DC MPD conducts "failsoft" test

[dc2wheel]

Today from about 4:00 pm to 4:10 pm it appears the MPD radio
system conducted a "failsoft" test. I'm not certain what this
involved, but it caused loss of reception of the control channel
on my Pro-96. I was however able to hear transmissions from
several of the police districts if I reverted all the frequencies to
FM mode from the Motorola mode.

Apparently this test had little or no effect on the function of radios
in use in the field, although all officers were notified the test was
occurring. I found it odd they conducted the test while the 4th
District was working a shooting investigation & looking for suspects/
weapons.

Can anyone fill me in on what a "failsoft" test is?

-dc2wheel

 

[ericcarlson]

Can anyone fill me in on what a "failsoft" test is?

The trunked system goes into "failsoft" mode if the system controller crashes or goes down for some reason (the control channel is lost). In failsoft mode the trunked repeaters act as conventional repeaters.

-Eric

 

[fireradio]

Also, each field radio is programmed with the proper repeater input/output pair to use (depending on the talkgroup) in the event that the control channel goes down.

In other words, talkgroup 001A is set to use xxx.xxxx mhz while talkgroup 001B may be set to use yyy.yyyy mhz.

This way, the system failure is largely transparent to the field users. Generally the only thing they'll notice is that there may be more users on their channel while the system is down.