerobleu]

Thanks for the replies!

[HarrisRF]

I recently added York County P25(harris) and Dauphin County P25(moto) to my Lebanon County P7100EDACS radios. Everything works well, but you cannot scan into different protocols. If im on EDACS, thats it, only edacs.