Fulton County's TRS

[FireDawgEMT22]

The delay in the system going live is not everything is installed yet. Bender is doing all installations and is not complete yet. They have been told they have until the end of February to get it done.

The traffic on Fulton Fire 1 TG is just temporary until the system goes 100% live. Once the system goes live the only traffic on Fulton Fire 1 TG will be initial dispatch, or emergency traffic. All other traffic will be on Fulton Fire 2, like I described in earlier posts.

I will be getting a list of all of the TG ID's for the Fulton County system this week sometime, I think the only one that isnt available on the database is the Fulton Fire 2 TG, but I will go through and make sure they are all there once I get the list.

 

[radioscan]

There is absolutely no reason to have two different threads going simultaneously on the Fulton County TRS. Thus they will be merged into one.

 

[jpryor]

Here are my observations for brand new Fulton County talk groups from over the past couple months based on monitoring only the Lucas County 800 MHz simulcast site:

10688
10689 Fulton County Sheriff Main?
10690 Delta PD
10696 Delta FD
10697 Archbold FD?
10698 Fayette FD
10699 Metamora FD
10700 Fulton County Fire 2
10701
10704 Fayette PD
10706 Swanton PD
10712
10720 Wauseon PD
10722 County PD/Sheriff back channel?
10728
10736 Fulton County Sheriff back channel?
10738 Fulton County Sheriff back channel?
10744 Wauseon PD back channel?

Will indeed be interesting to see a more official list. It's looking like most new Fulton County radios will be setup with the same groups of zones/channels. I suspect fire, law and ops zones, plus probably a zone with some additional back channels. The new Fulton County radios have been seen affiliating to plenty of known/existing Lucas County zones/channels as well. And I would suspect they would have similar MARCS zones like Lucas County radios and maybe even some additional MARCS channels for Henry County as well.

What make/model did Fulton County end up going with for radios? I recall hearing a number of different radios being tested for fire department usage last year under a handful of different situations.

Any idea if dispatch is getting full consoles, or just additional base radios for dispatching?

Also here are my notes for the new Fulton County radio IDs:

2622xxx Swanton PD/FD
2637xxx FD/EMA?
2638xxx Wauseon PD/FD
2639xxx Delta PD/FD
2643xxx Fulton Sheriff
2646xxx Metamora FD
2648xxx Archhold PD/FD
2649xxx Fulton EMS (ALS/Medic units)
2650xxx Fayette PD/FD
2654xxx Lyons FD

So far I have not heard any full time dispatch for law/PD related activity from the Lucas County side, only general PD chatter. But their fire/EMS activity has been pretty consistent on Fire 1.

 

[FireDawgEMT22]

Radios are the Motorola 2500's, but some departments still have a couple 5000's from before also. None of the LE are using the system yet because they are still installing them for LE. The dispatch will have 4 consoles. And as far as the radio id's 26 is for the county and then next two digits are the agency. So PD and FD have different ID's Swanton FD is 2622XXX but Swanton PD is 2655XXX (I think not 100% sure on that) but you get the idea. We are using Fulton Fire 1 for right now, but that will switch to Fulton Fire 2 once the system goes live . Fulton Fire 1 Fulton Fire 2 all the 12-x ops , and Swanton Fire will be broadcast on both the Lucas 800 and fulton 700.

 

[john56]

Fulton County Ohio

I see that Fulton County is going to a Simulcast System.....has anybody heard the control channel yet?

I have been listening off and on, and I have not heard anything on it yet...

Thanks,
John KD8BIN

 

[bezking]

Moved to our Ohio Radio Discussion Forum.

 

[W8RMH]

I see that Fulton County is going to a Simulcast System.....has anybody heard the control channel yet?

I have been listening off and on, and I have not heard anything on it yet...

Thanks,
John KD8BIN

http://forums.radioreference.com/ohio-radio-discussion-forum/229948-fulton-countys-trs.html

 

[ctpd845]

John, where are you located. The system is up and running and the Fulton County System is not a simulcast system. It is a single tower located in Wauseon so if your to far from Wauseon you might not be able to receive the system.

 

[radioscan]

Guys, we don't need to keep creating new topics on Fulton County when there is already a growing thread on the exact subject.
Please use the forum tools above to conduct a search for the answers to your questions, and if you don't find the answers then
by all means create a new topic. We are trying to keep the information centered and easy to locate.

With that said this will be the second time posts will be merged into the existing thread.

