Horry County SC

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leonzo

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I was visiting in the area on 02/28/2017 and was advised within 30 to 60 days there will be a new digital trunked system that all Horry County law enforcement will be using. Those of you who live in the area need to start searching for it now.
 

troymail

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I could be wrong but it looks like they've licensed the existing trunked system frequencies for P25. I've seen in several counties in Maryland (including Baltimore City) perform a gradual "cut-over" by pulling users and frequencies from the old system and transferring them to the new system (the whole transition occurred over a couple of hours).

What I would do is create a new P25 system in your radio and enter in all of the existing frequencies. Then, add a wildcard (GRE/Whistler) or put your radio in "ID Search" mode (Uniden). The talkgroups will almost certainly change. Hopefully, the dreaded "E" doesn't appear when the new system comes up...

You can monitor the existing system along with the newly programmed P25 system at the same time. You may actually see/hear some activity or testing.

I'll be down in Ocean Isle next week... will poke around and see if I can find anything...
 

N4LHY_1

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I could be wrong but it looks like they've licensed the existing trunked system frequencies for P25. I've seen in several counties in Maryland (including Baltimore City) perform a gradual "cut-over" by pulling users and frequencies from the old system and transferring them to the new system (the whole transition occurred over a couple of hours).

What I would do is create a new P25 system in your radio and enter in all of the existing frequencies. Then, add a wildcard (GRE/Whistler) or put your radio in "ID Search" mode (Uniden). The talkgroups will almost certainly change. Hopefully, the dreaded "E" doesn't appear when the new system comes up...

You can monitor the existing system along with the newly programmed P25 system at the same time. You may actually see/hear some activity or testing.

I'll be down in Ocean Isle next week... will poke around and see if I can find anything...

Should I create a P25 standard system or Mot Type II/P25??
 

INDY72

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P25 standard for the new p25 system

Sent from my LG-K330 using Tapatalk
 

k3sls

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HCPS P25 control channel

For what it's worth, there's a P25 control channel running on 859.7125 for several weeks now. If anyone has a pro96com setup, you might check to see what's going on there.

PS: I have it setup on a Unication G5, but have yet to hear a transmission other than the control channel.
 
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troymail

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For what it's worth, there's a P25 control channel running on 859.7125 for several weeks now. If anyone has a pro96com setup, you might check to see what's going on there.

PS: I have it setup on a Unication G5, but have yet to hear a transmission other than the control channel.

If no one gets to it before then, I'll check it out tomorrow or Wednesday when I get down there.
 

troymail

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Well, I made it...

I'm sitting on the deck at the beach in Ocean Isle with my laptop, PSR-500, TRX-1 - and a beer (of course!)...

859.7125 is indeed active - Pro96Com is showing several alternate CCs that are all frequencies listed on the current Motorola system. I'm seeing 1 radio ID (1260xxx) sending data (GPS?) about once a minute and a couple of radios chatting on TGID 6485 -- uh-oh..... encrypted! No callsign yet....

Will submit the system to the database a bit later....

Oh, at least right now, all Phase 1

EDIT: seeing a little more activity including some additional radios and talkgroups (which I missed live) .. I think at least one of the additional talkgroups was not encrypted...

System data has been submitted -- now, hopefully someone will pick it up and get it posted... things tend to be a little slower down here in the south than I experience at home...
 
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k3sls

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Well, I made it...

I'm sitting on the deck at the beach in Ocean Isle with my laptop, PSR-500, TRX-1 - and a beer (of course!)...

859.7125 is indeed active - Pro96Com is showing several alternate CCs that are all frequencies listed on the current Motorola system. I'm seeing 1 radio ID (1260xxx) sending data (GPS?) about once a minute and a couple of radios chatting on TGID 6485 -- uh-oh..... encrypted! No callsign yet....

Will submit the system to the database a bit later....

Oh, at least right now, all Phase 1

EDIT: seeing a little more activity including some additional radios and talkgroups (which I missed live) .. I think at least one of the additional talkgroups was not encrypted...

System data has been submitted -- now, hopefully someone will pick it up and get it posted... things tend to be a little slower down here in the south than I experience at home...

Thanks for the analysis Troy. Not happy to hear they're fooling around with encryption though. I assume they'll leave that up to the individual agencies using the system...but they better keep inter-op in mind!

They've also missed the self-imposed 12/31/16 deadline!

