Cambria County Motorola system to go live in 2022

[IStebleton]

Cambria County to spend 16.9 Million on a new radio system

I am surprised that I haven't seen any new licenses show up, considering this article is almost a year old. Any clue if they are building out their own system, or are they joining ICORRS?

 

[W3DMV]

According to the county EMA and commissioner notes the county is making improvements
to the existing system with some tower work and overhauling the site microwave system. Since
there are no license additions or applications, I would presume they will keep the current system
and make necessary changes to upgrade to a more reliable system. Several fire chiefs commented
and digital equipment but I don't see anything in the reports regarding actual radio replacement.
15-18 million these days doesn't get you a lot. My county, "Adams" spent 28-30 million to replace
everything and this is a small county so looking at the projected project cost, it would be limited in
scope.
The county EMA web site contains notes regarding the projected work involved.

 

[HM1529]

A move to ICORRS is in the works from what I understand.

 

[HM1529]

Here is a news story publicly stating that Cambria and Mercer will be coming on board:

911 system set for major enhancements

Indiana County emergency officials are down to counting the months before the 911 dispatch center makes a major leap in connectivity to people in need of help.

www.indianagazette.com

 

[talviar]

Here is a news story publicly stating that Cambria and Mercer will be coming on board:

911 system set for major enhancements

Indiana County emergency officials are down to counting the months before the 911 dispatch center makes a major leap in connectivity to people in need of help.

www.indianagazette.com

However- at the time of that article- Cambria and Mercer were only in talks with ICORRS.

Mercer is coming on as a Console only site with Conventional bases. ie they are not going trunked, merely bringing their conventional channels on to the system.

Cambria system is being installed over the next 18 months or more..... and will be on ICORRS I can't remember when we formally approved them on. But was in the middle of COVID this year some time..... too many damn on line meeting to remember

 

[RedPenguin]

Cambria system is being installed over the next 18 months or more..... and will be on ICORRS I can't remember when we formally approved them on. But was in the middle of COVID this year some time..... too many damn on line meeting to remember

So will Cambria be similar to Mercer? I mean they act like they are not going to trunking based on their comments and work they are doing.

Also does ICORRS have some patches? I noticed in the DB for Indiana County, it says IUP still are using UHF, yet they are listed on ICORRS. Is it just a UHF patch or another channel?

 

[RedPenguin]

BTW, here is another story by Cambria:

Cambria set to use eminent domain for 911 radio tower sites

All they mention is that there is an agreement if something happens to Cambria's System or a nearby county, another county can take over the Dispatching.

 

[IStebleton]

I had heard from a firefighter in Cambria County that they are switching to an 800MHz system that works with their new CAD that is getting installed.

 

[talviar]

So will Cambria be similar to Mercer? I mean they act like they are not going to trunking based on their comments and work they are doing.

Also does ICORRS have some patches? I noticed in the DB for Indiana County, it says IUP still are using UHF, yet they are listed on ICORRS. Is it just a UHF patch or another channel?

Cambria is installing 800 MHz P25 Trunking.....

Unknown on IUP. I am in Fayette not Indiana. And don't keep track of what each county on ICORRS does unless it comes up during a board meeting or a tech meeting.

 

[talviar]

BTW, here is another story by Cambria:

Cambria set to use eminent domain for 911 radio tower sites

All they mention is that there is an agreement if something happens to Cambria's System or a nearby county, another county can take over the Dispatching.

Lots of moving parts to that statement.... All the ICORRS counties are also members of WESTCORE... WESTCORE is a large scale 911 phone system. Basically if Cambria has to shut down their 911 center, phones and radios can be brought up in quite a few different counties and people assist in calltaking / dispatching from somewhere else on the network.

 

[RedPenguin]

Well it sounds like no more 453MHZ.

Bummer as virtually nobody that I know has a P25 Scanner.

But even if they did, guess some may go encrypted.

 

[druhe]

Fire and EMS dispatch / paging is to remain as is. All operations will be on the 800 system. Law Enforcement, as of now, will be 100% encrypted.
If other county services will be brought on board is unknown at this time. Somerset County has been running this exact way with good success.

 

[RedPenguin]

Fire and EMS dispatch / paging is to remain as is. All operations will be on the 800 system. Law Enforcement, as of now, will be 100% encrypted.
If other county services will be brought on board is unknown at this time. Somerset County has been running this exact way with good success.

TBH, I'm slightly surprised that other counties aren't all encrypted on ICORRS. It seems that virtually every PD in the country is moving that way.

It seems like it's slowly just being the huge cities like NYC, Pittsburgh, LA, etc that I haven't seen a big move towards encryption yet.

 

[RedPenguin]

What makes no sense yet is, how is Cambria going 800MHZ without a single new license?

I did an Advanced FCC ULS Search and found nothing new for the county except a non-related 800MHZ license.

I did find Oakland Sta 6 has an 800MHZ License now though.