Thanks, Mark

 

[radioscan]

I am also giving this thread 'Sticky' status since it continues to grow and grow.
Keep up the great work all, you all are providing some really great info on the system.

 

[FireDawgEMT22]

I submitted a huge list of TG IDs to the database and they should be up by now. These TG Id's are confirmed 100% accurate, as I had a portable radio with me as I was testing. The Fulton County Tower is experiencing HUGE problems right now. Many departments have stopped using it and have gone back to the VHF radios. Swanton has a mix of some radios home grouped on the Fulton Co Tower and some Homegrouped on the Lucas county Tower. Lucas County is much better, so the radios that are on the FC system are not being used by them. When the tower is working right I can get 98% on the CC at my house in East Toledo with an antenna 35-40ft up. Other times I can get nothing. I am not very knowledgable on how the tower actually works other than to say, entire transmissions are getting dropped. A radio will key up, get the VC info from the CC and give the Ok to transmit, but it never gets broadcast. Some of the transmissions are so garbled that you cannot hear anything. Pretty much anything that originates on the Fulton Co system has a 50/50 shot of not being heard or understood as of right now. Lucas County system is working great, and anything that is originated on the Lucas Co system comes through clear and solid when sent out on the Fulton Co system. They are working on a fix, but the usage on the system has decreased a lot because of these problems.

 

[jackj]

The Fulton County Tower is experiencing HUGE problems right now. Many departments have stopped using it and have gone back to the VHF radio.

It seems to me that the Fulton Co Sheriff's VHF repeater also has problems. It is really noisy here in Delta on my rubber ducky, it has been full quieting here up until about 2 or 3 days ago. I've been working all week bringing my computers back to life so I haven't been monitoring the systems too closely.

 

[FireDawgEMT22]

I am not sure about the Sheriff's line, I dont use it or monitor it that well. I am only familiar with the Fire/ems side and the VHF channel for that side is not repeated and not having any problems right now, except for the typical bad reception inside.

Swanton is still using the TRS for everything because they switched a good number of portables over to home on the Lucas County Tower and they can get great comms with that. Hopefully it gets straightened out soon. Bender is just doing all the installs, but motorola is doing the actual programming of everything. The dispatch center still doesnt have a console installed yet for the TRS.

 

[FireDawgEMT22]

Some new info and testing results.

First the Fulton County Tower issues seem to be resolved. They found two cards swapped at the tower site, and everything appears to be working.

It seems as of right now, everything that is on the Fulton County System is being broadcast on the Lucas County system. I had multiple hits on the Wauseon PD, Swanton PD, Lyons FD etc TGRPS, on the Lucas county frequencies. I still cannot get a good solid signal from the Fulton County Tower at my home in East Toledo.

Some news about furture developments. Fulton Co is going to be putting up a second tower site. That is a absolute as of right now. When exactly, where exactly, and other plans for it are still up in the air. The tentative plan for right now is to put up the second tower to allow ALL traffic on both systems to always simulcast on both systems. Subject to change, the only thing that is concrete right now is the definite addition of a second tower site for Fulton Co.

 

[jackj]

I fail to understand why Fulton Co. would need a 2nd tower site to enable simulcast with Lucas Co. Simulcasting both systems would make for a simpler controller as well as simpler programing but it will triple or better the amount of traffic on Fulton Co.'s radio channels. Must be some other reason FireDawg.

I'm not really surprised that you are having problems picking up the Wauseon tower in East Toledo. You must be around 30-40 miles from it.

 

[FireDawgEMT22]

I agree it will greatly increase the traffic on the Fulton Co system. However, I can just report what was told to me. Fulton Co has money left over from the grant for the system and are putting up a tower to extend the Lucas County System further into Fulton Co and simulcast the traffic onto the Fulton County system. I further inquired how for sure is this, and was told everything EXCEPT for the second tower is still not 100% decided, even the date. The only thing that is a guarantee, as of tonight, is that Fulton Co is getting a second tower.

And the reason I feel I should receive it is two fold. #1 the tower is not broadcasting full power right now. They are going to turn up the power once they go live, according to sources involved. If they turn it up to full power or not I do not know. #2 You can receive the Lucas County system as far away as South of Findlay, been there, done that, tested it. Which is about the same distance between my house and Wauseon. The multiple towers in lucas county would not really play much of a role in this except for the fact that you would connect to the strongest broadcasting tower (probably the southern most) to transmit from south of Findlay. So if the Fulton County tower were to be increased in power, the distance would be better. It really would not take much of a power increase as I can hear the control channel, it just wont lock and hold onto a signal. But while they were testing and having problems with the system I was able to get the Tower at 99%.

