Cambria County P25 System

IStebleton

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I don't think so, I haven't seen any Phase II TG's on any County site that is solely operating Phase I TG's
 

Synapt

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wonder if any of the Cambria TGs will be supported on Westmoreland or Indiana County sites?

This is sort of yes/no in a way.

The talk groups are county specific but the goal of the ICORRS infrastructure is that neighboring counties on the P25 ICORRS system can utilize towers in another county on it also. So for example stations that go to other counties w/ ICORRS currently our radios will be configured to easily use mutual neighbor county groups and infrastructure as well.
 

IStebleton

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Are all of the sites able to broadcast Phase II traffic?
 

maus92

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While in southern Centre County, I noticed that Site 1.11 was on air, I did not catch which site it was. If I had to guess, it's Fallen Timber, but I can't confirm. The County Simulcast site is no on air yet.
Control channel? 855.4625 / 856.2375 / 856.7625?
 

Synapt

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Control channel? 855.4625 / 856.2375 / 856.7625?

If it was the fallen timber tower, it should be 855.4625, Cresson would be 854.9625, Ashville 858.7625 and then others simulcast on 851.3750 (mind you my data might be out of date, it's been a bit since we directly covered these details but pretty sure this is still accurate).
 

EMT1301

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If it was the fallen timber tower, it should be 855.4625, Cresson would be 854.9625, Ashville 858.7625 and then others simulcast on 851.3750 (mind you my data might be out of date, it's been a bit since we directly covered these details but pretty sure this is still accurate).
Site 1.10 (Cambria Simulcast) Primary CC: 854.1375, Alternate CCs: 854.8125, 855.3125, 855.8125 (Call signs: WRNX287, WRNX288, WRNX289) - not online pending completion of two towers, as @Synapt stated.
Site 1.11 (Lost Mountain ASR) Primary CC: 858.7625, Alternate CC: 859.4375 (Call sign: WRMT218)
Site 1.12 (Ashville ASR) Primary CC: 854.0875, Alternate CC: 854.6125 (Call sign: WRMT218)

Both Lost Mountain and Ashville are showing online on the system administration side, and per discussion today during an ICORRS technical committee meeting, "several sites are now active" in Cambria County, so that follows.
 

EMT1301

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Are all of the sites able to broadcast Phase II traffic?
When you say site, do you mean RF subsite (individual tower) or simulcast/ASR site? For Cambria, the entire simulcast will be TDMA, they are also tentatively enabling DDM on one or two channels to allow channels to downgrade to FDMA. All three Cambria ASRs are TDMA with one DDM channel each, so are also capable of TDMA or FDMA. Somerset County is 100% FDMA, with no forseeable plans to add DDM. Indiana County is 100% FDMA, but they are working on a project to convert one of their channels to DDM for the benefit of Cambria County responders. However, the system already has a transcoder installed that benefits all sites to allow cross-mode communications.
 

IStebleton

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Those freqs don't quite match up with the locations on the license. Plus I think some of the freqs on the sites weren't listed as repeaters on any of the 3 sites.
 

IStebleton

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When you say site, do you mean RF subsite (individual tower) or simulcast/ASR site?
I mean site as in Site 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, and 1.13.

So all Cambria sites will be able to handle Phase 1 traffic, but only 1 channel per site?
 

EMT1301

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Those freqs don't quite match up with the locations on the license.
I see that now. On the system administration side, The sites are definitely listed as 11 - Lost Mountain, 12 - Ashville, 13 - Cresson. I noticed that Motorola does not have the BSI programmed correctly yet for those three sites, so perhaps when they address that they will discover that the sites are misnamed on the system. Or not. Obviously there won't be any "real" traffic on any of those sites just yet, as coverage testing isn't even scheduled to begin until late spring, per Cambria's technical person.
 

maus92

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Sounds like one DDM license per ASR site, equating to one talk group. Two licenses for the simulcast site, equating to two talk groups. Might get dicey if an incident with a multijurisdictional response requires multiple channels. In Maryland, we found that two DDM licenses per site were not enough in some areas, which lead to adding an additional license, more frequencies, and a requirement for mutual aid partners to use only TDMA radios.
 

EMT1301

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I mean site as in Site 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, and 1.13.

So all Cambria sites will be able to handle Phase 1 traffic, but only 1 channel per site?
And that's still an operational decision to be made by Cambria County, whether they will allow Phase 1 traffic on any of their sites. As it stands in this moment, the ASRs are configured to allow one channel each to downgrade to FDMA, but when they actually go live, they may decide not to permit that to happen. Just because a site is capable doesn't mean the permissions exist on a particular talkgroup or radio. I feel that they will permit FDMA calls, only because any number of subscribers in Indiana, Westmoreland, or Somerset County (presently) are only capable of FDMA, and if they had to respond for mutual aid into Cambria, they would need that capability.
 

EMT1301

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Sounds like one DDM license per ASR site, equating to one talk group. Two licenses for the simulcast site, equating to two talk groups. Might get dicey if an incident with a multijurisdictional response requires multiple channels. In Maryland, we found that two DDM licenses per site were not enough in some areas, which lead to adding an additional license, more frequencies, and a requirement for mutual aid partners to use only TDMA radios.
I can't speak for Indiana County, but in Somerset we are in the process of upgrading all subscriber radios to add TDMA capability so that we can operate in Cambria County as Phase 2. Westmoreland is also considering something like this, but they are limited by the fact that a large portion of their fleet are still XTS/XTL radios which cannot support TDMA. And Cambria's site is still very much in the buildout stage, so nothing is concrete yet.
 
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