Phila P25 System

[copterdriver]

I know that the Fire Dept is on system 1 and Police are on system 2, but, does anyone know if the Police are the only users of the system 2 and everyone else is on system 1, If anyone has a breakdown could you please post. Thanks

[mikedel83]

This is DjDan's list he compiled I believe, the TAC fire bands are encrypted now I believe and are not able to be heard unless the encryption is not used.

ZONE 2
1- Far Northeast Dist 7 & 8*
3- Northeast Dist 2 &15*
5- North Central Dist 22*
7- Central Dist 6 & 9*
9- South Dist 1, 3 & 17*
11- Southwest Dist 12 & 18*
13- West 16 & 19*
15- North 14 & 35*
17- Northwest Dist 5 & 39*
19- East Dist 24 & 26
21- 25 Band
23- J Band*
25- T Band*
27- M Band
29- South 2 Band*
31- Special Event 1*
33- Special Event 2*

ZONE 1
237- North Fire*
239- South Fire*
241- North Medic*
243- South Medic*
245- South Tac 1
247- South Tac 2
249- South Tac 3
251- Fire Admin
253- North Tac 1
255- North Tac 2
257- North Tac 3
259- Fire All
261- PFD/PPD Interop 1*
263- PFD/PPD Interop 2*
265- Rescue Ops
267- Hazmat Ops
269- EOC 1
271- EOC 2
273- EOC 3
275- EOC 4
277- Airport Fire (Engine 78)

[ocguard]

I may be wrong, but someone along the way told me that the upgraded P25 system's zone breakdown was no longer by service (as it was with the Smartzone) but by geographical area, whereas, all city agencies share all frequencies, and the city is covered half-and-half by the two zones. Someone please elaborate if this is inaccurate.

[phillydjdan]

ocguard, the system is setup just like the old one, Zone 1 is fire and municpal, Zone 2 is ONLY police. There is too much traffic on the police side to have other agencies on with them, so they get a zone all to themselves...

[ocguard]

Originally Posted by phillydjdan

ocguard, the system is setup just like the old one, Zone 1 is fire and municpal, Zone 2 is ONLY police. There is too much traffic on the police side to have other agencies on with them, so they get a zone all to themselves...

Do both zones transmit from the same tower sites? It seems to me that this concept sort of defeats the purpose of a trunking system. If every channel is "busy" on the police zone, but there are numerous open channels on the fire zone, there's no way for the next call to fall over to the other zone. Anyhow, what do I know.

[phillydjdan]

I dont know how often that would happen, or if it does happen, but, yeah, you're right!

[pdw911]

So there isn't any reason to program in the the other "zone"??

Use PD zone for PD and fire zone for fire/municipal??

[W2GLD]

Yes there is... The system is designed to failover to each other in the event of a controller failure, system overload, etc. On the Uniden's, I'd program this as one system with the two sites, then just toss in all of the talkgroups you want to hear. It will scan both sites and provide the traffic based on where the talkgroup is currently affiliated. The same goes for the PSR-800 as it will scan all sites in the system on each pass. On the PSR-500/600 (and Radio Shack equivalent); you'll need to program two separate systems and assign them to one scan list. By doing it in this fashion, you'll never miss the action... I'd also spend the time, if you don't care about them and lock out the none-essential talkgroups such as PWG, PWD, PSD, etc. (assuming police and fire is what you desire most). Then turn on the search or wildcard mode and hear even more...

Originally Posted by pdw911

So there isn't any reason to program in the the other "zone"??

Use PD zone for PD and fire zone for fire/municipal??

[mikedel83]

Had a few questions that need clarification.

1. Correct me if I'm wrong but this system is based off of "repeaters" correct?

2. Also the weather can greatly effect scanner performance, correct? Atmospheric conditions can limit reception is what I would gather.

3. Different scanners like GRE and Uniden can get different reception levels in those conditions. Like last night for instance.

