HCRRS P25 Thread

[slatescan]

just thought i would put this up so everyone in texas can dicuss this TRS Being rolled out

when i do come dwon to housten (if i ever do) what sites and TGs shound I program in


aslo is this going to cover a lot of the state of texas ? i hear this TRS has some sites in parker county near dallas

[texasemt13]

Originally Posted by slatescan

...(if i ever do)...

Really?

P.S. It's Houston.

[slatescan]

i am disabled. i knew i mispelled houston


been thionking about makeing a trip dwon there in a few years i really want to see the city

[motorola_otaku]

Bumping this thread because I didn't know where else to put it:

TGID 681 is another radio tech talkgroup, possibly used by Austin County. I've heard guys talking about testing the new APX7000 radios, and one guy mentioned forcing his radio to the Cat Springs tower.

[slatescan]

nice so Austin county should be on soon,

i have heard that SA and LCRA is going p25 and the midland area too. be intining what Sy ID's pop up for those two.


and did i hear right that Parker Co in the Dallas area on this TRS now?

[davidbond21]

Originally Posted by slatescan

nice so Austin county should be on soon,

i have heard that SA and LCRA is going p25 and the midland area too. be intining what Sy ID's pop up for those two.


and did i hear right that Parker Co in the Dallas area on this TRS now?

I doubt San Antonio will be going P-25 any time in the foreseeable future, as they have spent much time and even more money installing their ProVoice EDACS system the past 5 or 6 years. Not to mention, at least in my opinion, ProVoice I think offers superior audio quality to P-25.

The LCRA EDACS system is even more doubtful as far as P-25 goes; besides the obvious enormous costs to upgrade the 32 county wide infrastructure and replace all the subscriber radios with digital capable ones, to my knowledge there aren't even any manufacturers who produce a 900 MHz P-25 radio in the first place.

[mfn002]

If HCRRS is going to go statewide, I have not heard anything about a proposal for my area to join this system. In fact, we are in the process of creating our own regional system, the Brazos Valley Wide Area Network (BVWAN), which would consolodate the three major trunked systems here in Brazos County (Bryan/Brazos County, College Station, and Texas A&M University) and possibly grow to cover surrounding counties (Robertson to the north, Burleson to the west, and Washington to the south. Our neighboring county to the east, Grimes, however, has stated that they would not join any trunked system--HCRRS or BVWAN).

[rattlerbb01]

Originally Posted by mfn002

If HCRRS is going to go statewide, I have not heard anything about a proposal for my area to join this system. In fact, we are in the process of creating our own regional system, the Brazos Valley Wide Area Network (BVWAN), which would consolodate the three major trunked systems here in Brazos County (Bryan/Brazos County, College Station, and Texas A&M University) and possibly grow to cover surrounding counties (Robertson to the north, Burleson to the west, and Washington to the south. Our neighboring county to the east, Grimes, however, has stated that they would not join any trunked system--HCRRS or BVWAN).

Check TAMUs radio system webpage. They are saying that once the buildout of the new digital system covering Brazos and Washington counties is complete, the system controller will be shared by HCRRS and BVWACS (or WAN) at the Tomball controller. As far as Grimes County is concerned, they are not going to cough up any money to help build this system. They aren't against trunking, but the status quo works fine for now. What else would you expect from a county that can't keep a road and bridge manager, give its deputies and jailers much needed pay raises to get them off the breadlines, etc... I could go on and on, I sometimes wonder where the heck all our county tax money goes to. No paved county roads in the north 2/3 of the county, a jail close to overcrowding, county employees making horrible salaries for their hard work, old haphazard county annexes. I'm done.

[slatescan]

so i saw the boatload of interop groups, so looks like HCRRS will be linked with MWIN and LWIN,


i can see more links comming.


any coutines close to getting on whos next to come on?

[slatescan]

Texas DPS in Montgomery Co Matagona Gen Hosptel and Montgomery co PW are now on this TRS according to the latest database update if you are in those areas put the new tgs in.

[motorola_otaku]

Originally Posted by davidbond21

..to my knowledge there aren't even any manufacturers who produce a 900 MHz P-25 radio in the first place.

This at least is incorrect. Motorola does make the XTS2500 portable in 900 MHz with P25 available as a flash option. A couple of guys on Batlabs have them, and as one guy put it they were "cheap and plentiful" at the Dayton hamfest this year. I have also personally seen an XTL1500 mobile in 900 MHz.

Now as for LCRA dumping their EDACS infrastructure and switching to P25.. who knows? Stranger things have happened.

[texasemt13]

Originally Posted by motorola_otaku

Now as for LCRA dumping their EDACS infrastructure and switching to P25.. who knows? Stranger things have happened.

