Official Bucks County 700Mhz Phase II Radio System Thread

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signaldoc

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Does anyone know if they will also dispatch on a alphanumeric system like Montgomery County uses?(pocsag)
Thanks
 

phillydjdan

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They have not revealed the technical details regarding their planned upgrade to the alpha paging system. They currently use a system called Active911 that sends the info direct to your smartphone through your carrier. There was an upgrade done to this system a few months ago but I can't say whether that was the upgrade they were talking about or whether more is in the works. Personally I would love for them to go with a pocsag paging system, but I'm not so sure that's their plan.
 

phillydjdan

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So they're going to keep using the carrier-dependent notification system that sends pages up to a minute or longer after the voice dispatch? Lol there's forward thinking...
 

wa3bxw

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Display paging

There was no money budgeted for display paging, nor a separate RF frequency to utilize, the consensus was to not use 155.55 for the data, keep it tone and voice only. I don't subscribe to the present text messaging, but I was told it's much quicker than past formats.
 

pete7919

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I will say there has been many times where my Active 911 has gone off before my tones had dropped.

Active 911 is not at all a part of the county system. The county just provides the data from the CAD. There have been plenty of times where I have not received an Active 911 alert at all or it's been minutes to hours after a call. (It's also worth mentioning that there is a bug in the current version Active 911 software for iOS 9 that users are not getting alerts.) There are a number of secondary alert providers but there is one common thread. They are not "mission critical" and should not be relied on for emergency alerting. Rather they are a backup and supplement to the voice paging system. As mentioned earlier there was talk of putting alpha data on 155.55 but it was not implemented.
 

phillydjdan

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And therein lies the problem. Montgomery and Delaware Counties seem to having favorable results with their pocsag systems. With the new trunked system being put in service I can surely understand putting alpha paging on the back burner. It would be in their best interest to revisit it down the road, however.
 

APX_Radio

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Does Montgomery and Deleware Counties use the same frequency for both Voice and POCSAG paging? I can hear a lot of POCSAG on 155.550
 

Septa3371CSX1

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Does Montgomery and Deleware Counties use the same frequency for both Voice and POCSAG paging? I can hear a lot of POCSAG on 155.550

No Delco and Montco use different frequencies for alpha and voice paging. I don't know off the top of my head who else within a reasonable distance of Bucks uses that frequency whether it be voice or data.

I do know Lehigh County uses 154.175 for both voice and alpha paging - the alpha page is at the tail end of the voice dispatch.
 

phillydjdan

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Bucks would be best served to recycle one of the VHF frequencies they still have licensed for alpha duties rather than put it on 155.550. And the noise you hear on that frequency isn't from Bucks. It could be digital voice from somewhere in North Jersey for all we know. I'd have to do an FCC search. What I CAN say is that a PD in South Jersey (Clayton I think) for sure uses the same frequency in analog mode with a different PL. I hear it clear from Delaware County.
 

wa3bxw

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155.550 Mhz.

Hammonton, NJ (Atlantic County) runs DMR on the frequency and the City of Bridgeton, NJ (Cumberland County) uses analog for their Police dispatching.
 

pete7919

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I'm hearing tones and dispatches from all over the county this morning. I was hearing lots of test pages last night so I'm guessing they turned the simulcasting on for dispatch.
 

phillydjdan

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I have the same observations. On my pager in Bensalem I heard a call for 108s but did not hear the tones. I wonder if they are still working or that is the final product...
 

phillydjdan

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Looks like the tones have joined the party. I heard a call for 141s clear as a bell with the tones and all. Also noted a 168 call came through clear when before it was barely intelligible from my workplace.
 

radio3353

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Tones and voice on 155.550 are loud and clear in central bucks today. Yesterday and the day before they were weak.
 
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