4. Scanning a system from South philly in Northeast philly would get less reception then if you were in South philly?

[W2GLD]

While this is mostly true, trunking systems are a different animal altogether. At anytime, a Project-25 system can borrow from other sites for load balancing. This is why the subscriber units (portables/mobiles) ONLY listen to what the control channel tells the radio to do. Same thing for your scanner. You're only listening to the control channel tell you which site to listen to for the given traffic you are looking to listen to. The old conventional repeater methodology does not apply to Project-25 trunking systems unless they are in "Site Trunking Mode", in which case ONLY those repeaters are that site will be active.

This system can dynamically move subscriber units around based on system load levels, zone controller failures, talkgroup affiliation per site, etc. Thus the need for a scanner user to monitor both system for all talkgroups; however, it is still true for the most part that fire and municipal services are contained within Zone 1 and police within Zone 2, but this can change at anytime for a number of different reasons.

Originally Posted by mikedel83

Had a few questions that need clarification.

1. Correct me if I'm wrong but this system is based off of "repeaters" correct?

2. Also the weather can greatly effect scanner performance, correct? Atmospheric conditions can limit reception is what I would gather.

3. Different scanners like GRE and Uniden can get different reception levels in those conditions. Like last night for instance.

4. Scanning a system from South philly in Northeast philly would get less reception then if you were in South philly?

[SuperPuma]

Originally Posted by phillydjdan

ocguard, the system is setup just like the old one, Zone 1 is fire and municpal, Zone 2 is ONLY police. There is too much traffic on the police side to have other agencies on with them, so they get a zone all to themselves...

And if you noticed Zone 2 has 5 more frequencies available for voice use than Zone 1.

[SuperPuma]

Originally Posted by phillydjdan

I dont know how often that would happen, or if it does happen, but, yeah, you're right!

Originally the police side did get frequent system busies, years ago.

That is why they added 5 extra voice channels to Zone 2 to alleviate the congestion and it appears to have worked.

[pdw911]

I can tell you..this has been a little frustrating

I got reasonably good reception with the legacy system (BCD996XT)

This system hasn't been so great...firmware upgrade and despite fooling with p25 adjust mode and levels etc (8 vs 11) (50 vs 100 or even 120)..at least for me the sweetest spot has been set the mode at 8 with the level at 100-120...maybe perception

What I found strange was that the reception "levels" were better for the Zone 1 than Zone 2...which shouldn't make sense if the towers are the same

I might be on the edge of the quality reception zone...I'll have to try monitoring each channel seperately to see if I can find a good channel and maybe diffuse any simulcast interference

[soberbyker]

Originally Posted by pdw911

So there isn't any reason to program in the the other "zone"??

Use PD zone for PD and fire zone for fire/municipal??

Not sure if this was done properly or makes sense, but what I did was set WIN500 to ignore encrypted channels, installed both zone sites (1&2) separately but on the same scan list with different LED colors for each zone on my Pro-197. On zone 2 I included "group & wildcards" on zone 1 I did not include "group & wildcards". I included all the talkgroups from zone 2 and only the ones I wanted from zone 2, like the sheriff and airport PD, and a few others. I did install the non encrypted dispatch for fire & ems but locked them out. So far I have heard the airport police ops once with this set-up and of course all the regular PD as well.

[johnnyc1021]

I have a GRE PSR-500. Had the Phila. Police perfect until they switched over. So now I guess my scanner is out of date? Or might there be some way of circumventing the Phase II TDMA.

[copterdriver]

I read something about the PSR 800 can only decode 2 channel or something like that and not 4 channel TDMA. Still looking into it. Don't know if Philly is 2 or 4.

[fourthhorseman]

Originally Posted by johnnyc1021

I have a GRE PSR-500. Had the Phila. Police perfect until they switched over. So now I guess my scanner is out of date? Or might there be some way of circumventing the Phase II TDMA.

with the 500 you should be able to just DL the new TRS info from the DB to win500 and import.

all i did for my 106 was i entered the 20 freqs for zone2 and put in a wildcard...wildcard started getting hits right away..

[fourthhorseman]

copter..not channel,Slots.
phillys on a 2Slot system.