Alabama Interoperable Radio System (was: Alabama First Responder Network)

[KV4PM]

Edit to add: One thing I'd love to know more about is the history of the public safety systems along this stretch of the gulf coast, but unfortunately finding historical information on scanner frequencies, old 10-codes and signal codes, and stuff like when cities and counties migrated from VHF to UHF or the old analog trunked systems is impossible to find. I know I've mentioned in other threads in years past that I vacationed down here as a kid in the 80's and 90's and always brought a scanner but rarely heard anything from any police departments while at the beach, so I don't know if they just weren't very busy back then, or I had the wrong frequencies, or what. By the time I grew up and moved down here permanently everyone was on AIRS or the NXDN system.

Seems like only yesterday that Fairhope, Daphne, Gulf Shores, and Foley were all on VHF, with Mobile on UHF. I still remember going to Radio Shack and buying a Police Call guide and having an 8-channel scanner with crystals.

I feel old all of a sudden.

 

[WX4AJM]

Yesterday, RFSS 6 seems to have had something going on for about an hour and a half. I lost 6-001 (Dothan Simulcast) and 6-002 (Dale County Central) around 15:15 and came back up around 16:40.

There was a lot going on in the 6-001 frequency ranges, but of course by the time I got into SDR to see what was going on, it all came back up.

 

[MississippiPI]

I don't think anyone was streaming their traffic online (at least through broadcastify), unless someone just recently started doing so. Makes me wonder what made them decide to flip the switch now.

Probably the media

 

[TomServo]

Probably the media

Do the media here not have AIRS or MCCD listen-only radios? I thought that was a common thing for police and EMS to loan out radios to the media so they can bypass the encryption and know what's going on.

 

[KV4PM]

Do the media here not have AIRS or MCCD listen-only radios? I thought that was a common thing for police and EMS to loan out radios to the media so they can bypass the encryption and know what's going on.

Given the half-arsed reporting from our local media, it seems unlikely; the media seem to report only what the cops tell them in their jargon-filled press releases. When a "news" story has words like "male subject" and "ascertained," it's a dead give-away, lol.

Personally, I would like to see private citizens (after thorough background checks and a permitting fee, of course) be allowed access to e-keys; do the Unication pagers have the ability to decrypt with the proper keys? Never had my hands on one of those units but I hear they are solid but costly devices. I seem to recall way back in the day reading that some jurisdictions required a permit for mobile use of scanners but never knew if any of those areas were nearby.

 

[kb5udf]

Yes, unications do support encryption.

 

[radiogod_2103]

Yes, unications do support en

They do but you have a snowballs chance in hell of getting they key. also according to the data it only supports phase 1 encryption "AES, DES (Phase 1 only), URC4 (ARC4, ADP"

 

[TomServo]

Does anyone happen to know where talkgroup 64005 might belong? I haven't actually heard any activity on it yet but it shows up in my logfiles every few days with radio ID 6030006 or similar getting denied registration.

I look at the logs daily for anything interesting and there's quite a few radios that show up like this, trying and getting denied registration. I'd say 9 times out of 10 it's a talkgroup for a PD or FD up around Birmingham, Tuscaloosa or Decatur and Huntsville, but this one isn't listed in the database and doesn't seem to fit with any existing pattern.

It's that time of year where down here on the coast we do get some people "travelling with their radios" so out of area activity pops up. Dale County SO has been here and there all summer, and just today Jeffco SO came alive with their Bessemer dispatch channel, so I know some radios are allowed to roam down here, but apparently not all of them can do that.

 

[morganAL]

Assuming the numbering convention has stayed the same, the "6" prefix would indicate Zone 6. Zone 6 was supposed to be Dothan but I retired before they ever joined the system.

 

[TomServo]

Is anyone familiar with talkgroup 33580 by chance? I caught a Marshall County radio trying and failing to register on this talkgroup on a tower in Baldwin County recently and it's not listed in the AIRS database.

Like my previous post earlier this month, it's one of many radio IDs that are being denied affiliation with out of area talkgroups, but this is the first one I've found that isn't listed yet.

 

[TomServo]

Assuming the numbering convention has stayed the same, the "6" prefix would indicate Zone 6. Zone 6 was supposed to be Dothan but I retired before they ever joined the system.

I meant to follow up on this but it slipped past me... Has there ever been a published list of the zones for talkgroups and radio IDs, by chance? It would really be interesting to see the layout. This came back to mind tonight when I looked at yesterday's AIRS logs in SDRTrunk and was confronted with a metric ton of new radio IDs I've never seen before, almost all of them getting denied group affiliation rejections from the system.

I think I mentioned it before but it seems like fewer radios are being allowed to roam down here on the Baldwin County towers. Other than the occasional Dale County Sheriff transmission, it seems everyone else is getting rejected now. Makes me wonder if the system has just gotten that busy that they can't support unfettered roaming anymore.

Here's just the radio IDs that showed up on the Magnolia Springs tower yesterday:

2913xxx - Dale County - denied
3004
3009
3010
3030
3032
3040
3041
3102 - Etowah County - Attala FD Dispatch - denied
3104
4006
4039
4042
4047
4049
4050
4132
4165
4203 - Talladega County - Sylacauga FD Dispatch - denied
4205
4210 - Jefferson County - Bessemer FD Dispatch - denied
4305
4307
4312
4313
4336
4337 - St Clair County - denied
4993 - Dale County?
5007

Some of them like the 3102xxx radios I could match up because they actually showed trying to register to the Attalla FD dispatch channel but were denied. But most of the others just were denied with a TG of 0 so that doesn't tell me anything about what part of the state they're supposed to be from.