Agreed stranger things have happened, but I've logged over 2500+ unique users on only one site of the LCRA TRS. To switch every LPE200 portable out (even if P25 flash is an option- not up to speed on those), not to mention the mobiles, would take an enormous amount of time and money. IF they were able to update their MA/COMs it would take months (I've logged less than 20 confirmed radio techs), if they were to go the route of different radios I would see it taking years.

Why would they switch to P25 when they can already manage P25 patches, demodulated to analog, and perform their "interop" that way? I don't see the need/point.

[davidbond21]

Originally Posted by motorola_otaku

This at least is incorrect. Motorola does make the XTS2500 portable in 900 MHz with P25 available as a flash option. A couple of guys on Batlabs have them, and as one guy put it they were "cheap and plentiful" at the Dayton hamfest this year. I have also personally seen an XTL1500 mobile in 900 MHz.

I must say then that I stand corrected, and as a ham, that's awesome. I've had some interest in using the 33cm band(no radios as of yet) and the fact there are digital radios out there is promising(my buddy and I have been using 2m P25 and it's great). I wonder what the band splits of those XTS/XTL's are though, because I believe for 900 MHz Public Safety trunked it's 896-901/935-940 MHz, and 33cm is sandwiched right in between there.

I guess also have to eat my hat, because there was a member on here not too long ago selling an 900 MHz Orion EDACS radio that had ProVoice installed, so I guess there really are digital(IMBE at least) 900 MHz radios out there.

Originally Posted by texasemt13

Agreed stranger things have happened, but I've logged over 2500+ unique users on only one site of the LCRA TRS. To switch every LPE200 portable out (even if P25 flash is an option- not up to speed on those), not to mention the mobiles, would take an enormous amount of time and money. IF they were able to update their MA/COMs it would take months (I've logged less than 20 confirmed radio techs), if they were to go the route of different radios I would see it taking years.

Why would they switch to P25 when they can already manage P25 patches, demodulated to analog, and perform their "interop" that way? I don't see the need/point.

While you're right about the expenses that would be incurred upgrading all the subscriber units, I think you missed the larger, and maybe equally expensive task of replacing all the site equipment. P25 is just not an option on EDACS; ProVoice is the closest you are going to get in that regard, and that also costs out the wazoo. If they did decide to make the switch, it would probably take years to do it, giving me at least a little more use from my EDACS radios before I'd have to hock them on fleabay(or here).

[motorola_otaku]

Originally Posted by davidbond21

I wonder what the band splits of those XTS/XTL's are though, because I believe for 900 MHz Public Safety trunked it's 896-901/935-940 MHz, and 33cm is sandwiched right in between there.

Standard commercial ranges of 896-902 TX and 935-941 TX & RX out of the box. Getting them to go out of range is as easy as band split-hacking the CPS, however, if you're not adverse to a little hex-editing. The instructions are here; the offset locations are different with new & updated CPS versions but the methodology is the same. It also works for MCS2000 CPS, and speaking from experience they make outstanding 33 cm. ham radios.

If you've never used 900 MHz simplex, be warned that it's a completely different ballgame than 2 meters or even 440. Range is considerably shorter than lower-frequency bands at equal power, and foliage attenuation and multipath fading are atrocious. However, in certain applications (like car-car comms for foxhunting 'tards on the Children's Band) this can also be used to your advantage.

Back on-topic: nothing I've read anywhere mentions LCRA in the discussions of regional system linking so personally I'd expect them to stay independent and EDACS for the foreseeable future. Now there are also rumors circulating that Harris, as the new owner of MA-COM, may end support for EDACS so, again, who knows?

[slatescan]

Holiday Lakes FD is now on this TRS according to what i saw in the Database this morning


and i hear the name of this TRS is TXWARN at leset to one post i saw here on RR

[mfn002]

Originally Posted by slatescan

Holiday Lakes FD is now on this TRS according to what i saw in the Database this morning


and i hear the name of this TRS is TXWARN at leset to one post i saw here on RR

TXWARN. Interesting. I suspect it's Texas Wide Area Radio Network, which is more accurate then Harris County Regional Radio System. This also might be a clue that there could be some sort of statewide radio system in the works here.

[texasemt13]

Originally Posted by mfn002

Texas Wide Area Radio Network

Google pegged this:

It's about a MOTO release of SmartX technology which is used to transfer Smartzone to P25.

This is an explanation from ETMC.

and a Motorola PDF that is very interesting...

[texasemt13]

Wow...

The pdf itself is too big to load to RR but you can get it here. It explains a lot about HCRRS's direction and interfacing with the rest of Texas.

[nd5y]

I posted this about TxWARN in another thread
http://www.etmc.org/pdf/warn.pdf

[texasemt13]

Originally Posted by nd5y

I posted this about TxWARN in another thread
http://www.etmc.org/pdf/warn.pdf

And knowing my memory I looked at it then also... and didn't even remember today. My memory is not the best...