 

[phillydjdan]

Cambria doesn't need to obtain licensing so long as the system administrators have licensing in that county on that band. Is there anything at all licensed in the 700/800 band in Cambria County? PA Starnet uses some First Energy frequencies on its system...

 

[RedPenguin]

Cambria doesn't need to obtain licensing so long as the system administrators have licensing in that county on that band. Is there anything at all licensed in the 700/800 band in Cambria County? PA Starnet uses some First Energy frequencies on its system...

Doing an FCC Geosearch, it says only Oakland VFD/Station 6 has an 800MHZ license to operate in Cambria County. The other licensees are Commercial Trunks.

 

[phillydjdan]

They could lease from a commercial entity. That's what Trenton NJ does. Entire city radio system on business band frequencies using Kenwood NXDN trunking. Makes zero sense to me, but whatever lol

 

[IStebleton]

Let me put it this way, there aren't any licenses at any of the 16 tower locations they said they were using, and Motorola Solutions is the one building and designing the system.

 

[talviar]

Let me put it this way, there aren't any licenses at any of the 16 tower locations they said they were using, and Motorola Solutions is the one building and designing the system.

A couple of tidbits.... you don't walk into a store and purchase repeater pairs for a trunking system.... The first and foremost issue is locking in all the tower sites which sometimes takes a while.

Since a handful of the towers are new builds requiring property acquisition, FAA approval and appropriate construction permits (ie building permits).... its usually best to wait a while and finalize all that before submitting the final approval/auth to the frequency coordinator.

On top of that.... The coordinator has to deal with multiple "nextel rebanding areas", several states, National Radio Quiet Zone and possibly Canada for the interference contours. Out of this entire process, the freqs are the fastest to obtain.

I know in the case of Fayette, when we deployed.... the system was assembled and shipped before we had all our frequencies. We had 8 freqs licensed at the time but were also running a 7 channel Smartnet system on all but 1 freq, which was running an analog FM repeater on Mt Davis for back fill into part of the county. Final freqs for us were not available and approved until 2 months prior to bringing the system on line for optimization.

Some of our issues- 1 site, required power to be turned down for an unknown reason.. Since the next closest licensed location was on the freqs was 195 miles away with 4 major mountain ridges in the way.... the National Radio Quiet Zone due south of the tower by a number of miles- maybe 70-90? was the only reason we could come up with as why we had to cut the power output down, on our northern high profile tower site, it took approval from Canada to get approval for coordination.... on 3 of our 7 towers, it took Nextel waivers due to rebanding locks on frequencies... That whole process took us over a year and was started before the system build commenced.

Lastly... what does Motorola Solutions building and designing have to do with "there aren't any licenses"? While they work with the county and facilitate the license process... it is ultimately Cambria County responsibility to pay the coordinator and finalize the paperwork/process to get licenses

as always, this has been my $4.95, no warranty expressed or implied, strictly my opinion, and YMMV!

 

[IStebleton]

A couple of tidbits.... you don't walk into a store and purchase repeater pairs for a trunking system.... The first and foremost issue is locking in all the tower sites which sometimes takes a while.

Since a handful of the towers are new builds requiring property acquisition, FAA approval and appropriate construction permits (ie building permits).... its usually best to wait a while and finalize all that before submitting the final approval/auth to the frequency coordinator.

On top of that.... The coordinator has to deal with multiple "nextel rebanding areas", several states, National Radio Quiet Zone and possibly Canada for the interference contours. Out of this entire process, the freqs are the fastest to obtain.

I know in the case of Fayette, when we deployed.... the system was assembled and shipped before we had all our frequencies. We had 8 freqs licensed at the time but were also running a 7 channel Smartnet system on all but 1 freq, which was running an analog FM repeater on Mt Davis for back fill into part of the county. Final freqs for us were not available and approved until 2 months prior to bringing the system on line for optimization.

Some of our issues- 1 site, required power to be turned down for an unknown reason.. Since the next closest licensed location was on the freqs was 195 miles away with 4 major mountain ridges in the way.... the National Radio Quiet Zone due south of the tower by a number of miles- maybe 70-90? was the only reason we could come up with as why we had to cut the power output down, on our northern high profile tower site, it took approval from Canada to get approval for coordination.... on 3 of our 7 towers, it took Nextel waivers due to rebanding locks on frequencies... That whole process took us over a year and was started before the system build commenced.

Lastly... what does Motorola Solutions building and designing have to do with "there aren't any licenses"? While they work with the county and facilitate the license process... it is ultimately Cambria County responsibility to pay the coordinator and finalize the paperwork/process to get licenses

as always, this has been my $4.95, no warranty expressed or implied, strictly my opinion, and YMMV!

I didn't mean that Motorola Systems was doing any of the licenses, I just meant that it wasn't a commercial entity like what Trenton did. I didn't think about all of work involved in getting towers built and frequencies approved. My apologies.