Guadalupe county going digital??

[Kingsbury4266]

Hearing rumor of Guadalupe county going digital. Can anyone confirm or deny?

Also, what are your thoughts of changing from analog to digital?

Kingsbury4266

 

[davidbond21]

Seguin PD has been P25 for a while, and they sound pretty good. I've heard rumor that Comal County was going digital too, but that was over 2 years ago and nothing has ever come of it yet.

 

[Kingsbury4266]

yeah but i wonder if its just P25... i hope they don't switch to EDACS... but any move to digital is gonna put a hurtin on the volunteer departments... those radios are NOT cheap...

 

[davidbond21]

I'm sure they won't switch to trunking. If they were, the easiest route would be to become subscribers on the LCRA 900MHz EDACS network, which has a tower in Guadalupe county; for them to set up their own trunking system would be extremely costly. But the LCRA network is analog system voice only, so if you're hearing digital rumors, they probably won't be going to trunking.

You're right. VFD and such are usually on the low end of the receiving totem pole when it comes to system wide communications uprgrades.

 

[2101]

kingsbury4266, you are more right than wrong! digital trunking is a possibility in Guadalupe County's future. When things get a little more definite I will post! and no it will NOT be on the LCRA Edacs.

 

[Kingsbury4266]

Hey Chief Strey,

Yeah i kinda figured it wasn't all rumor... maybe they will add us to the digital trunking P25 that seguin has... Hopefully this means better communications for the departments. I wonder if the county will help out the departments with the purchasing of radios...

Derek

 

[texasemt13]

Hey Chief Strey,

Yeah i kinda figured it wasn't all rumor... maybe they will add us to the digital trunking P25 that seguin has... Hopefully this means better communications for the departments. I wonder if the county will help out the departments with the purchasing of radios...

Derek

I believe Seguin is just a digital conventional system. No trunking involved, as seen here.

 

[2101]

the communications committee of Guadalupe County Fire fighters association is working on grants for the vfd part of the equation. Don't look for this system to be an add on to Seguin's system, it will be a totally seperate system as I understand it. If it is constructed as planned, I think you will see an improvement in coverage areas as we know it now. for interoperability and two tone paging purposes, I believe there will still be some analog channels still in place though. Currently, this whole thing is an idea on paper with some commitments already in place so I think this will become a reality eventually. I believe though that this will not be something you will see in place this year yet, there are some tech hurdles to jump over and some licensing issues that must be cleared for this to happen as planned which will take some time. will keep the scanning community informed as I know things for sure!

2101 out

 

[Kingsbury4266]

So the latest news/rumors/thoughts are... Guadalupe county is going to the Kenwood digital system. I've checked with communications provider in San Antonio. They are going to leave two analog channels for those of us that are left with pagers. the Kenwood radios should be backwards compatible to the analog channels so we can still us Seguin BU for airlife and stuff.. A brother of a co-worker says the change should be next year...

4266

wonder if we can include the software and programming cables with the radio purchase...

 

[texasemt13]

Just dug up the grant solicitation. Page 7 (of 11) shows that the applicants (GCSO) are choosing a VHF digital trunked system. I imagine this is for the ease of patching with the volunteer fire departments on the analog patches. Good news for some of you with 1st generation digital scanners anyway.

Who knows how far away this is...