Rockbridge P25 phase 2

Rockbridge is getting ready to go live at the beginning of February on our new phase 2 system. We’ve started getting some of the TGs uploaded to RR, still a work in progress. All signs point to it being a very good system (at least on the user end), and a much needed improvement to the county. Will update if things change.

lexmedic157 said:

Rockbridge is getting ready to go live at the beginning of February on our new phase 2 system. We’ve started getting some of the TGs uploaded to RR, still a work in progress. All signs point to it being a very good system (at least on the user end), and a much needed improvement to the county. Will update if things change.

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David, look forward to seeing your data. Several of us have been listening to the system as it was being built out.

Mark KB4CVN
Amherst County

What scanner is everyone using ?? and results

I have a handful of BCD996P2's and they work just fine. Though, they aren't mobile. I use a HomePatrol 2 in my truck and it seems to do ok as well.

So far it sounds excellent here in Clifton. Glad to hear its going well for you all. I've picked up the North Mountain site a while back before they did additional work on it all the way to the 17 mile marker on 64 continuous.

Add
9208 Company 10 Private
9302 Company 9 Alert
9318 Rescue 1 Alert

They do a lot of "Test, test" but very little "Test on such and such" to give a clue.
So far I'm up to 548 RIDs and 95 talk groups. They just added five a couple of days ago.

I'm curious just how much will be on the new system. Do you know off hand? As in just PS or will PW, schools and such be on it too?

Do you know what the new 8097-8101 talk groups are that popped up a week or so ago? They all started out in the clear then all but one went encrypted. Fire units were on using them. Also just how much is going to be encrypted would be something of interest to know.

It looks like Sheriff 1 and Fire Ops 1 were in use yesterday for the event you had. I also heard a couple units on Command Ops testing and identifying it as such.

The groups identified as Sheriff 1 was entirely encrypted. I really hope dispatch doesn't remain that way if that's the dispatch channel.

As to scanners here mostly I listen on the 536.

Anyway thanks for the update

So, the new system will include Fire, EMS, LE, WLU public safety and eventually the Natural Bridge. I haven’t posted all of the LE talkgroups, but there are several per dept and many of them are encrypted. I have all of the page talkgroups, but I hadn’t planned on posting them. Every Fire/EMS dept has a private talkgroup as well. The typical SO dispatch isn’t encrypted but for this weekend’s event all of the tactical information will be.

Last night a Lexington officer told another one to use their portable and switch to the private channel. That came up on 8002 and E.

Yeah, it’s the sheriff’s office “tac” encrypted TG. I made and adjustment to the list the other day. Should be up in a day or two. At this point, they’re just playing around with the new system.

lexmedic157 said:

So, the new system will include Fire, EMS, LE, WLU public safety and eventually the Natural Bridge. I haven’t posted all of the LE talkgroups, but there are several per dept and many of them are encrypted. I have all of the page talkgroups, but I hadn’t planned on posting them. Every Fire/EMS dept has a private talkgroup as well. The typical SO dispatch isn’t encrypted but for this weekend’s event all of the tactical information will be.

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Thanks for the info. Its good to hear that routine dispatch will be in the clear after all even if they are getting a bunch of encrypted stuff.

Will look forward to more info showing up.

randy6800 said:

Last night a Lexington officer told another one to use their portable and switch to the private channel. That came up on 8002 and E.

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Yes have picked two units talking late at night on 8002 on several occasions over the last few days. One is Rockbridge 11 while the other I haven't identified yet. RID is 5785059.

lexmedic157 said:

Yeah, it’s the sheriff’s office “tac” encrypted TG. I made and adjustment to the list the other day. Should be up in a day or two. At this point, they’re just playing around with the new system.

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Saw the updated list. I'm curious 8011 had previously been identified by someone as Sheriff 2 and 8015 had been identified as Sheriff 3. The new list shows 8003 as Sheriff 2 and 8004 as Sheriff 3 now.

Do you know what the original ones are? (8011 and 8015) They were almost always encrypted. Although a short while ago someone was on 8011 in the clear but just key ups though.

Also 8006 is Sheriff Event 3 not sure where Event 1 and 2 will be considering the new list.

Also they added a bunch of Patch talk groups yesterday. 65106 continuous to 65144.

The other site has been connected finally in the last week. Its now showing as a peer where before it didn't.

