I believe Stafford County Sheriff switched from the Conv. 480mhz to there new 700mhz trunked system...good luck listening in to that b/c they encrypted it....i hate that so much...ive been listening to F/R on the 480 band all day but havent heard the PD...and all i here is gargling all day on the 700 system...anyone have any more news on this???
Stafford County TRS
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Looks like you are probably correct. In several minutes of listening just now, I have seen talkgroup 4501 come up several times encrypted. I heard one key-up on 489.8375 [156.7], but no voice.
Dave
Dave
Here's the bad news:
NEW RADIO SYSTEM TO BECOME EFFECTIVE DECEMBER 28 - Stafford County Sheriff's Office
I disagree completely with encrypting the routine dispatch channels.
Dave
NEW RADIO SYSTEM TO BECOME EFFECTIVE DECEMBER 28 - Stafford County Sheriff's Office
I disagree completely with encrypting the routine dispatch channels.
Dave
thanks for putting that there for me dave.....i hope it wont apply to Fire and Rescue...and yea routine should be left alone...you know except for swat, arson investigators, undercover ops...it totally bums me out
I have to agree, encryption for the routine traffic simply is not warranted. Let's see what they do for fire & rescue (which happens to be my main interest of monitoring).
gcgrotz
Member
Once again they cut off their nose to spite their face. Disregarding the huge difference in cases where a scanner listener (myself included) has come to the aid of LEO vs the rare incident where a criminal has succeeded at his task from using a scanner.
Isolating government from the citizenry is never justified. Don't get me started.
Happy New Year Dave, thanks for all your hard work.
The press release isn't clear about whether Fire/Rescue will also be encrypted. Perhaps member Eng2Trk will have some clarification on that. The press release refers to "first responders" having their radio traffic encrypted, and not specifically deputies.
Stafford has used an "Operation Extra Eyes" to alert scanner listeners and fire/rescue personnel when a child is missing. If they encrypt all or even most of their traffic, that capability goes away. I guess they could use their email alerting system instead.
I fully support encryption for law enforcement in situations where an officer's life can be put in jeopardy, or to protect personal information (such as SSNs.) However, it bugs me that a scanner listener can't find out when a major road is closed due to an accident or bad weather because ALL radio traffic is encrypted. Plus, as others have mentioned, there are other situations in which it is advantageous for members of the public to know what is going on. I'm not sure it should always be up to the local police chief or sheriff to decide what to encrypt - maybe a state law defining when enryption should be used and when it shouldn't would be better.
Stafford has used an "Operation Extra Eyes" to alert scanner listeners and fire/rescue personnel when a child is missing. If they encrypt all or even most of their traffic, that capability goes away. I guess they could use their email alerting system instead.
I fully support encryption for law enforcement in situations where an officer's life can be put in jeopardy, or to protect personal information (such as SSNs.) However, it bugs me that a scanner listener can't find out when a major road is closed due to an accident or bad weather because ALL radio traffic is encrypted. Plus, as others have mentioned, there are other situations in which it is advantageous for members of the public to know what is going on. I'm not sure it should always be up to the local police chief or sheriff to decide what to encrypt - maybe a state law defining when enryption should be used and when it shouldn't would be better.
Suppose our sheriff just wants to keep up with Fredericksburg PD... Miss listening to them as well...
Tom M sends
Tom M sends
p_ballermatt98
Member
The only reason I can see encrypting ALL radio traffic is in areas with high crime where they have instances where they find radio scanning equipment ON or in posession on the criminals. I just can't see Stafford bein that bad. I mean thats quite the jump, going from plain ol' FM to diital AND encrypted. Just seems, excessive.
doesnt fburg just use voice inversion...all the counties around us that are digital use only special channels for encryption...and it is excessive....who ever was contracted to build this system got some big bucks....and of coarse listening to them for over 12 yrs and now nothing is kinda weird...
Yes, Fredericksburg PD is using voice inversion on their Dispatch and Tac channels. Interestingly, the "Hospital" channel (3) does not have inversion.
Dave
Dave
February 1st The Stafford County Fire/Rescue side will complete the switch over....still dont know if they will be encrypted also
loco-lee
Member
Interestingly enough, if you ask public safety professionals in the Northern Virginia area how they feel about this decision by Stafford to encrypt all channels, they will tell you they agree with BoxAlarm187. Doing so was just plain stupid.
Stafford TRS
Cut over is still set for Feb 1, 2011. Fire and Rescue will not be encrypted, and will be FDMA.
The codeplug is not fully finalized yet. Radio hardware is installed but all radios will have to be touched before switch over to flash the finalized codeplug.
Unlike most NOVA jurisdictions, it seems Stafford is not going with an A, B, C talkgroup configuration, but more of a plain voice "incident command 1' "Incident Tac1" and so on. This is going to make it a little interesting.
The system is TDMA capable but plans are to stay FDMA for now. Of course if at a later date the system admin decides to go TDMA, scanning for general public will be gone.
