The Easiest and Most Cost Effective Solution?

[SKYNET156]

I am just wondering what the most cost effective and efficent trunking system there is?

As i have told alot of people i talked too, A few friends and i are investing in a Paintball venture, we have about $80,000 between 4 of us to invest,
My whole part in this is the tech and electronics part,
We agreed that a trunking system would best fit out needs, Not only for Game ops, but Administrative ops and such,
We are looking for a single site trunking system, used of course,

What system would you recommend?

We are still in the planning stages and still have FCC Paperwork to file and such

As an edit, i just wanted to add,

We are looking for 30-45 Game Play Talk groups with Encryption if possible,
and about 20 Administrative talk groups,

We are looking to consider the durability of the radios, Battery life, and possible encryption, we have about $19,000 set aside for the tech part of this, plus more to come in a loan,
But i am thinking used here, i have a friend in the radio business who can service the radios for whatever brand we choose,
i am just looking into this for the future,

Thanks in advance

[ILMRadioMan]

Dont count out MotoTRBO.

[SKYNET156]

I am not sure that there is any used MotoTRBO Systems yet?

[ILMRadioMan]

True enough.....you said you were "thinking" used....didnt know "used" was your final decision.

My mistake.

[fineshot1]

Originally Posted by SKYNET156

I am just wondering what the most cost effective and efficent trunking system there is?

As i have told alot of people i talked too, A few friends and i are investing in a Paintball venture, we have about $80,000 between 4 of us to invest,
My whole part in this is the tech and electronics part,
We agreed that a trunking system would best fit out needs, Not only for Game ops, but Administrative ops and such,
We are looking for a single site trunking system, used of course,

What system would you recommend?

We are still in the planning stages and still have FCC Paperwork to file and such

As an edit, i just wanted to add,

We are looking for 30-45 Game Play Talk groups with Encryption if possible,
and about 20 Administrative talk groups,

We are looking to consider the durability of the radios, Battery life, and possible encryption, we have about $19,000 set aside for the tech part of this, plus more to come in a loan,
But i am thinking used here, i have a friend in the radio business who can service the radios for whatever brand we choose,
i am just looking into this for the future,

Thanks in advance

I did not vote because I think you left out "smartnet" which I think would be your best choice when it
comes to the used market and the fact that you stated that you would need about 50-65 talk groups.
Your most frequency efficient and cost efficient single site used trunk system would be a smartnet.

Assuming you get one and solve that problem your going to need about 10 or more frequencies for that
many talk groups so that will be your second problem to solve. Since you seem to be in a major metro
area I think that will be a tough one to get 10 freq pairs.

If you get the two above solved then you have to have a site. A 10 chan system will require approx 4
antennas (1 for rx and 3 for tx) and all the combiner/duplexer/cabling - well you get the picture. The
site rental on all this equipment can get quite costly.

EDIT: I would also say I don't think you'd get ANY of these systems used for less than $20K

[SKYNET156]

I did talk to a communications company that I emailed a while back, From what I understood, a 900mhz smartnet system used would run about $14k.
And as you mentioned in the above, there is still the problem of frequency pairs,
I am nit sure if it's easier to get 900mhz frequencies?
There still is a lot of things to consider, This is still in the planning stages, I am wondering what the best option is to look into...

[fineshot1]

Originally Posted by SKYNET156

I did talk to a communications company that I emailed a while back, From what I understood, a 900mhz smartnet system used would run about $14k.
And as you mentioned in the above, there is still the problem of frequency pairs,
I am nit sure if it's easier to get 900mhz frequencies?
There still is a lot of things to consider, This is still in the planning stages, I am wondering what the best option is to look into...

There are more costs involved other than the purchase of used equipment.

If you have a small enough area to cover then you may be able to eliminate the
engineers having to do frequency coverage modeling but I dont think you can due
interference contours must be generated for co-chan and adjacent chan users and
such.

Bottom line is I dont think you can swing it $ wise - its going to be a lot of $ and
quite complicated.

[N_Jay]

Originally Posted by SKYNET156

I am not sure that there is any used MotoTRBO Systems yet?

And there are NOT ANY MotoTRBO trunking systems yet.

[ILMRadioMan]

Originally Posted by N_Jay

And there are NOT ANY MotoTRBO trunking systems yet.

I should have known. Thanks for helping the topic of the thread.

I won't hijack this thread too much...but you need to update your information.

[N_Jay]

Originally Posted by ILMRadioMan

I should have known. Thanks for helping the topic of the thread.

I won't hijack this thread too much...but you need to update your information.

Originally Posted by N_Jay

And there are NOT ANY MotoTRBO trunking systems yet.

TODAY!

Does that "update" help?

Note, having an analog LTR board in a MotoTRBO radio makes it a ANALOG LTR subscriber, it does not create MotoTRBO trunking.

MotoTRBO trunking (AKA: Capacity Plus) will be out very soon, but is NOT shipping as of TODAY!

[pachanga22]

That all depends on what your definition of "today" is...

[N_Jay]

Originally Posted by pachanga22

That all depends on what your definition of "today" is...

Maybe it means the date of the post?

[loumaag]

Let's stay on topic. If you cannot help the OP with his quest, just leave the nit-picking to those that do it as a lifestyle.

[N_Jay]

Originally Posted by loumaag

Let's stay on topic. If you cannot help the OP with his quest, just leave the nit-picking to those that do it as a lifestyle.

Well if you insist!

LTR is the cheapest and most available on the secondary market.
Not a lot of features, but has proven itself in the simple trunking world.

You are already too tight on cash to worry much about stiff like encryption, and such.

Unless you are VERY rural, you will probably not get frequencies to set it up, though.

Capacity Plus is cool (When it becomes available), but until the used channel has lots of stuff it will be near list price.

[SKYNET156]

I am looking for the most cost efficant system, I have not considered MotoTRBO because of the huge cost involved,
We have thought about going just analog conventional, but i am afraid of having to have 3-4 repeaters for different channels just for 1 facility,
I am not sure if there are places who do that?
Is the cost for 3-4 Conventional Repeater Allocations just as much as Trunking interms of Equipment, Licensing and Repeater Cost?

[N_Jay]

How many trunked channels are you considering, if 3 or 4 repeaters is "too much"?

[inigo88]

There is no way you could EVER fit 65 talkgroups onto a trunked system with 4 voice channels. You can basically think of an LTR standard system as simply a collection of conventional repeaters that are linked together and each governed by an LTR controller. Hence you're going to buy the conventional repeaters either way, the cost of the trunking system will only increase since you'll be adding the cost of all the LTR controllers and other additional system hardware.

Be realistic... figure out how many frequencies you can get FIRST. That will be how many conventional channels you can have. If you want to go trunked, LTR standard seems like the only logical choice given your budget.

THEN figure out how many talkgroups your system would be able to support, given the number of trunked channels you actually HAVE. There should be a hard-set mathematical relationship between total talkgroups and total voice channels to help you predict this, but ultimately it will vary wildly depending on how frequently each talkgroup is used, and talkgroup usage on the system will have to be continually observed and managed after it's initial construction to ensure that it performs adequately.

Keep realistic expectations about how many talkgroups you can have given your budget. This is not my area of expertise and I can only venture a guess based on my experience monitoring these types of systems - but if you have 5 trunked channels (repeaters), expect having around 10-15 talkgroups (and this may even be too generous). Definitely NOT sixty!!!

Regards,

Inigo