oldeschoolff
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Will they operate like Westmorland, no field radios on dispatch ?
Cambria County P25 System
- Thread starter Synapt
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- cambria county p25 scanner
Synapt
Member
Not entirely sure what you mean by field radios unless you mean like normal personal/unit portables, in which case the new infrastructure will still largely operate procedures wise like the old one as far as we've been told. ie; if you got something to say over a main dispatch channel say it, otherwise stick to your assigned ops/etc channel.
oldeschoolff
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That was my question, Thanks for the clarification. One more, will Johnstown dispatch on the county system ?
Synapt
Member
There's currently no 800MHz paging, all siren/pager tones will still drop on the Fire Dispatch UHF frequency. In fact to what we've been told (assuming it doesn't change) EMS will also be sent out over the current Fire Dispatch channel as well, so it's going to basically become a merged dispatch channel.
oldeschoolff
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Thanks again !!
jeffm77
Member
Hey all, question. So, I am in North Versailles, Allegheny County. I programmed in the Cambria sites into my SDS100, using the Remtronics 800 MHZ antenna. I am getting DATA on 854.1375 NAC 150H. It is weak, but I saw TG 2274 pop up on my display. Can anyone closer confirm that I am actually picking up the Cambria site?
That is the current control channel in use, and talkgroup 2274 is being used by field units for testing
jeffm77
Member
Will be interesting to see when the system is up and fully in operation, if any of the talkgroups will be carried over onto any of the surrounding counties ICORRS sites.
Synapt
Member
There should be some overlap at the county borders to my understanding (as that's a point of the ICORRS system so they say), but stations in municipals that border county lines and regularly do mutual into those counties will have those counties available as well.
RedPenguin
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Will they just have patch through channels for non-county agencies that PD/Fire occasionally communicate with? Or will they just use dual-band radios?
Like Cam Transit seems like they manage their own radios but PD or FD will hop on and talk with them at times.
I know the buses will miss police traffic as they helped use it to steer their buses away from vehicle accidents, violent situations, etc.
Like Cam Transit seems like they manage their own radios but PD or FD will hop on and talk with them at times.
I know the buses will miss police traffic as they helped use it to steer their buses away from vehicle accidents, violent situations, etc.
The county did license the the UTAC frequencies (as suggested in the NIFOG) ULS License - Public Safety Pool, Conventional License - WROV899 - CAMBRIA, COUNTY OF The frequencies are licensed for the three ASR sites and three northern simulcast sites. It's unkown at this juncture what their intended use will be. Stations that respond to Clearfield, Blair and Bedford Counties have been advised to maintain their current radios.
Synapt
Member
From the fire side of things, if we think a major road is gonna be closed for an extended period of time and there aren't viable detours there at/near scene, we normally just ask dispatch to notify CamTran.
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I'd imagine they can / may be used to patch audio from the neighboring counties to Cambria county in the case someone doesn't have a radio for said county they are responding into.
wolfhart67jr
Member
Do we have any idea how soon they will completely switch everything over from analog except for the previously mentioned pager/dispatch analog UHF frequency? I read a news paper article from probably about a week ago or so and it sounds like they are working on transitioning now. Also when will the new system get added into the database? I'm relatively new to this scanner hobby and I just picked up my first digital scanner a month or so ago. I was getting very underwhelmed with my analog scanner I bought last year. I wasn't hearing much from Somerset county do that's why I got a digital scanner, I also knew they were eventually going digital in Cambria County so luckily I am ready. Anyway since I'm pretty new at programming digital P25 systems into my scanner I was curious when it'll be added so I can get it on to my scanner right when they switch over. It will suck not being able to hear police anymore because of encryption but I still want to be able to hear fire and EMS still.
scanner92us
Member
It's in the database now.
Synapt
Member
Rollout begins this coming week and will progress a few stations/services at a time over the next month or so.
Somerset county has been P25 for about 5 years now or so I believe, only general dispatching is done over lowband (or VHF? I forget which).
Also keep in mind Cambria County will be Simulcast, if you do not have a scanner that handles Simulcast you may run into a lot of issues.
scanner92us
Member
Somerset county went live in late 2015. Fire and EMS paging is on 155.175 only.
wolfhart67jr
Member
I read through this whole thread and as far as I understand Cambria County's new system is going to be exactly like Somerset's for the most part right?
The analog scanner I have is the Uniden BC75XLT and the digital scanner I got was the Whistler TRX-1 with a Remtronix 800MHz antenna. From what it sounded like the Whistler doesn't do simulcast very well but I liked it a lot more compared to the Uniden SDS 100/200. When I originally got it I decided that if Somerset broke up and got garbled in Simulcast style I would have just returned it and retreated to the SDS 100 but it didn't seem to do too bad. It makes me wonder is Somerset Simulcast? Ive not had all that much trouble with picking up somerset county's digital transmissons since I got the TRX-1, keep in mind im listeining to that from the Johnstown to Somerset areas depending on the day.
When you monitor a simulcast cell from the edges or outside the main coverage area, scanners that don’t handle simulcast well will sometimes receive well because they are only in range of one of the transmitter locations. All of the counties in ICORRS have simulcast cells (groups of towers over a wide area) covering their counties.
While you have had some success, I would suspect you will be disappointed once Cambria comes on board.
There’s a reason that the near universal recommendation for monitoring simulcast trunked systems is to use the SDS series scanners or Unication pagers.
Synapt
Member
Yeah as @HM1529 said your main consideration there is probably being only within range of a single tower, so your scanner isn't getting overwhelmed. Most parts of Cambria are going to be within reach of a minimum of 2, I'm in the middle of Johnstown so I got 3 guaranteed saturating most of my area lol.
The SDS scanners are definitely of a high price but unfortunately I'm not sure anyone else has released a decent actual-simulcast capable scanner yet.
