Newcastle county fireboard sent out a message this morning stating that all dispatches were now running off the new 800Mhz system. I turned on my scanner, still is trunk tracking but voice quality has improved. I'm not sure if they have officially moved over from the old Motorola to P25 Phase 1 because scanner is still working. Does anyone have any information on this?
800Mhz Upgrade
- Thread starter chrishoerner
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doctordialtone
Member
As long as there is at least ONE phase one radio affiliated, the system will operate as Phase 1.
I did notice that 8304 - NCC Motorola was active on the NCC Simulcast. I’m not sure if that’s related or not.
So unless the State of Delaware is building out a totally new P25 system which takes at least a year, that is not what is being upgraded. So is the actual Fire/EMS Dispatch freq 453.30 going away in favor of a new 800mhz Frequency?
453.3 is still active today. The state has been phasing out radios not flashed for P25 phase one for years now in preparation to upgrade from Motorola type 2 to P25 Phase one. I'm wondering if its about to change over, or already has. I'm curious if the scanner would still track without changing the settings in the scanner from mot2 to p25 and we wouldn't notice. Another thread mentions activity on the Delwin system, perhaps the 2 systems will be merged?
Mr_Boh
Member
Over in the FiRST thread in MD forums, a recent meeting for the radio board implies that Delaware is converting to P25 at some point soon.
I believe the issue with FiRST and Delaware is FDMA radios hogging resources when on FiRST. I think Delaware radios are getting TDMA capabilities to alleviate this issue. (ie P25 PH2 capable) At least the ones that have this interop need..
If they're going to use DELWIN or even just convert their current system they're likely going to have to acquire several additional repeaters.
Mr_Boh
Member
That part definitely knew about. Could be misinterpreting, but the latter half of this is what I was referencing:
Now not sure how upgrading a local system would impact capacity of a foreign system, why as I read it again I’m less inclined to believe it’s a sign of system upgrade, however as far as I knew from previous project news they have SmartX in place. Not sure if it means they have a P25-supporting core already, or are using them for some other purpose.
All speculation at this point.
Could be taking advantage of the generous discount, and generally preparing for an inevitable future upgrade. 2 birds..
No word about Delaware system changes, just the subscriber radios.
Whenever an FDMA radio uses a FiRST channel it uses (busy's) 2 TDMA slots ch resources, This can cause a denial of service, just when it's needed most during an incident.. At the current time this would only affect Delaware radios which can subscribe to neighboring (and future) TDMA systems.. They would operate as normal on the home system. (and be ahead of the game for a future system change)
No word about Delaware system changes, just the subscriber radios.
Whenever an FDMA radio uses a FiRST channel it uses (busy's) 2 TDMA slots ch resources, This can cause a denial of service, just when it's needed most during an incident.. At the current time this would only affect Delaware radios which can subscribe to neighboring (and future) TDMA systems.. They would operate as normal on the home system. (and be ahead of the game for a future system change)
jwhite591
The Comunication Guy
Hopefully this will clarify some things, The State of Delaware currently has a 800Mhz Motorola Type II SmartZone system With APCO-25 Common Air Interface Exclusive Audio overlay that was purchased way before Maryland Started building their 700 P25 Phase 2 System, Now Delaware Started a 8 year Project back in 2016 or so, To upgrade the 800Mhz System from a Motorola Type II SmartZone system to a full Motorola Project 25 Phase I System, and they have been slowly replacing and or upgrading the equipment, More info can be found on State of Delaware’s Web site at http://bidcondocs.delaware.gov/GSS/GSS_16771_800MHzUpgrade_rfp.pdf , Now I have heard talk that they may combine the 800 and the 700 System after the upgrade is completed. On another note there is a push to upgrade mobile and portable radios so they can do both P25 Phases like the river and bay authority has already done, so they can communicate on the New Jersey Interoperability Communications System (NJICS)
Thanks, I was hoping someone would run Trunker to confirm. I'm curious what that message was referring to, Im not active in the fire service anymore but I can ask around. Though most users really don't have much of an understanding of how these things work.
I don't have many contacts over there anymore either unfortunately. I pulled the county license for 453.05/.30 and grabbed the FRN and ran it. I don't see any 800 frequencies licensed to the county. That's not surprising as the trunking system is a state system. I was just curious if they may have licensed one for conventional dispatch.
I had a couple thoughts as far as possibilities. I'm still curious if there's possibly a conventional 800 meg dispatch channel that's been newly fired up. I also considered that perhaps there may be a new control channel on air, but this seems unlikely given what looked like normal (heavy) traffic load on the NCC site on 853.2125. My only other thought was to check the activity on the DELWIN system. My SDR crashed before I got that far, so I still need to look at that. I also think I'll throw a scanner up with close call turned on for a few days to see what it logs. I'm only a couple miles from a site across the river.
