Aurora SWAT Omitted from Home Patrol Database?

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county

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Good Evening-

I was very excited to post that with my BCD436HP I'd found (what I thought to be) a new talkgroup for Aurora PD - "SWAT - 2" as I heard the officers referring to it, AFS ID 14-082, when to my surprise a quick check of the web-page for this system on RR already has it listed.

However, it is not in the Home Patrol database. I thought perhaps it an outdated DB issue, but negative. . just downloaded the latest within Sentinel and stepped through all "departments" associated with the Aurora TRS, just in case the APD SWAT channels were misfiled, and the SWAT channels 1, 2, and 3 simply don't exist. . in the PD department or anywhere else within the HP DB.

I did a quick check on the State DTRS and found Arapahoe County SWAT TGID 3087 does exist in the HP database. . so at least it's not a global issue with "SWAT" being excluded.

I wonder what's happening. .
 

hiegtx

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Good Evening-

I was very excited to post that with my BCD436HP I'd found (what I thought to be) a new talkgroup for Aurora PD - "SWAT - 2" as I heard the officers referring to it, AFS ID 14-082, when to my surprise a quick check of the web-page for this system on RR already has it listed.

However, it is not in the Home Patrol database. I thought perhaps it an outdated DB issue, but negative. . just downloaded the latest within Sentinel and stepped through all "departments" associated with the Aurora TRS, just in case the APD SWAT channels were misfiled, and the SWAT channels 1, 2, and 3 simply don't exist. . in the PD department or anywhere else within the HP DB.

I did a quick check on the State DTRS and found Arapahoe County SWAT TGID 3087 does exist in the HP database. . so at least it's not a global issue with "SWAT" being excluded.

I wonder what's happening. .
I suspect they are not included because they are flagged in the database listing as 'E'- "encrypted", probably 'Provoice'. If in fact you are hearing them in the clear via an ID Search, then that may be in error, and they should be instead be listed as "M" - 'mixed', like most of the other PD talkgroups.
 

county

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Ah hah!! Thanks Steve - that makes sense. I did indeed hear communications in the clear on APD "SWAT-2" 14-082 whilst in ID search this evening. I believe Aurora sometimes toggles back and forth between ProVoice and analog on some talkgroups . . maybe that's the definition of "mixed" mode?

I noticed Aurora Fire Admin channel (04-064) is also excluded from the HP DB, it's listed as mode D, which I presume is digital. However, I do know that dispatch is analog, whereas the mobile units are digital (ProVoice). I manually added this one into my Favorites List as it's better hearing half of the conversation than none :)

I haven't yet found if the exclusion of E/D/M modes is a preference that can be edited in Sentinel. . would be nice if that's the case.

Appreciate it!!!
 

PJH

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If the digital transmission is tagged as encrypted, the scanner will skip it. No scanner that I am aware of will decode ProVoice either.

The APCO P25 codec is it for digital.
 

county

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If the digital transmission is tagged as encrypted, the scanner will skip it. No scanner that I am aware of will decode ProVoice either.

The APCO P25 codec is it for digital.

Agreed - but in this example for Aurora, if the talkgroup is marked as something other than "A", the talkgroup is skipped. APD SWAT-2 comms were in the clear tonight. . There should at least be the option to import-all, regardless of mode, for such cases where mode is incorrect, or modified on the fly.

Also - AFD Admin is marked as mode D, but only half the comms are Pro-Voice (the mobile units' traffic), dispatch's traffic is analog. . so it's worth including, in my opinion.

Meanwhile, looks like the work-around is to just add talkgroups manually.
 

natedawg1604

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Many/most radios with Encryption have binary encryption switches, and switches have two positions. I believe the same is true for Provoice mode. Read between the lines... (On some systems the end-user switch is disabled, that's why I said "many/most"...)
 

dw2872

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I listen to Aurora PD SWAT all the time.

Aurora PD SWAT-1 and 2 are NEVER encrypted and NEVER in ProVoice mode.

Aurora PD SWAT-3 is ALWAYS fully encrypted. If they want encryption they switch to SWAT-3.

I've also verified this on Steve's Trunking Logs website (in case I missed some) where, we as a community, can collect and analyze system control channel data.

So 1 and 2 should NOT have an E in the database at all. Once this is corrected in the RR database, the HP database issue should resolve itself in short order.
 
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