Money to fix victoria trunk system

[electricsheep]

Story here...

 

[Jay911]

All right, having read the story, I'll bite - BCradio guys, what's broken about CREST?

 

[RBerezowski]

All right, having read the story, I'll bite - BCradio guys, what's broken about CREST?

Well, I'm not a BC guy, but I have heard of some coverage issues there.

There was also a recent story in the news that a police officer was beat up while trying to apprehend a suspect. Her two partners tried to call for help on their digital radios, but couldn't get a signal through. One idea they are pursuing is providing lapel mikes with emergency buttons on the lapel, which should work better than having the emergency button and radio antenna on the belt.

Like I said, I'm not a BC guy, so there may be more to the story.

Rob

 

[electricsheep]

I posted this article link as I have an interest in scanning in Victoria. I am out there at least twice a year for extended stays. I can concur that coverage is a major problem out there. For the longest time (even today?) they had such a problem downtown Victoria that they had an analog VHF back up repeater that would rebroadcast a lot of the Victoria PD traffic. I don't know what the problem is, but I know the system has been stuffed full of problems since launch in certain areas of the metro Victoria region.

I don't know if emergency declare buttons would help them or not, as they too are dependent on getting a good clear signal out of the portable to the tower.

 

[slicerwizard]

You don't need much of a signal path to get an emergency ISW through. Besides, the radio will keep trying until it sees an acknowledgment. When one gets through, the dispatcher knows that the officer may need assistance.

 

[BC_Scan]

Crest

It would appear that most problems are related to Victoria Police using the system, quite often getting the Moto bonk (the busy signal you get on a trunked system) they had the news guy film a Female officer using the radio and she looked so stupid showing the interviewer the bonk (she held the mike open) on her portable and it bonked (she tried to mimick the sound with her voice and the straight poker face cop look ) I laughed !!
If you look closely ath the system there are many sites for such a wide coverage area (a bye the seaside city) however the largest site in downtown Victoria only has seven freq's to it and the next one on Mt Doug has only six, well I am sorry Crest users but do the math the folks over at Radioworks Communications botched this one big time.
As the only Motorola APCO25 system in the province they had no one to turn too for guidance. (Other than Moto) Clearly more freq's are needed.
Listen to the channels in regular mode and you will see the problem, You got BC transit endlessley talking about nothing (most guys lock out their comm's) EHS Ambulance, Multiple Police forces (5) in the area, and then the Fire depts , so when it comes to it there is a shortage of frequency's in use per site, (there is no shortage of freq's for that area 142 mhz range ) so look at any other major city and they have double and triple the frequency's in use per site.
Really a simple solution in my opinion. (Just by observing what other citys have with P25)
Most other agencys according to independent reports say that no major complaints by radio users.

 

[Jay911]

I don't remember what the population/user base is for the area of Victoria, but here in Calgary, we have a city population of a million and surrounding population of around 50,000 to 60,000 all with services using the digital trunk radio system (DRS). The DRS has 6 sites, all within the city limits, the first four of which cover 90% of the city and have 17 voice channels each at any given time. The fifth site fills in some holes in one part of the city and has 12 voice channels, and the sixth site is dedicated to the international airport region and has 11 voice channels. The different services on this system include the city police (by far the busiest user), the city fire department and ambulance services (next up), the international airport authority, the local electric utility, several small rural fire departments/ambulance services/policing services, and as of very recently, the provincial sheriffs' prisoner transport program. It's only recently starting to show its age and feel its capacity.

 

[BC_Scan]

I rest my case Jay, according to CRD stats approx 359,439 population Est 2006, approx 950 sq miles not incl Gulf Islands which is part of system.
Smaller than Calgary but with the amount of users it still seems underserved in terms of fre'qs allocated .