Middlesex County Edacs

[CM1]

Council voted last night to join the Middlesex County Radio System.
Rumor has it the PD is pushing for fulltime ENC.

[robbinsj2]

Originally Posted by CM1

Council voted last night to join the Middlesex County Radio System.

For what, all services? PD/FD/EMS/DPW/Municipal services?

Jim

[CM1]

From what I can gather it will be ALL services.Guess time will tell.

[TAMR213]

Originally Posted by CM1

Council voted last night to join the Middlesex County Radio System.
Rumor has it the PD is pushing for fulltime ENC.

Once again I don't see what the point of this is. Listening yesterday afternoon, the big "call" was a report of someone flying an American Flag upside down, the officer then responded and talked with the resident (not that I support it, but since when is that illegal?). Then the night before yesterday, it was kids playing football in the street and being loud. Demonstrates a real need for ENC...

Also interesting since the FD is currently on the East Brunswick TRS.

[W2SJW]

MPD is a joke - don't even get me started on them!

My best friend was the Chief of the Franklin-Somerset FAS until he moved after getting married. One of the PD supervisory officers (not sure if Sgt or Lt) found out during a mutual-aid call that he had the MPD main channel in his XTS5000 & flipped-***** on him over it.

He made him de-program their channel & bring his radio back to prove he didn't have the channel in there anymore...

[SnakeEater9920]

Speaking of Middlesex EDACS, I just took them out of my scanner altogether. There's never anything good to listen to (Unless you enjoy hearing the Health Department, DOT, DPW and other small stuff) I don't see why all these groups went encrypted. I honestly think It's just a waste of taxpayer money. More scanner memory for me! Although...doubtful I'll ever use all 25k channels....

But oh well. It was interesting to listen to before the ENC era.

[SnakeEater9920]

Speaking of Middlesex EDACS, I just took them out of my scanner altogether. There's never anything good to listen to (Unless you enjoy hearing the Health Department, DOT, DPW and other small stuff) I honestly don't see why all these groups went encrypted. I honestly think It's just a waste of taxpayer money. More scanner memory for me! Although...doubtful I'll ever use all 25k channels....

But oh well. It was interesting to listen to before the ENC era.

[Highpockets]

Originally Posted by W2SJW

MPD is a joke - don't even get me started on them!

My best friend was the Chief of the Franklin-Somerset FAS until he moved after getting married. One of the PD supervisory officers (not sure if Sgt or Lt) found out during a mutual-aid call that he had the MPD main channel in his XTS5000 & flipped-***** on him over it.

He made him de-program their channel & bring his radio back to prove he didn't have the channel in there anymore...

In our town it's the line officers that want encryption, the chief was leaning only encrypt certain stuff, I guess he gave in. Some of the cops don't encrypt because their wifes listen at home. This town has changed over the years, I ran into our Mayor one day and asked him about it, he said he get back to me, he never did!

[CM1]

Originally Posted by TAMR213

...Also interesting since the FD is currently on the East Brunswick TRS.

Some changes coming down for East Brunswick too. I heard they are upgrading their TRS to P25 Digital Phase II.

[mredding]

Originally Posted by CM1

Some changes coming down for East Brunswick too. I heard they are upgrading their TRS to P25 Digital Phase II.

East Brunswick's changes are likely to accelerate now. The original target date was pushed back temporarily because of the T-band nonsense. The FCC apparently was holding off on processing applications related to T-band frequencies. The modification to WIL536, adding sites at the Yates Rd Water Tower and the Municipal Parking Garage on Old Bridge Turnpike and changing emissions, was approved August 8th. Last I heard the infrastructure equipment was purchased and sitting in the dealer's warehouse. Emission designators 9K80D7W (P25 Phase II fixed-end 2-slot TDMA H-DQPSK) 8K10F1E (P25 Phase I C4FM voice) and 8K10F1D (P25 Phase I C4FM data) are now on the license.

Frankly, given what may be happening on T-Band, being on the county system might make sense for Milltown when compared to buying new 500 Mhz P25 radios that might become obsolete within a few years. I am confused, however. What's the deal with county EDACS versus the supposed new P25 county system? I guess Harris or somebody makes 7/800 Mhz radios that do both EDACS & P25 and everyone will switch over in the future? Or am I way off?

[W2SJW]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9930; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.580 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

Go to their site & check out the P7300 portable - it's a dual-band radio that does everything except Motorola (I mentioned this in the Union Twp thread, as they recently bought those radios).

[GM]

As Scott said, it does almost everything except Motorola and LTR trunking. The County Fire Marshal's office and Highland Park Police are currently using P7300 portables.

And regarding the County's future 700 MHz TRS that will eventually replace the 800 MHz EDACS system, it is currently undecided if it will go to the P25 Phase 2 format or the dreaded OpenSky 2 format from what I have heard. Either way, the P7300 portables (and their counterpart mobile and base stations) will be able to handle either format with just a programming change.

[mredding]

Aha! Thanks to both of you.

[RadioDitch]

Originally Posted by GM

As Scott said, it does almost everything except Motorola and LTR trunking. The County Fire Marshal's office and Highland Park Police are currently using P7300 portables.

And regarding the County's future 700 MHz TRS that will eventually replace the 800 MHz EDACS system, it is currently undecided if it will go to the P25 Phase 2 format or the dreaded OpenSky 2 format from what I have heard. Either way, the P7300 portables (and their counterpart mobile and base stations) will be able to handle either format with just a programming change.

I keep hearing the same thing, from very reliable, involved sources, that any 700MHz-TRS that includes money from the NJ Homeland Security grant for these county/state interop 700MHz systems, has to be P25 Phase II at completion of build-out. Apparently it was a condition of the grant.

[W2SJW]

That is 100% correct!

[W2SJW]

I just saw the updates to the P25 page for the county in the database - have we confirmed a P25 CC now? Not sure if I'm close enough to hear from my place...

[SnakeEater9920]

Originally Posted by W2SJW

I just saw the updates to the P25 page for the county in the database - have we confirmed a P25 CC now? Not sure if I'm close enough to hear from my place...

I have it programmed into my scanner now. No control channel coming over the air in manual mode. At least from where I am in northern Middlesex County. Should be able to hear it from here.

[Tac-1]

P7300 Portable Spec

http://www.pspc.harris.com/media/ECR...cm27-11040.pdf

[CM1]

As of yesterday I still haven't heard a single thing on any of the frequencies - definitely not a control channel here either - and I'm in middle of things and been waiting to hear something.

I did see that the county requested an extension of time on the build out till the end of 2013 (check out the formal extension in the FCC ULS records for further details) There is even an attachment that spells things out...basically it sounds like funding is the hold-up (shocking I know LOL).

No word yet on if the extension was granted.

[CM1]

UPDATE: Extension for build-out granted till 12-31-2014