With most Police Services being encrypted and having the capabilities to “patch” together with one another, is this frequency still in use? Has anyone heard anything on this frequency lately?
142.770
- Thread starter Gymbag
- Start date
Barrie still tests it out on a daily basis but I haven't heard it used for anything other than that.
Deep River does weekly radio tests on here with OPP, as well as Chalk River Nuclear Labs Security...
FleetNet has talkgroups they use for various Police services when they need to patch in. 142.770 won't be around for much longer. I can't find the document I saw online, but the OPP put out a notice to municipal services that once PSRN is operational, 142.770 will be discontinued.
That is correct. 142.770 is a bit of a mess with each service usually having their own transmitter. When OPP does a test they key up the 142.770 located at their towers. When the local service does a test they key up their local transmitter. The result is a lot of doubling (both transmitters active at the same time).
Not quite. Here's the original post with the memo from the OPP to the Police Chiefs in Ontario: PSRN General Discussion
Basically it says that the OPP will be discontinuing *their* OPC Common system after they roll out the new system and any force that requires it to communicate with the OPP should make arrangements before the discontinuation. They also point out that the OPP can supply a donor consolette to provide interoperability instead of using OPC Common.
However, that doesn't mean that other forces that have a standalone repeater for OPC Common will be shutting it down. I suspect most agencies in the GTA on 800MHz already have a dedicated interop group on each other's systems and don't rely on OPC Common at all. However, if an agency uses OPC Common to interop with another force that isn't the OPP, they'd better make sure they've got something. For example, Barrie and South Simcoe will need to figure something out unless they already have something set up.
It's not supposed to be that way. The directive is for each agency to monitor OPC Common and enable their repeater if needed. Unfortunately, that's seldom the case these days.
Very true Mike. We must remember that dispatcher are not radio techs so just push the OPC button on the console.
My understand is that the new PSRN system will be using a lot of patched audio from the com center to the local dispatcher. This will be very similar to how the EMS phone patches work. I am not sure if there will be a dedicated TG for such patches. We will have to wait and see. The advantage of using audio would let the local system directly output it on any TG or channel from the local console.
As far as I've been told, nothing is being changed. Local Police Services will still have a consolette installed and the OPP will still patch.
rneals
Rosco P. Coltrane
Small Muni Police on VHF still typically have a repeater on 142.770/138.750 using the standard -4.02 MHz OPC offset.
Most commonly it is wireline controlled, with a "Repeater Knockdown" button on the Muni Police Radio Dispatch Console.
Normally repeat is off, and vehicles in the area on OPC can call the dispatcher. Dispatcher can talk to the car.
If there is a need to activate repeat, Dispatcher can push the knockdown button and activate the repeat function which allows car to car on OPC.
Usually the system design was to put the OPC repeater on a different site than the Muni Police primary VHF repeater.
This provided backup Comms if the usual Muni Police repeater failed, the Muni Cars could switch to OPC and keep talking until radio service could respond a fix things.
In the present era with many forces now on 700/800 Trunking, and no VHF capability in cars that are on 700/800, with the the general direction toward encryption (Managing keys interop is a PITA), and with DMR and NXDN being deployed as cheap alternatives for P25 in small forces, the notion of OPC VHF FM is an ancient concept without purpose.
I'm somewhat suprised to see the lack of common planning/coordination around P25, DMR and NXDN for Small Muni Police across Ontario. The dual timeslots in DMR and NXDN are attractive and you dont get dual timeslots with P25 until you deploy Phase II trunking which is too large for smaller Muni Police systems. However, Ontario now has a swiss-cheese radio systems with only Console Patch interoperability for small Muni services.
The large amount of FEMA and Homeland Security Grants to Counties and Municipalities in the US result in a much more homogenous set of technologies. Virtually everything Public Safety is P25 because grants require that for interoperability.
I think we'll see more small muni police services fold up and go OPP, or be serviced by an adjacent city police under contract.
Most commonly it is wireline controlled, with a "Repeater Knockdown" button on the Muni Police Radio Dispatch Console.
Normally repeat is off, and vehicles in the area on OPC can call the dispatcher. Dispatcher can talk to the car.
If there is a need to activate repeat, Dispatcher can push the knockdown button and activate the repeat function which allows car to car on OPC.
Usually the system design was to put the OPC repeater on a different site than the Muni Police primary VHF repeater.
This provided backup Comms if the usual Muni Police repeater failed, the Muni Cars could switch to OPC and keep talking until radio service could respond a fix things.
In the present era with many forces now on 700/800 Trunking, and no VHF capability in cars that are on 700/800, with the the general direction toward encryption (Managing keys interop is a PITA), and with DMR and NXDN being deployed as cheap alternatives for P25 in small forces, the notion of OPC VHF FM is an ancient concept without purpose.
I'm somewhat suprised to see the lack of common planning/coordination around P25, DMR and NXDN for Small Muni Police across Ontario. The dual timeslots in DMR and NXDN are attractive and you dont get dual timeslots with P25 until you deploy Phase II trunking which is too large for smaller Muni Police systems. However, Ontario now has a swiss-cheese radio systems with only Console Patch interoperability for small Muni services.
The large amount of FEMA and Homeland Security Grants to Counties and Municipalities in the US result in a much more homogenous set of technologies. Virtually everything Public Safety is P25 because grants require that for interoperability.
I think we'll see more small muni police services fold up and go OPP, or be serviced by an adjacent city police under contract.
