Ludlow PD

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aleckrohto

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I haven't been hearing Ludlow PD in the Westfield area on 453.25 for a couple days now. Are they still using DMR and the 453.25 frequency?
 

matt04

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I normally don't listen to them but heard them a few times on whatever DMR CC/TG is in the RRDB a week or two ago. I will be in the area early this week and will take a listen.
 

LD723

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I haven't been hearing Ludlow PD in the Westfield area on 453.25 for a couple days now. Are they still using DMR and the 453.25 frequency?
Yes and I live less than a mile away from the tower and I've noticed the signal has greatly decreased for some reason on my sdr and my md380. All of the officers seem to be communicating with dispatch fine. I will have to ask them about why the signal is reduced next time I meet with an officer again
 

LD723

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Also on a different note ludlow was recommended by acd telecom on a report from around 2 years ago to go p25 phase 1 uhf or 700mhz trunked to support all of the agencies in town to be on the same system but I doubt this will happen since more of other departments here in this town have gotten more and more dmr capable handhelds especially the school because 2 years ago not a lot of staff had dmr capable handhelds but now pretty much 90% of the staff at the HS have it now and I attend at the HS here. As for the fire dept. lots of the fire personnel have dmr uhf portables that go through the repeater in their vehicle back to vhf on their main freq I'm not sure about the DPW as I rarely ever see them.
 

LD723

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Looks like I am wrong and they at some point will move to a town wide p25 system more than likely trunked on UHF.
 

cg

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Back in March of 2018 the town approved a Capital Purchase of a radio system not to exceed 4.8 million dollars. It was also mentioned that the system the PD was using at the time was a monthly lease. I couldn't find anything about progress.

chris
 

LD723

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Back in March of 2018 the town approved a Capital Purchase of a radio system not to exceed 4.8 million dollars. It was also mentioned that the system the PD was using at the time was a monthly lease. I couldn't find anything about progress.

chris
I read somewhere I forgot where that they were wanting it to be done by the end of 2020 so I bet it will be later than that and I wonder what the schools will get for p25 radios since the superintendent wanted them to be "watered down" versions. Ludlow having a trunked system sounds very unusual to me but that's what they want I guess but at some point they were trunked analog I'm guessing ltr but it failed and they reverted back to conventional.
 

kb1ejw

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Just heard Ludlow PD loud and clear. I, too, haven't been hearing them at all in the last week or so, but they are back up now.
 

LD723

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Just heard Ludlow PD loud and clear. I, too, haven't been hearing them at all in the last week or so, but they are back up now.
They have always been there its just the signal is on and off with dropouts it sometimes randomly occurs and I live around less than a mile from the tower
 

cg

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I don't know the workings of the State of Massachusetts with regard to the new buildout plans for CoMIRS but if it is like CT, Ludlow could buy radios and use the State P25 Core. Between Wilbraham and Mt Tom, they should have decent mobile coverage and would have to only look at portable coverage.

chris
 

LD723

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I don't know the workings of the State of Massachusetts with regard to the new buildout plans for CoMIRS but if it is like CT, Ludlow could buy radios and use the State P25 Core. Between Wilbraham and Mt Tom, they should have decent mobile coverage and would have to only look at portable coverage.

chris
That is EXACTLY what I was thinking they should join CoMIRS and they will have even better interoperability with state agencies. I have no idea why they would want their little own trunked system but when I went under the contracts section on acd telecom's website I scrolled down until I saw Ludlow and it said "ACD Telecom is the Town of Ludlow’s current consultant for their migration from a legacy multi-band analog system to a UHF P25 Phase I system. ACD was contracted to perform an analyze on their LMR communication system to provide FCC licensing advise to ensure FCC compliance as well as an inspection of their tower sites and shelters. As their consultant, we are currently advising and assisting the Town of Ludlow with their RFP procurement process to select a qualified vendor to implement their migration to a P25 Phase I system." So I believe they are still in the process of choosing a vendor but before they purchase any p25 equipment the acd telecom report said they will need to replace or upgrade infrastructure like towers, antennas, HVAC, etc in order for the new system to work as best as possible because the report stated that many of the sites had major problems like grounding, HVAC, and other things.
 

cg

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UHF trunk system should still be able operate under the CoMIRS core. The town would still be responsible for towers for desired coverage but the most expensive single part of the system would be taken care of. Then if they bought multiband radios, they could have access to their own system from across the state.
Very different challenge than they will have in Franklin County trying to get coverage for a much larger area without using mobile repeaters.

chris
 

LD723

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UHF trunk system should still be able operate under the CoMIRS core. The town would still be responsible for towers for desired coverage but the most expensive single part of the system would be taken care of. Then if they bought multiband radios, they could have access to their own system from across the state.
Very different challenge than they will have in Franklin County trying to get coverage for a much larger area without using mobile repeaters.

chris
I don't remember very well but I think they wanted ps to have multi band and the schools not sure about dpw to have "watered down" radios so the school will probably only have single band basic p25 radios
 

kb1ejw

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Is this system still hard to receive? When this thread started, they were silent for me as well. Then, when i posted above, I could hear them. I recently upgraded scanners, and now I can't hear them again. I was wondering if I programmed it wrong, or it's just a coincidence they went silent again when I changed out scanners..
Thanks
Jeremy
 

LD723

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Is this system still hard to receive? When this thread started, they were silent for me as well. Then, when i posted above, I could hear them. I recently upgraded scanners, and now I can't hear them again. I was wondering if I programmed it wrong, or it's just a coincidence they went silent again when I changed out scanners..
Thanks
Jeremy
No they are still there but their signal is very droopy and the signal seems very limited unless you are very close to the repeater and keep in mind my signal drops a lot and I live around less than a mile away from the tower
 
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LD723

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They are going to upgrade towers and everything needed before heading on to the p25 trunked system if they do and since this summer the signal has decreased greatly but I have only heard of one officer saying he had issues with the radio but it was minor. An outdoor antenna would probably fix the problem for me but I receive most of the transmissions fine but usually towards the end or the beginning of the transmission the signal is bouncy.
 

zerg901

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240 page RFP for new Ludlow P25 system - contract scheduled to be awarded June 2020 - page 223 has long list of freqs in the area - cops want encrypted radios - rest dont
 

LD723

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Wayback Machine

240 page RFP for new Ludlow P25 system - contract scheduled to be awarded June 2020 - page 223 has long list of freqs in the area - cops want encrypted radios - rest dont
Yeah I saw that earlier and we don't know if the single key aes they are requesting is going to be used on all pd talkgroups. We are just going to have to wait and see. The new control station radios they are requesting are the ones without aes encryption so I don't really know. Maybe the aes key maybe used to encrypt gps data since they want radios with gps capabilities but I have no idea if encryption can be applied to gps. They want full interoperability on the new system and be able to talk directly to each other which can be done over a seperate interop talkgroup but here in town it would make sense to have units talk directly on the intended talkgroup like a fire unit talking on the pd talkgroup since our town doesn't really have many transmissions coming through because of the amount of units out and about in this town so switching to an interop talkgroup would waste time for any side wanting to communicate to each other.
 
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