Maybe once the system goes 100% live, the TG's will not be broadcast on the Lucas County system, but as of right now they are because as i said i am getting multiple hits on all of the new Fulton Co TG's using the Lucas towers.

 

[wa8pyr]

I fail to understand why Fulton Co. would need a 2nd tower site to enable simulcast with Lucas Co. Simulcasting both systems would make for a simpler controller as well as simpler programing but it will triple or better the amount of traffic on Fulton Co.'s radio channels. Must be some other reason FireDawg.

1. The Fulton County traffic is a multicast, not a simulcast, which refers to the same transmission on the same frequency at the same time.

2. Don't necessarily expect that the full-time broadcasting of everything on both sites will continue, and in fact it very likely won't continue indefinitely because, as you note, it will dramatically increase on the Fulton County site, as well as the Lucas County site. Roaming can be enabled or disabled by talkgroup in the controller, and it's very possible that roaming is enabled for everything right now for service and testing purposes.

 

[FireDawgEMT22]

1. The Fulton County traffic is a multicast, not a simulcast, which refers to the same transmission on the same frequency at the same time.

2. Don't necessarily expect that the full-time broadcasting of everything on both sites will continue, and in fact it very likely won't continue indefinitely because, as you note, it will dramatically increase on the Fulton County site, as well as the Lucas County site. Roaming can be enabled or disabled by talkgroup in the controller, and it's very possible that roaming is enabled for everything right now for service and testing purposes.

I am curious if they are going to increase the number of voice channels when they add the new tower also. Since, as of right now, they only have 4 VC.

I do not expect the broadcasting on both sites forever, but I do know Swanton PD, Swanton FD, and Both Fulton Co Fire channels will be always broadcast on both. I would also think the SO would remain on both.

I know they are planning on bumping the power up on the tower once it goes live. I hope it is enough for me to get it at my house. I did the work and it is 33 (line of sight) miles over flat terrain from the Hospital to my house, and my antenna is about 35-45 feet up with this antenna ( Outdoor VHF-Hi/UHF Scanner Antenna - RadioShack.com ). It has a freq range up to 1300mhz. And I am using RG6 cable about 65-70 feet run. I would think I should be able to receive the signal. I will admit I am not super knowledgable on the details of how antennas and scanners and systems work, but I have a basic knowledge and have good sources and information on the Fulton county system.

 

[jackj]

Picking some nits

1. The Fulton County traffic is a multicast, not a simulcast, which refers to the same transmission on the same frequency at the same time.

Simulcast
"Shorthand for "simultaneous broadcast", refers to programs or events broadcast across more than one medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at the same time. For example, Absolute Radio is simulcast on both AM and on satellite radio, and the BBC's Prom concerts are often simulcast on both BBC Radio 3 and BBC Television. Another application is the transmission of the original-language soundtrack of movies or TV series over local or Internet radio, with the television broadcast having been dubbed into a local language."

Multicast
"In computer networking, multicast is the delivery of a message or information to a group of destination computers simultaneously in a single transmission from the source creating copies automatically in other network elements, such as routers, only when the topology of the network requires it.

Multicast is most commonly implemented in IP multicast, which is often employed in Internet Protocol (IP) applications of streaming media and Internet television. In IP multicast the implementation of the multicast concept occurs at the IP routing level, where routers create optimal distribution paths for datagrams sent to a multicast destination address."

The above are both from Wikipedia, I used them because they were listed first in the searches.

It would appear from those definitions that either would be correct for describing Fulton County's trunked system. Simulcast would appear to be a little more accurate as multicast appears to refer to computer data distribution networks.

My nits are all picked over now. hehehe
Jack

 

[wa8pyr]

The above are both from Wikipedia, I used them because they were listed first in the searches.

It would appear from those definitions that either would be correct for describing Fulton County's trunked system. Simulcast would appear to be a little more accurate as multicast appears to refer to computer data distribution networks.

In this case, inaccurate and incorrect. In LMR (the medium in this case), simulcast is a system where the same transmission occurs on the same frequency from multiple interconnected sites at the same time; multicast is where the same transmission occurs on multiple frequencies from multiple sites at the same time.

So, the Lucas County site is, in and of itself, a simulcast cell. The Lucas County and the Fulton County sites together, taken as a single entity, are multicasting.

See? Wikipedia really doesn't know everything!