Somewhere previously in this thread it was mentioned that there's a public safety convention of some sort yearly at the beach, but I didn't come across anything online about anything that might be going on right now. This is an awful lot of new radio activity, though, to be coincidental. I had similar levels of activity on the Robertsdale and Seminole towers, too.

 

[morganAL]

The Alabama NENA conference is in the fall at Orange Beach, usually at the Perdido Beach Resort. But you also have the Alabama Sheriff's Association and I think they meet at Point Clear but don't remember when.

 

[sadave]

Last week, there was also a School Resource Officer training at Baldwin Prep Academy on Hwy 59, north of I-10, in Loxley.

Shep

 

[Avery93]

The Sheriff's Association conference was back in July, the AACOP summer conference is going on this week, and the Alabama NENA conference is the second week of October. All at Orange Beach.

The majority of these attendees are in county/city vehicles and likely don't turn off their mobile radios when they leave their normal operating area. Some may even try monitoring their local TGs on their portable radios. With some exceptions, most local talkgroups aren't allowed to roam very far from their home county. The denials aren't really just a Baldwin County thing.

 

[TomServo]

Ah okay, thanks for that info, Avery!

I was wondering how roaming worked on a system like this. I haven't been listening as long as some others but have in the past heard snippets (or seen them in the SDRTrunk logs) of out of area radio activity and was wondering why all the sudden everything was being denied access.

I don't think I've ever heard an AIRS site in Baldwin County get totally jammed up with traffic but it's come close when there's multiple agencies working incidents plus one of the medivac copters in phase 1 taking up two channel slots, ha ha. The Foley NXDN system, on the other hand, seems to regularly have capacity issues, especially the Foley and Seminole sites.

 

[kingpin]

Ah okay, thanks for that info, Avery!

I was wondering how roaming worked on a system like this. I haven't been listening as long as some others but have in the past heard snippets (or seen them in the SDRTrunk logs) of out of area radio activity and was wondering why all the sudden everything was being denied access.

I don't think I've ever heard an AIRS site in Baldwin County get totally jammed up with traffic but it's come close when there's multiple agencies working incidents plus one of the medivac copters in phase 1 taking up two channel slots, ha ha. The Foley NXDN system, on the other hand, seems to regularly have capacity issues, especially the Foley and Seminole sites.

I used to manage the site roaming access to the sites. It took some fine tuning when we first went live in 2012, because someone from the south part of the county would want to be home up north still listening to their talk group. The problem is with this being an ASR system, we only had so many voice channels. So, those have to be allocated for nearby usage only in some areas, with distant agencies being denied access simply because the local agency needs the priority. One particular example was a Gulf Shores official wanting to listen to their dispatch at his home up in Spanish Fort. I noticed in my reports we were getting busies on the Spanish Fort site, and upon investigation I found the amount of Gulf Shores PD dispatch talkgroup traffic caused the lack of resource problems for the agencies that were locally served by that tower. So since Spanish Fort was not in their primacy geographical or adjacent jurisdiction, I had to lock the Gulf shores channels out. This didn't make certain people happy but the busies on the Spanish Fort tower went from frequent to rare. Not all sites have the same number of channels, so managing where the talk groups can / can't go is crucial to their management. It got particularly important for Festivals and conventions when they would come to town, so I'd find out what talk groups were needed and expand coverage if needed. It was a constant dance but good job security.. and also a lesson to agencies to use those mutual aid talk groups instead of dragging their own talk groups around the state.

 

[morganAL]

Ditto on what Kingpin said. I used to do it in Morgan Co and dealt with the same issues, plus the whining from officials that were going to conferences at the coast and wanted to be able to listen to their TG while down there. I just told them it wasn't going to happen. I never bothered Kingpin with it. There was no need. The reality is, they would never really be listening anyway. If something bad happened, either dispatch or someone from the agency would call them anyway. Trying to explain limited resources on a radio system to police/fire people is like trying to explain quantum physics to a 3 yr old. They just don't get it.

 

[TomServo]

Were these agencies sold the upgrade to a trunked radio system as having the capability to have their radios work anywhere in the state?

You'd think they'd be aware of range limitations based on the old analog radio systems that only covered a county or region.

 

[morganAL]

Were these agencies sold the upgrade to a trunked radio system as having the capability to have their radios work anywhere in the state?

You'd think they'd be aware of range limitations based on the old analog radio systems that only covered a county or region.

No. They were sold on interop with all agencies within the county and some agencies from surrounding counties. During presentations, agency heads would ask questions about other users and Motorola would reference different agencies (agency A has this many officers, this many cars, and they do blah. Agency B has has this other number of officers and they do bleh). In addition, I'd bet it was discussed at Chief/Sheriff conferences more than once.

 

[TomServo]

Ah, that makes sense and I can see how that would be a really big draw to switching to this system. For as much interop as I hear locally on the BCERN (BC Law 1) channel and the BC Fire channels, I don't think I've ever heard more than a radio check during Hangout on the statewide interop talkgroups so I guess they're not used much at all.