Steve
 

brian

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It's interesting to me that this is not (so far) part of the Palmetto P25 1D9 system.
 

troymail

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It's interesting to me that this is not (so far) part of the Palmetto P25 1D9 system.

I suspect it's a situation similar to the new Maryland State system.

Counties were/are being encouraged to join and come onto the system in the name of interoperability. However, it's probably more at least in part to help offset the cost of building and maintaining the system.

However, so far, although the system covers roughly 15 of the 23 counties, only 4 of those 15 have come fully on-board (didn't build their own system). Nearly all of the rest have either built or are planning to build their own systems. Once the western part of the state is online, two additional counties are slated to join. Still, that's only 6 of 23 counties.

From what I understand, some of the reasons include:

- maintaining control of your system
- belief (true or not - I can't say) that a county can build a system cheaper than joining the state system
- the state system was not design for in-building coverage (though some test say it is performing better in that area than originally expected); early estimates of the cost to achieve in-building coverage for the state system indicated the nearly half-billion dollar price tag would double

Larger jurisdictions - big cities, vacation areas (like Horry/Myrtle Beach, etc.) will never give up control of their autonomy or the dollars used to "do it yourself".
 

brian

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Contrast that to Beaufort, Charleston, Sumter and Florence Counties in South Carolina, who have all moved off their own trunked radio systems to systems connected to the 1D9 Palmetto P25 system. I read on this forum not too long ago that York County may join (link up to) the Mecklenburg UASI system or Palmetto P25 system sometime in the future.

I believe that linking to Palmetto P25 doesn't necessarily mean giving up control of your system, but I'm not well experienced with that sort of thing.
 

troymail

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Contrast that to Beaufort, Charleston, Sumter and Florence Counties in South Carolina, who have all moved off their own trunked radio systems to systems connected to the 1D9 Palmetto P25 system. I read on this forum not too long ago that York County may join (link up to) the Mecklenburg UASI system or Palmetto P25 system sometime in the future.

I believe that linking to Palmetto P25 doesn't necessarily mean giving up control of your system, but I'm not well experienced with that sort of thing.

Yup - there are different reasons for going one way or another. The 3 counties to recently join Maryland's system came off their own joint (3 county) system. Oddly, rumor is that they plan to keep (for now I assume) the old system as a "backup". Another county (ranked one of the 2 smallest counties in the state) was purely conventional when they came onto the state system as the first non-state entity.

What I've seen in Maryland and North Carolina is a talkgroup plan that allows for low disruption integration or interconnecting of county and state systems through various technologies. Unlike the old Motorola and EDACS systems, the talkgroup and radio IDs are planned out and block assigned in ranges to ensure uniqueness. Then, through either switching to the state system (or using something like ISSI, etc.) the users/county, etc. can connect without alot of conversion, etc.

In another contrast, I've been recently watching and reading about Columbus County NC and their efforts to build a new system... seems like things are improving but they had all kinds of problems... and yet, just south, Brunswick County opted to join the state VIPER system. Columbus County is probably used by some sales folks as "don't let this happen to you" (and they aren't the only ones). Pennsylvania (I believe) spent something like a billion dollars on a failed state system. There's lots of horror stories out there....

Ultimately, all of this comes down to ho is making the decisions, how much money they have, how much or how little those people understand the technology, and how easily they can be "sold" on something by a salesman....
 

brian

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Absolutely, I don't have much insight into all the variables at play. I would assume that since these other 4 counties saw benefit to tying into the state system that they must have been given a good deal on costs to do so, and at least some local control of talkgroups and RIDs. I believe in NC, with the VIPER system, counties are issued a group of talkgroups that the counties can then allocate as they see fit. I would assume the SC arrangement is similar.

One would think that with regular mutual aid calls with Midway and Murrells Inlet Garden City FDs in neighboring Georgetown Counties as just one example, that Horry County would see a benefit to a direct tie into the state system that these agencies use.

I'm still curious how state agency users of Palmetto 800 (2b02) will interop/use the state 1D9 system in these counties once Palmetto 800 transitions to full P25 later this year. Today, in those 4 counties I mentioned, the county 1D9 system exists separately from the 2b02 Palmetto 800 system, on a completely different set of infrastructure and frequencies. When Palmetto 800 transitions to P25, will the state agencies all the sudden be using the counties' frequencies and infrastructure, and the old Palmetto 800 sites and equipment and frequencies just go away? Or will there be 2 P25 sites in each of these counties, one used by county agencies and one used by non-county agencies?
 
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