lambton county fire looking for new radio system

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Muxlow

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During the summer i was talking with a Labton fire fighter and he made mention they were going to Trbo.

Since sarnia fire, transit and PW are trbo dont seem like much of a stretch. Couple sites maybe IP site connect.

Their current system is just VHF radios and EDACs gear in the trucks to act as repeaters for the wide area coverage.

I can say the EDACS system is on its last leg. Couple times this year the Wallaceburg CACC who dispatched lambton county fire/ems couldnt get a hold of a few stations via pager or the radio. Few times iv herd calls and one station cant talk to another, or they can copy each other but dispatch dont hear a thing. Pages fail and calls dont get paged and dispatch has to call the station by phone. Lambton county is 1 of 3 edacs systems left in ontario.. and i wont be sad to see it go
 
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VE3JSO

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During the summer i was talking with a Labton fire fighter and he made mention they were going to Trbo.

Since sarnia fire, transit and PW are trbo dont seem like much of a stretch. Couple sites maybe IP site connect.

Their current system is just VHF radios and EDACs gear in the trucks to act as repeaters for the wide area coverage.

I can say the EDACS system is on its last leg. Couple times this year the Wallaceburg CACC who dispatched lambton county fire/ems couldnt get a hold of a few stations via pager or the radio. Few times iv herd calls and one station cant talk to another, or they can copy each other but dispatch dont hear a thing. Pages fail and calls dont get paged and dispatch has to call the station by phone. Lambton county is 1 of 3 edacs systems left in ontario.. and i wont be sad to see it go

it could be possible that they will go trbo i hope they don't i was talking to a sarnia official and the trbo radios they use has range issues like to many dead spots unlike their last radios that they used i recommend that the county and sarnia fire go to p25 where they can be patched into sarnia fire sarnia police and maybe make it easier to patch into opp if it is needed like the michigan p25 system
 

Forts

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TRBO patches in just as easy as anything else (Western university campus police in London are TRBO and have no issues being patched in with London police). This migration has been in the works since at least the spring. It was brought up at one of the county fire chiefs meetings that a new system should be investigated.

Every radio system will have dead spots, it's how you work around them. Here in Strathroy our analog system has several known dead spots... If you key up and you can't hit the repeater you either change locations or move to a simplex TAC channel to reach command.

Many fire departments are embracing TRBO it seems. Sarnia fire was one of the first around here. Now several Essex County departments are TRBO as well as Exeter/South Huron and very soon all of Elgin County. I've been listening to the coverage testing in Elgin (all done with portables) and it sounds excellent.
 

Forts

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Looks very similar to what Elgin County is now using... Simulcast DMR with analog paging. The big sticking point with the Lambton upgrade is cost. Several of the departments have said they really don't have any issues with the current system and don't want to be 'forced' into spending hundreds of thousands to upgrade. From the wording of that document is almost sounds like the system is a go and whoever doesn't join will be stuck out on their own.
 

VE3JSO

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for the system that what i thought just a little confused i heard it was a go then i heard it was put on hold it will be interesting to see what happens within a year or two to see if they get the system up and running
 

Muxlow

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Was told it would be ready for the end of 2016.. But there was some delays so now 2017

The pager system will be the first to change i think they said. Rather then say.. Petrolia. They get pages out off the tower in their area. if you are in forest you wont hear the page. Each dept is paged off a local tower.. watford, alvinstin oil springs are all done on the same tower. Again if you are not in that area you dont hear the page. So thats changing to how Middlesex does it.. Page goes out and all the repeaters active so dont matter where you are in the county

Spectrum has to get rid of the junk kenwood radios from all the departments.. although iv seen some depts have a mix of XPR4550 and 5550's in their trucks and 6550's for portables. Point Edward has NX200 NXDN's for portables.. but no digital channels in it.
 

Wernham

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will any digital trunk radio be able to pick this up? I am getting back into scanning and wondering what is the best economy scanner to monitor OPP and EMS and Fire in the area for Lambton and Chatham kent
 

Forts

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No, there isn't a scanner on the market that will do DMR/MotoTRBO. OPP & EMS can be done with any P25 trunking scanner but Chatham Kent police can only be scanned with a BCD436/536 with the ProVoice paid addon. The new Lambton system is still likely better part of a year away from coming online.
 

Muxlow

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Little update.

Most if not all lambton county fire depts have new radios now. Motorola XPR7550 portables and XPR5550 mobiles. The system will be setup much like Elgin County fire.

The paging frequency will be patched with Ops 1 on the TRBO system so fire fighters responding can hear when the trucks are responding and whatnot on their pagers still. Once the 1st truck is on scene they go to a simplex TRBO Tac channel and the VHF pager link will be closed. OPS-2 will be used for IC to communicate to dispatch to not tie up OPS-1 for other fire depts

Im told April ish of 2017 we will make the switch to digital. No word as of encryption but my guess would be they wont turn that junk on
 
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