I haven't seen much of Gonzales County or the city. They used to pop up on the LCRA sites I am close to pretty regularly. I wondered if anyone in that area knows if they are jumping to GAATRS like Kerr County did. A thread a while back showed some articles about them discussing that move, but I haven't heard anything since.
Gonzales County
- Thread starter NC5267
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I doubt they’ve had time to build out the sites they would need for coverage. We used to have a node out that way on Calls but since it died, next to nill activity has been ingested. SO had one transmission a few days ago and the last activity recorded was a police chase on I-10 on April 17th.
I was also noticing in the database that Gonzales County only has the one three frequency tower listed. Seems like they would have at least two sites even with close neighbor sites
Most of the county operates exclusively on LCRA still, there are still some legacy VHF repeaters for backup and voice paging though.
The transition over to GATRRS is not certain, our chief asked us to sign a petition to join GATRRS and although I signed it I explained that there is likely nothing that GATRRS will offer that LCRA can not offer so I am not sure what the rationale behind the switch is.
Sitting about 1 mile from downtown Nixon in the EMS station I am currently connected to the hickory forrest site with 4 bars RSSI.
The transition over to GATRRS is not certain, our chief asked us to sign a petition to join GATRRS and although I signed it I explained that there is likely nothing that GATRRS will offer that LCRA can not offer so I am not sure what the rationale behind the switch is.
Sitting about 1 mile from downtown Nixon in the EMS station I am currently connected to the hickory forrest site with 4 bars RSSI.
Thanks for the update. I don't get over to Gonzales that much anymore. Also, Wilson, Guadalupe, and Fayette counties are all on the LCRA system. Easier interoperability. I know switching between systems nowadays is just a push of a button but the LCRA coverage seems to be beneficial to the county.
But as always, politics and money play a part
I mean GATRRS may have offered them something cheaper maybe. Something like you build the sites and we will give you the airtime for free. I am not sure though. It seems like a bit hassle to change just for the sake of change so there has to be some benefit.
Especially because the LCRA countywide move is still relatively fresh. Doesn’t make sense, especially with the infrastructure already in place for LCRA’s existing microwave backbone for their 900 sites that dot the river course to the gulf.
Project25_MASTR
Millennial Graying OBT Guy
Specific talkgroups that are in every radio on each system are actually full time patched between the two systems. Quite easy to interop actually.
One of the advantages to going to GATRRS airtime is free if you build the sites and pay the core connection fees to the City of Austin. You control your portion of the system to an extent. One of the advantages to going to LCRA is you don't have to worry about owning the infrastructure but in a lot of counties where LCRA offers service, there isn't adequate coverage so some customers have had to work out deals to get LCRA to add sites. The LCRA codeplug is also a lot smaller when you factor in the "required" interoperable zones. Most LCRA radios have 4-5 zones in them where GATRRS radios typically have 28-40 zones in them.
One of the other issues right now is Motorola is currently not price competitive on infrastructure. Motorola is beginning to no longer sell the GTR8000 ESS with end of life dates set and now pushing towards the DBR series. While the DBR offers some cool features compared to the GTR it is lower power (35W out of the combiner compared to 60W of a GTR8000) and costs twice as much as the GTR did on a channel for channel basis. With the pushed migration to DBRs many counties are now realizing it is just as expensive if not cheaper to build their own systems out with L3-Harris, Tait or EF Johnson compared to upgrade their GTRs to DBRs especially when you look at many having to add more sites to maintain the coverage footprint they have today with the GTRs.
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