LCRA - San Antonio

Any traffic on San Antonio LCRA site? Is it up and running yet?

I checked for it about 2 weeks ago (manually looking for a control channel) and heard nothing, but I'm trying from the airport.

I personally don't think an LCRA site will ever show up in San Antonio. There isn't anything in the city that is serviced by the LCRA so there isn't a coverage requirement. I suspect the license we saw was a forward thinking action (many years ago) by LCRA to move interoperability into SA on the 900 system when they were actively searching for users on their system.

With the p25 overlay being deployed, rest assured that a 900 expansion into sa isn't going to happen.

I added the site in hopes somebody would give it a go, but suspected the site wasn't up. LCRA is usually pretty good about keeping their FCC licenses in sync with actual usage. This license is set to expire on 06/12/2013.

Are there any links between the SA/Bexar system and LCRA now? How do they currently interop with neighboring agencies/counties on LCRA? I expect the new SAUA P25 system is intended to fill this need in the future, though very little has occurred since the first 13 sites were installed and tested a couple of months ago. Have any links been tested between SAUA and SA/Bexar? I sure would like to see more info on the San Antonio sites for SAUA.

Russell said:

Are there any links between the SA/Bexar system and LCRA now? How do they currently interop with neighboring agencies/counties on LCRA?

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Russell,

I want to say about a year, to a year and a half ago, I heard some techs on the SA/Bexar system in analog on the Gold simulcast doing some testing of Nextel Patch into the SA/Bexar EDACS, and I want to say it was either on a Zone 7 interagency talkgroup or it was on a Zone 8 Fed/Interop talkgroup. I think there were actually 3 techs involved, one actually on the Nextel phone calling into the radio system on that talkgroup; a second tech located somewhere around the repeater hardware as he was making physical audio adjustments, and then there was a third tech talking to them both, who later on towards the end of their testing session revealed that he was actually in Comal County and talking on an LCRA radio to them. This was the first time I had heard about this connectivity at all, and apparently it wasn't anything unusual or special seeing as this third technician was calling in to hear the other techs tweaking the Nextel patches on the SA/Bexar EDACS.

To answer your second question, there isn't much in the way of need for interop between Bexar Co and neighboring counties/agencies because there really isn't any public safety in this small geographical area that borders Bexar that is on LCRA. I can tell you this, any time NBPD has to do anything with Schertz, Selma, Live Oak, and San Antonio, the NB dispatcher gets on the phone with those agencies dispatches, and NBPD continues their chase. Also, I do know that at least some of the LCRA sites contain crossband/repeaters for TX LAW 1 and the like, as I heard a manhunt once with NBPD working with DPS on the north side of town. I had one of my vhf radios sitting on TX Law 1, then also had UniTrunker running on the NB site, then had another scanner setting on the talkgroup NBPD was using. Everything I was hearing on the vhf frequency, I was hearing on the 900 MHz system as well and vice versa. How widespread this capability is, there's no telling.

I also think that nothing will become of this 900MHz site.

Awhile back I was perusing the LCRA site and was searching for customers of their radio service. I came up with a comprehensive list by County, and included the list in the LCRA Wiki page I created. I made the assumption that since AACOG, Bexar County, City of Fair Oaks Ranch and SAFD were customers, that these (900MHz radios) were going to be utilized, if needed , to support a mutual aid fire situation or to assist Kendall County/Boerne (since Fair Oaks Ranch is out that way, almost to Kendall County). That is the only reasoning I could come up with.

With SAUA coming in to play I'm hoping we can confirm a test between SAUA+LCRA (those two are definitely linked) +SA EDACS (an analog talkgroup, not PV). If we could catch a test between these 3 systems it'd be an almost certain bet that nothing would become of the SA 900MHz site. This would give San Antonio a back gate to P25 interoperability with Austin. However, besides being able to patch an analog EDACS talkgroup to another analog EDACS talkgroup (SA>LCRA) I wonder if San Antonio is going to try to fulfill any other interoperability "requirements."

As I posted in the new LCRA thread, an NBFD Asst. Chief indicated to me that it looks like the majority of AACOG will go VHF P25 TRSs and that New B would follow AACOG. How San Antonio will influence this I don't know.

We might need to do a search for an LCRA site in San Antonio again. I was listening to my New Braunfels Fire Department feed today at work, and heard Medic 5 say they "out at Wilford Hall."

I'm not saying definitively that they were using an LCRA site in San Antonio, but that sure is a long way to be using the Comal (027), New Braunfels (007), or the Kendall (103) sites. Again, I'm not saying there is one up in San Antonio, but a search of the 930MHz area wouldn't hurt.

I just checked, nothing in San Antonio. They were probably hitting the Comal Site.

Thanks Lindsay. Good to know. I can get the Comal Site spotty near SAT with a scanner. I need to bring the LPE in to see how well a true system handheld would receive it.

As David mentioned above, SA and LCRA have patched before, but I would bet that wasn't the case today, and as you said they were hitting the Comal Site.

Although hitting it from Wilford Hall would be a stretch, using a mobile Orion mounted in the ambulance might not be to difficult. I get the Comal site pretty OK into my location here in Stone Oak / just off 1604. I suspect further down into the "valley" of SA where Wilford Hall is, it is entirely possible for some sporadic coverage to make it's way there.