One thing I did notice was that NCCPD Dispatch 2 was patched somewhere. Everything else looked normal to me over the course of a few hours.
-Ryan
I've done some more monitoring on the 800 MHz system. The control channel is definitely still Motorola. For the sake of experimentation I programmed the control channel as P25 standard trunk and the scanner doesn't know what to do with it. It tracks as Motorola just fine.
The audio from the consoles definitely sounds as though it has improved significantly. I mentioned above that I was seeing NCCPD Dispatch 2 patched somewhere. At that time that was the only talkgroup I was seeing that on. I'm now seeing consoles on the fire and police sides (NCC) show up with an ID of 65520 in Unitrunker. (I had this tagged as a patch previously, I can't remember all of the special IDs to say what the meaning might be in the present case). I did see at least one NCC Fireboard console still using the same 5xxxx series ID that I've tagged it with in the past. My 396xt isn't displaying any source IDs for the consoles that come up as 65520 in Unitrunker. All field unit IDs appear to be unchanged.
I did check the DELWIN system tonight and it is silent (online with no voice traffic).
-Ryan
The audio from the consoles definitely sounds as though it has improved significantly. I mentioned above that I was seeing NCCPD Dispatch 2 patched somewhere. At that time that was the only talkgroup I was seeing that on. I'm now seeing consoles on the fire and police sides (NCC) show up with an ID of 65520 in Unitrunker. (I had this tagged as a patch previously, I can't remember all of the special IDs to say what the meaning might be in the present case). I did see at least one NCC Fireboard console still using the same 5xxxx series ID that I've tagged it with in the past. My 396xt isn't displaying any source IDs for the consoles that come up as 65520 in Unitrunker. All field unit IDs appear to be unchanged.
I did check the DELWIN system tonight and it is silent (online with no voice traffic).
-Ryan
That document supports what has been posted earlier in the forums. Delaware intend to convert / rebuild / refresh its current SmartZone system into a P25 Phase 1 infrastructure. It will not be adding new tower sites, nor will it incorporate the current DELWIN (DOC) 700 overlay - which makes sense since the DELWIN system uses the same physical tower sites as the 800 system for the most part. The document does say they will convert / incorporate the two IR sites in NCC into the NCC simulcast cell. The new system will also bridge into the MD FIRST and DELWIN systems using ISSI, meaning that users can roam onto each other's systems if proper authenticated. The subscriber units that Delaware will field from now into the future will be Phase 2 capable (which is an option on Moto APX radios, for a fee of course,) and compatible radios that Delaware has acquired in the past will be prioritized for software upgrades, especially for fire companies and DSP units that respond into Maryland. As noted above, Sussex has reflashed all its compatible radios for Phase 2 operations into neighboring Maryland Eastern Shore counties.
Delaware is likely using Smartx Site Converters as a migration gateway between their new P25 Astro core infrastructure and the legacy SmartZone system. They have also replaced dispatch consoles in the centers with IP switched technology, and is replacing base station and microwave radios, and antennas. It should sound "cleaner." 64Kish (65534) is the max number of RIDs you can have with a SmartZone system; when the P25 Astro core comes online natively, you will (or could) start seeing 7 character RIDs.
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jwhite591
The Comunication Guy
According to bid. Proposal that went out in 2016, Starting on page 50 of this document http://bidcondocs.delaware.gov/GSS/GSS_16771_800MHzUpgrade_rfp.pdf
It shows the time schedule and that the up grade project is planned to take 8 years to complete, the conversion to a P25 system not going to happen until year 6 at he earliest, and based on the work so far it looks like we are in year 2
It shows the time schedule and that the up grade project is planned to take 8 years to complete, the conversion to a P25 system not going to happen until year 6 at he earliest, and based on the work so far it looks like we are in year 2
The state intends to accelerate the implementation of the project (which is a new development since that document was created,) but it won't be finished for more several years. The SmartX gateways are intended to help jurisdictions introduce new hardware over a long term project. It *appears* that they will replace center and site equipment in stages, so some sites could theoretically see some improvement before others.
jwhite591
The Comunication Guy
Yes they can accelerate the upgrade, But They need to upgrade the entire backbone 1st, Therefor all the towers and Equipment Need to be upgraded First, Before you throw the switch to a full P25 System, and yes you will probably notice some changes as the progresses like improved audio as they replace outdated Consoles and other Radio Equipment, it all comes down to the state and how much money they have to spend per Budget year on how fast they go. The bottom line, Its not going to happen over Night.
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