Simulcast of DISPATCH and 154.175 will continue, again "for now".
enjoy
Cut over is still set for Feb 1, 2011. Fire and Rescue will not be encrypted, and will be FDMA.
The codeplug is not fully finalized yet. Radio hardware is installed but all radios will have to be touched before switch over to flash the finalized codeplug.
Unlike most NOVA jurisdictions, it seems Stafford is not going with an A, B, C talkgroup configuration, but more of a plain voice "incident command 1' "Incident Tac1" and so on. This is going to make it a little interesting.
The system is TDMA capable but plans are to stay FDMA for now. Of course if at a later date the system admin decides to go TDMA, scanning for general public will be gone.
Simulcast of DISPATCH and 154.175 will continue, again "for now".
enjoy
Thanks for the update, eng2trk.
Dave
Dave
Good info to have, eng2trk! Thanks.
sweet thanks for the info
Stafford Co. 700 Mhz. Trunked - Update
A few facts;
The system is NOT encrypted in total. A few police and a few fire TGs are; the majority are in the clear. The coded TGs are for law enforcement sensitive matters; administrative/command matters and patient (HIPPA) privacy.
(Thank you, Stafford County for allowing us to continue to monitor what our taxpayer money has funded - radios, systems, dispatchers and county personnel in the various department. You did what was right!)
It is a P25 Phase 1 system. Going to Phase 2 is not in the immediate future, but is a possibility. (I'm guessing money will be hard to come by and the need/justification may not be there for some time).
The system will be better than existing 800 systems in NoVa/DC in design and features. In fact, there are system features that the county can "grow into," such as GPS tracking and data transmission, etc. when the need and funding exist.
The system design is designed for portable to tower use, far better than designing it for mobile to tower use. Penetration into buildings tested so far is very encouraging.
The features selected/enabled make sense, as does the fleet map. This, in part at least, to the committee put together from among police, fire and rescue personnel, led by a very personable and knowledgable county comms staffer. (No, no one paid me to say this; nor I am a brown noser, but I am a fair shooter and call them as I see them).
Interoperability to adjoining systems in the counties to the South, West, North and even into Charles Co., Md.; maritime band; VHF Fire and EMS is all there.
The change from the "traditional" NoVa TG designation (4A, 4B, 4C) to Dispatch, Incident 1, Tac1A, etc. is due to technical changes at Motorola, not an outcome of some desire by the county personnel.
All in all, sounds like a really sound design, system and equipment.
So far the sheriff's dept. has been on the system with good results for about 2 weeks. Feb. 1 the Fire/Rescue folks switch over.
A few facts;
The system is NOT encrypted in total. A few police and a few fire TGs are; the majority are in the clear. The coded TGs are for law enforcement sensitive matters; administrative/command matters and patient (HIPPA) privacy.
(Thank you, Stafford County for allowing us to continue to monitor what our taxpayer money has funded - radios, systems, dispatchers and county personnel in the various department. You did what was right!)
It is a P25 Phase 1 system. Going to Phase 2 is not in the immediate future, but is a possibility. (I'm guessing money will be hard to come by and the need/justification may not be there for some time).
The system will be better than existing 800 systems in NoVa/DC in design and features. In fact, there are system features that the county can "grow into," such as GPS tracking and data transmission, etc. when the need and funding exist.
The system design is designed for portable to tower use, far better than designing it for mobile to tower use. Penetration into buildings tested so far is very encouraging.
The features selected/enabled make sense, as does the fleet map. This, in part at least, to the committee put together from among police, fire and rescue personnel, led by a very personable and knowledgable county comms staffer. (No, no one paid me to say this; nor I am a brown noser, but I am a fair shooter and call them as I see them).
Interoperability to adjoining systems in the counties to the South, West, North and even into Charles Co., Md.; maritime band; VHF Fire and EMS is all there.
The change from the "traditional" NoVa TG designation (4A, 4B, 4C) to Dispatch, Incident 1, Tac1A, etc. is due to technical changes at Motorola, not an outcome of some desire by the county personnel.
All in all, sounds like a really sound design, system and equipment.
So far the sheriff's dept. has been on the system with good results for about 2 weeks. Feb. 1 the Fire/Rescue folks switch over.
Talkgroup 4501 appears to be the Sheriff Dispatch channel (judging from the amount of activity on it). I have yet to see any unencrypted comms on it. I have also not seen any unencrypted comms on the other 45xx talkgroups. So I don't know where these "clear" comms are.
I did monitor a brief test on an unencrypted talkgroup in the 46xx series. Maybe the 46xx talkgroups will be used for fire...?
Dave
I did monitor a brief test on an unencrypted talkgroup in the 46xx series. Maybe the 46xx talkgroups will be used for fire...?
Dave
Can you elaborate on what technical change by the manufacturer would have an effect on which characters and what amount of same can be used on the display? I could understand the reverse being true, say if you went from having a display to no display, and needing to go with a ABC switch/1-16 channel number style naming convention- but not forcing names instead of alphanumerics.
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