Chico P25 Trunked Radio System

[mcjones2013]

It appears the City of Chico is planning a move to a new 800 MHz P25 Trunked Radio System, according to this Motorola project report. Looks like it will be a 3-site, 4-channel simulcast system.

https://chico-ca.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=1007&meta_id=78651

 

[mcjones2013]

This would be a separate system from Butte County's BRICS.

 

[officer_415]

It's on the air:

Chico Trunking System, Chico, California

Chico Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

 

[mcjones2013]

It's interesting to me that Chico decided to go their own route instead of just joining BRICS. BCSO is obviously on BRICS, Paradise is now there, Oroville is in the planning stages on moving over, and I'm sure Gridley would want to join at some point. It just seems from an interop perspective (and possibly even financial), joining BRICS would've been more effective, but maybe it's not as big of a deal as I'm thinking.

 

[gmclam]

It's interesting to me that Chico decided to go their own route instead of just joining BRICS. BCSO is obviously on BRICS, Paradise is now there, Oroville is in the planning stages on moving over, and I'm sure Gridley would want to join at some point. It just seems from an interop perspective (and possibly even financial), joining BRICS would've been more effective, but maybe it's not as big of a deal as I'm thinking.

I couldn't agree more. I see this as a waste of taxpayer money. And not the best solution in the name of inter-operability and officer safety.

 

[officer_415]

They're even using two of the same sites as the BRICS north simulcast (4157 Altatina Dr and 479 East Park Ave). They do have an additional site at 1110 W East Ave, and they're licensed for a higher ERP. Maybe they weren't satisfied with the BRICS coverage?

 

[norcalscan]

Don't waste energy trying to understand Chico's decisions, you could light up a small county instead. Remember this is the same city with a sole UHF Fire system smack in the middle of nearly (pauses to do math) 54,000square miles of VHF Fire. The political power struggles out of Chico is remarkable to say the least, and it has slapped them in the face with a wet trout multiple times, including their recent "surprise" of BCSO going full E last month. Utter waste of tax dollars and is a lost cause to assume anything was done with efficiency or collaboration in their thought process.

 

[mcjones2013]

including their recent "surprise" of BCSO going full E last month

Relatedly, I heard a Chico PD unit trying to hail BCSO dispatch on the BCSO MAIN VHF repeater last week with no response back (that I could hear before the scanner moved on).

 

[mcjones2013]

With Chico announcing they're going to be encrypted, it's going to be even more interesting to see how they and the rest of the county/cities will interop together. I'm not sure how much daily interop they have amongst each other to begin with.

Obviously for talking to each other, just need to program each others system in each others radios.

In terms of scanning between Chico and BRICS for situational awareness, unless they have two radios in the cars, I don't think its going to be possible unless they do some patching between systems. I don't believe there's a way to natively scan between two separate trunked systems on one radio.

Northern California APCO suggests coordinating regionally with encryption keys and key slots to avoid conflicts between agencies within your own system and between systems. Hopefully they're doing that here. Some of the systems near Sacramento you can tell are coordinating between systems and agencies when watching DSDPlus.

CHICO, Calif. — The Chico Police Department (CPD) has announced they are encrypting their radio communications.

I think it's one of those things where everyone wants to hear what other people are doing but if it's you personally, and it's your private information going out over the airwaves where anyone can hear it, that's when people seem to realize 'yea maybe that's not a good idea'. That's one of the arguing points for encryption is protecting the citizenry for all the things that are out there," said Brian Miller, Lieutenant for the Chico Police Department.

Chico Police Department begins encrypting radio communications for security and privacy

 

[officer_415]

In terms of scanning between Chico and BRICS for situational awareness, unless they have two radios in the cars, I don't think its going to be possible unless they do some patching between systems. I don't believe there's a way to natively scan between two separate trunked systems on one radio.

My understanding is that it can be done on the APX series radios. However, it works the same as a scanner where it has to monitor one CC for a second, then the other CC for a second, etc.

While the radio is monitoring one system, there's no way for it to know what's happening on the other system. So it's not really practical for your main radio (you would miss traffic on your primary dispatch channel), but it could be useful on a secondary radio.

 

[SCANHF]

Encryption absolutely does not hinder Interop anymore.
That's old thinking and from bad programming.

Were so advanced now

Motorola has a 24/7 team to handle programming & to make sure everything 'should' run without issues.

Not happy that conversations now resort to enc than actually listening to the agency as we had in the old days.