Its too bad non-PS stuff won't be on the system as well. I wonder if they'll do like Charlottesville and put a talk group up for SIRS full time. I know they use SIRS quite frequently on 39.54.

I'm also wondering if once they switch over if they'll add the old analog frequencies into the system to increase capacity. I do notice a lot of "Busy" messages when multiple people are talking or talking with data mixed in. There is a lot of data traffic which seems to use up resources.

Patch talk groups ended out the week at 65101-65168

Added a couple more talk groups in the 8000 and 9300 range as well.

All told up to 172 talk groups.

Ghstwolf62 said:

Patch talk groups ended out the week at 65101-65168

Added a couple more talk groups in the 8000 and 9300 range as well.

All told up to 172 talk groups.

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Minus the Patch groups, how many actual groups?

Most (all?) newbie System Administrators go 'talkgroup happy' and assign several times more talkgroups than anyone will actually use.

IE: total of 250 talkgroups in the system. Actual system usage is only 25 or 30 talkgroups.

I have seen it happen dozens of times over the past 25 years...

As far as I know, each of the LE depts have around 4-8 TG's. For the SO about half are encrypted, DTF, Admin, SWAT, etc. and the PD's have 2 encrypted. F/R has around around 20 TGs, not including the interop patched ones. Each of the F/R depts have a paging and private TG, so that's another ~30. I've been working on the F/R side having a algorithm for TG usage. It all, of course, has to be approved by the brass. The result of TG's available are what the various agencies "required..." I think in actuality, far less will be used on a daily basis. On the F/R side, the extra TG's will be there for expanding incidents, but for the most part, around 4 will be used.

lexmedic157 said:

As far as I know, each of the LE depts have around 4-8 TG's. For the SO about half are encrypted, DTF, Admin, SWAT, etc. and the PD's have 2 encrypted. F/R has around around 20 TGs, not including the interop patched ones. Each of the F/R depts have a paging and private TG, so that's another ~30. I've been working on the F/R side having a algorithm for TG usage. It all, of course, has to be approved by the brass. The result of TG's available are what the various agencies "required..." I think in actuality, far less will be used on a daily basis. On the F/R side, the extra TG's will be there for expanding incidents, but for the most part, around 4 will be used.

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Thanks.

Before I retired, I did the Centralize Fleetmapping for all new Harris P25 systems being installed (2009 to 2012), and if the customer paid for it, I also wrote all of their personality files to get them going.

Customer's often get carried away with trunked talkgroups, often to the total confusion of the First Responder.



I still have a copy of a presentation I used when meeting with customers if anyone wants it. ~300k PDF file zipped.
Anyone on the forum can PM me with your e-mail address if you want a copy. It is an interesting read for anyone not familiar with Fleetmapping a P25 system.

Yeah, I wanted to submit a regional usage model for the new system. I can’t do anything about LE usage, but just didn’t want, 1, to have the dispatchers having to monitor a boatload of TGs, and 2, make it fairly simple for the users, who, in reality will generally not be using a radio all that often. So, as it stand now, most all of F/R will be on 3 TGs.

Minus the Patch talk groups, the Radio Tech talk groups and the three 655 talk groups there are 90 main talk groups so far on the system. 3 more were added in the last week.

13 Radio Tech talk groups including 4 new ones in the last week and the 67 Patch groups.

Have everything set out in a spreadsheet to keep track of groups with their names as they are discovered, RIDs and unit/RID matches.

556 RIDs.

There are more UID's than 556, I programmed 505 portables that are just for F/R. Lol

lexmedic157 said:

There are more UID's than 556, I programmed 505 portables that are just for F/R. Lol

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I'm sure there are. There may well be more talk groups than I have as well.

The problem is I have no access to "Inside info" so all I can do is report what I've discovered so far and that is 556 RIDs and 90 main talk groups plus the others mentioned. I'd love to have all the info but I don't so its a process of discovery and that is why I post "Updates" to what has been discovered so far. That doesn't mean that's all there is.

I have been monitoring the system since before the North Mountain site went live and using DSDPlus, Unitrunker and Proscan to do it and that is the info I've amassed to this point. And while there is no doubt more what I posted is all that has shown up on the system so far.

As I discover more I'll update it accordingly.

Couple the data info with recordings of all traffic and it is slowly providing info on the system for those who don't know everything. If you'd like to provide "All" the info feel free