Interoperability

[N4DES]

I agree with you. I think thats when large statewide multi site systems really shine (probably never gonna happend in FL). A LEO from County A can roam to County Z without switching channel or zone. It's all handled by the system and LEO maintains his/her talkgroup.

To me, it seems like in FL trunked systems are set up "conventionally", meaning that if you travel outside of county A into county Z, well, good luck on your own.

Also, Inter-WACN or Intra-WACN just dont seem to work efficiently in Florida, because counties have their own SysID and WACN naming. For instance, Tampa's P25 which has a Sysid: 32D and WACN: 1E306, then to the east you have Polk's P25 with Sysid: 396 WACN: BEE00, to the north you have Pasco's P25 with Sysid: 00A WACN: 927F9... So an officer from Pasco travels to Polk wont be able to talk back unless he/she changes zone manually.

I believe the only few trunked systems that have true roaming are Duke Energy P25, FPL and SLERS (both EDACS and P25)

SLERS is set up in clusters and local talk-groups do not roam state-wide or outside the cluster. If a local end user needs to communicate outside of it they need to change modes on their radios to the internal IO's that do this. This is all to control system loading and how the traffic is managed. I know when Motorola had SLERS the local FHP Troop talk-group only roamed for 1 cluster in any one direction. A Trooper based out of Miami-Dade was not able to bring his local traffic with him when he drove to Orlando or Tampa. I used a radio on the original Motorola SLERS from time to time so I know how it operated. I would assume EDACS is much of the same because they are utilizing the same number of frequencies at the already built out sites, so the calculations for traffic loading doesn't change and is proper engineering.

Interoperability and what you are describing with wide-area roaming of a locally controlled talk-group are two totally separate items. When you travel to an adjacent County you want to be communicating with a local dispatch center who can arrange for assistance, even if it means having to adjust a radio.

 

[batdude]

SLERS is set up in clusters and local talk-groups do not roam state-wide or outside the cluster. If a local end user needs to communicate outside of it they need to change modes on their radios to the internal IO's that do this. This is all to control system loading and how the traffic is managed. I know when Motorola had SLERS the local FHP Troop talk-group only roamed for 1 cluster in any one direction. A Trooper based out of Miami-Dade was not able to bring his local traffic with him when he drove to Orlando or Tampa. I used a radio on the original Motorola SLERS from time to time so I know how it operated. I would assume EDACS is much of the same because they are utilizing the same number of frequencies at the already built out sites, so the calculations for traffic loading doesn't change and is proper engineering.

Interoperability and what you are describing with wide-area roaming of a locally controlled talk-group are two totally separate items. When you travel to an adjacent County you want to be communicating with a local dispatch center who can arrange for assistance, even if it means having to adjust a radio.

this is interesting to me. again, circa 1995 or so (?) - too many years..... the LT in charge of the Jacksonville FHP office came into the Moto shop with his brand new Astro Saber III portable. He called, and received a reply from, the Key West FHP dispatch desk - he then called another office - I think the Florida Marine Patrol ... somewhere in the Sarasota area..... I do not know how things were programmed back then, but he most certainly made the call from his portable. Frankly, it impressed the hell out of all of us.

 

[N4DES]

this is interesting to me. again, circa 1995 or so (?) - too many years..... the LT in charge of the Jacksonville FHP office came into the Moto shop with his brand new Astro Saber III portable. He called, and received a reply from, the Key West FHP dispatch desk - he then called another office - I think the Florida Marine Patrol ... somewhere in the Sarasota area..... I do not know how things were programmed back then, but he most certainly made the call from his portable. Frankly, it impressed the hell out of all of us.

There are monitored state-wide talk-groups and they do exist today, but there aren't the day to day operational ones that the Troopers and other entities use. Manual intervention is required to get to them. The is a control station on SLERS that we maintain in PBC in the County's 24 Hour Warning Point (EOC) that the State EOC monitors on a state-wide talk-group. We do an operational check with them on every exercise we do and when we activate for a hurricane and check the box that we have redundant comm's with the state. I had an Astro Saber available to me right around that time as well, so that's how I know how it worked. Initially it had a VSELP vocoder and then flashed for IMBE after APCO chose IMBE as the P25 vocoder standard.

 

[billy2047]

SLERS is set up in clusters and local talk-groups do not roam state-wide or outside the cluster. If a local end user needs to communicate outside of it they need to change modes on their radios to the internal IO's that do this. This is all to control system loading and how the traffic is managed. I know when Motorola had SLERS the local FHP Troop talk-group only roamed for 1 cluster in any one direction. A Trooper based out of Miami-Dade was not able to bring his local traffic with him when he drove to Orlando or Tampa. I used a radio on the original Motorola SLERS from time to time so I know how it operated. I would assume EDACS is much of the same because they are utilizing the same number of frequencies at the already built out sites, so the calculations for traffic loading doesn't change and is proper engineering.

Interoperability and what you are describing with wide-area roaming of a locally controlled talk-group are two totally separate items. When you travel to an adjacent County you want to be communicating with a local dispatch center who can arrange for assistance, even if it means having to adjust a radio.

thanks for the info, I do apologize for vaguely using the term interoperability. What I'm interested in is "wide-area roaming of a locally controlled talk-group". Do you know any trunked system in FL (just for example) that allows wide area roaming of locally controlled TG?

Also on that SLERS cluster topic, wouldnt it be better if radios have the ability to roam statewide without changing mode? I do get you want to limit radio to certain cluster due to traffic loading etc, but if no radio is affiliated to other tower how does that make a difference when it comes to load balancing/traffic management?

It seems like most trunked systems are capable of seemless roaming, but because of programming, radio roaming capability is disabled. Manually switching modes/channels brings me back to the old "conventional" day, when radios were operating over conventional frequencies/repeaters

Thanks

 

[N4DES]

I do not disclose any of that information...