LMRN General Discussion

[Muxlow]

All Essex County OPP have the new APX mobiles and portables with FleetNet in them. So, they will be using the new radios but the new system won't be going live for quite some time. Not this year it seems anyways.
They must of kept the old vehicle repeaters as that hasn't changed. Just the mobile and portables. I'm sure officers will be happy to have a battery that lasts longer then 42 mins.

I've seen a bunch of affiliations and such, but no transmissions on the LMRN sites in Essex/Chatham-Kent.

Can't speak of EMS or MTO if they have anything new yet. Last I saw, EMS still had the MCS radios and the Tait portables.

 

[Forts]

Was at a few MVCs this past week and the Middlesex/London EMS guys still all had old gear.

 

[gary123]

Same for Oxford, Perth, Huron, Wellington.

I have noticed a general degradation on the signal quality coming off some of the towers Oxford, Stratford, Listowel. This is very noticeable on EMS because they are analog. The mobiles are now often very staticky or there is heavy background noise (mutlicoupling). I wont speculate on why this is occurring nor why its not being rectified.

 

[mapleradio]

Curiosity, if they are using the same tower sites, how do they intend to fill in bad coverage areas?

 

[Muxlow]

Maybe little higher power output from the repeaters? New repeaters might have a better transmitter or receiver in them. The new Hytera H series repeaters claim a 40% increase over the previous RD series. Maybe something similar to that.. or could even be adding additional sites in really bad locations.

All assumptions of course on my end. Best case would be adding a couple extra coverage sites. They did that with Wallaceburg years ago. I remember hearing the BMR guys driving from Sarnia to Chatham doing RSSI levels along the way between Sarnia and Chatham sites and decided the 'burg was the best spot for a fill in site

 

[gary123]

I am not sure what they are doing for site locations. Most of the sites seem to be at the same locations but there are a few differences. For example, PSRN site 33 (143.085) is now located just to the west of Tavistock where as FleetNet site 33 is just to the south of Stratford.

For the sites that are at the same locations, I have not been able to determine 100% if the LMRN is using all new antenna hardware or if they are remaining on the existing multi-coupling.

 

[bluwest]

Just heard during a containment situation that when the OPP cars in Oxford County needed to use the car repeaters. One officer advised that he has the new radio system and so his in car repeater wouldn't work.
So either the in-car repeaters are not active or used in the new system or the old radios and repeaters are not compatible with the new in=car repeaters.

 

[Muxlow]

That's just the officers fault. They shouldn't be using the new system as its not active yet/in use yet.

All Essex, ChathamKent, Lambton, Middlesex, Elgin units have the new APX mobiles and portables with the new and old system in it. You can tell if a cruiser has been upgraded by looking at the antenna. If its a chrome antenna it hasn't been upgraded. If it's an all black antenna, it's got the new radios.

The two systems aren't patched together or anything and no dispatchers are monitoring the new system. So he would of just been talking to himself.

 

[Forts]

As Muxlow said, many cars down this way have been upgraded hardware wise, however are still running on FleetNet. They are using new VR's, though.

Search the low 770's and you'll likely find a few things..

 

[bluwest]

In fact, you can tell when a unit is using a new APX vs the old radios by the different sound of the voice transmission.

 

[32dave]

What step size at that freq ?

 

[ATCTech]

770 MHz uses 6.25 kHz spacing.

 

[mapleradio]

Has anyone else noticed that there is mostly MOH traffic on Charlton as of late? I am trying to diagnose if it's a decode error or something else is up.

Also, 142.800 every so often has a straight tone on it, could that be part of the LMRN? Or am I just nuts?

 

[Jradioptbo]

Looks like they are making progress. Won't be long before I hear a 1038hz test tone on my tower.

 

[VA3DBJ]

Pontypool has been mostly all MOH the last week or so. as well. The Techs were working on it a week ago. It also appears 143.055 was dropped from Pontypool's rotation and 141.390 from Whitby's.

 

[EJB]

I've noticed that there are a good deal of new radios being used in the SW area of Ontario. I can hear (most of the time) the Woodstock tower and with that FleetNet talkgroups of Middlesex, Elgin, Huron, Oxford and Norfolk. I'm seeing the new radios beginning with 52×××.

Haven't seen the Haldimand Brantford Nations units with the new radios.

I'm assuming that these radios will work with the new radio system and while we probably won't be able to hear them we could at least know using software maybe Unitrunker.

If anyone is interested in this I will enter in what I have heard into my scanners and send anyone the data. Maybe some of the members here can help out as well?
E

 

[Forts]

Yes the 5xxxx radios are the new APX radios, which will likely have both FleetNet and LMRN programmed into them. When it's time to switch to the new system they just change zones and away they go. Essex, Chatham-Kent, Elgin, Middlesex and Lambton have been installing new radios for quite a while now.

 

[Muxlow]

Can confirm all Essex, Chatham-Kent and Lambton units have new mobiles and portables. If you see a cruiser with all black antennas (use to be chrome whips) then that car has the new radios. The detective cars that use to just have the VHF antenna on the trunk now have a 700 MHz repeater antenna on the roof, the MDT data fin on the right roof and GPS puck on the left roof. No more single antenna for the detective cars now.

So with that being said, it should be easy to pick out if a car in your neck of the woods has the new gear. If your looking at the UT/DSD/T88 then just look for the 5xxxx radio id's

 

[mrweather]

Are they still using Sinclair antennas or is there a new supplier?

 

[Muxlow]

I do believe they are Sinclair, still. Funny part is Hytera owns Sinclair now. And with the Motorola/Hytera lawsuit battle thing.. sorta funny they ended up staying with those antennas