Aurora FD going Digital?

[RFsponge]

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My apologies in advance if this has been previously addressed in this forum. Just a quick question: Heard a lot of what sounded like simulcasting of digital transmissions on Aurora's analog EDACS system today. (8-17-12) Just on the Fire TG's. Wondering if anyone has heard if they're preparing to go full digital soon...

AND... if they do are they sticking with MA/COM?

AND... if they are is Pro-Voice back in the realm of possibility?

OK, so that's like, 7 questions.

Any insight is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[scanlist]

Usually when AFD has assistance from DTRS agencies you will hear digital to analog patching.

If there is a transition going on the best way to check would be to use unitrunker to log the system paying particular attention to the patch listings in the bottom window with known analog AFD talkgroups. Another hint would be the known analog talkgroup would have another digital only talkgroup show up simultaneously with each transmission.

I am at a disadvantage for logging the Aurora system up here.

 

[abqscan]

If it was Tac 3 or Tac 4, it was a digital patch to the DTRS for S. Metro or Cunningham FD's.

 

[kc0kp]

If it was Tac 3 or Tac 4, it was a digital patch to the DTRS for S. Metro or Cunningham FD's.

South Metro I believe uses Motobridge to tie them and they will not show up in the patch list since it is not a system patch.

 

[RFsponge]

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Thanks all.

Just FYI: Should've said that the traffic was on the main FD and TAC TG's. No MA operations as far as I could tell. 99% sure there was no similcasting of Police TG's. When I first heard them I thought I was listening to MAC GREEN 1 as it's normal to hear that simulcast all over the place. But it's pretty much everything on the fire side. Out of range currently but will try to monitor more closely as I come back into town today.

Thanks again!

 

[greenthumb]

Listening to them for a short time early this afternoon, fire dispatch, tac 2 and tac 4 are all analog (dispatch and field users) as is all of APD.

 

[jimmnn]

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Thanks all.

Just FYI: Should've said that the traffic was on the main FD and TAC TG's. No MA operations as far as I could tell. 99% sure there was no similcasting of Police TG's. When I first heard them I thought I was listening to MAC GREEN 1 as it's normal to hear that simulcast all over the place. But it's pretty much everything on the fire side. Out of range currently but will try to monitor more closely as I come back into town today.

Thanks again!

Be on the online feed all day and it's been all analog.

Jim<

 

[scanlist]

As far as the AFD dispatch talkgroup goes the dispatchers are analog while units in the field are pro-voice.

If the radio system goes into single site failsoft all communications on the AFD dispatch talkgroup are pro-voice I have verified this on 2 occasions.

 

[RFsponge]

As far as the AFD dispatch talkgroup goes the dispatchers are analog while units in the field are pro-voice.

If the radio system goes into single site failsoft all communications on the AFD dispatch talkgroup are pro-voice I have verified this on 2 occasions.

Last question: If this fault occurs and Disptach is ProVoice, is the system monitorable with a scanner?

Thanks.

 

[Steve2003]

New firmware on the PSR-800 now allows the scanner to "track" digital talkgroups. It is fairly easy to get Dsd4win up and running to listen to the audio. Not all PD is analog, I have seen quite a bit of ProVoice activity on some of the secondary PD groups.

-Steve

 

[scanlist]

Last question: If this fault occurs and Disptach is ProVoice, is the system monitorable with a scanner?

Dispatch is digital on the AFD Dispatch talkgroup when the system is in single site failsoft. All the TAC groups remain analog when this occurs. No other talkgroups or fleets are affected.

It was mentioned some years ago that radio reprogramming after AFD gave pro-voice the thumbs down may have been an oversight when it came to the dispatch talkgroup. At the time M/A COM wasn't exactly loved by the users on the Aurora system.

 

[RFsponge]

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Yes I do recall that they attempted to deploy a pure Pro-Voice system fleet-wide some years back and it failed miserably. I even remember fire chiefs and some cops in the media saying it was going to get someone killed because they had a real fear of a comm failure at a critical moment in an emergency.

Just wondering if they might be ready to try it again.

Thanks all!

 

[rfburns]

If they don't want Smartphone listeners, all they have to do is rename every channel a "Tac" channel. I think they already figured that out by having their car to car channels removed from the feed by simply naming them "Tac".

Are they really worried about being scrutinized after the fact when the media plays the archives back vs. using more digital chs. That must be quite an agonizing internal discussion. If new test results are being logged, that shuld make the discussions more subjective.

 

[scanlist]

The APD "TAC" talkgroups date back to when they moved from UHF to their Motorola system in the mid 90's. There never were car to car talkgroups on either trunked system.

Harris has classified EDACS as "End Of Life" with support of existing systems for a few more years

Down the road I would expect a change to P25 or whatever new and improved is available when they decide to retire the current system.

 

[rfburns]

The APD "TAC" talkgroups date back to when they moved from UHF

We had real tactical channels on UHF. One of which was 458.75. We may have also used 458.55. MT-500 TCXO's cost too much to change around very much. Seems like a pair was around $100 in 1970's dollars.

My point is that today's traffic on the "Tac" TG's like 14-024, 14-044 and 14-064 really isn't tactical like it was in those days on UHF. I would say that today's TG's that carry tactical traffic are like 14-030, 14-050, 14-070, 14-081 and 15-021.

I apologize for not having read read the terms of service for a long time. Under the current contract it doesn't matter what the TG is called and only dispatch and special event chs/tg's are allowed.