Oneida County VHF P25 Trunking?

[KD2DXF]

I Believe there is a Air to Ground but it's not in the data base ?

To my knowledge Mercy Flight still uses Fire Approach/Command to talk with FD LZ Commands

 

[tbski100]

A few Fire Depts. around the cities are having Phase II equipment installed. Additional users will be noticed on the system soon.

 

[R0am3r]

It sure would be nice if Oneida County could upgrade the rest of the communities who are still using older analog equipment. I often hear the local first responders lose contact with the county dispatchers and are constantly repeating their transmissions.

 

[KD2DXF]

Today at about 5:20 the radio system went down for oneida county, was partially back up by 5:37

 

[R0am3r]

Yikes. Any details on the cause of the outage? And were the analog systems also affected?

 

[studgeman]

Matt, could you do me the favor and describe the symptoms you heard when you say it went down. With these systems, "down" has a lot of meanings and levels.

 

[KD2DXF]

Matt, could you do me the favor and describe the symptoms you heard when you say it went down. With these systems, "down" has a lot of meanings and levels.

Confirmed by 911 when the system came back up, that the radio system crashed. my unication said out of range. unknown about the analog system. but the trunking did go down. Everyone seems to be confused by what happened. When it did come back online, dispatchers confirmed there was a system wide radio outage

 

[GTR8000]

Was there an issue with the other five cells of the 2AE system? If not, then the "system" did not crash, and it wasn't "systemwide", but rather an issue with the Oneida cell, which happens to also be the only non-UHF cell in the system and so far looks like the only one to be utilizing TDMA. Did the cell go into site trunking or failsoft?

 

[studgeman]

It sounds like the link dropped momentarily to Onondaga. That would not be a crash. That is the most likely scenario. When that happens the console sites go offline which drops the conventional to trunked patches...oh and the consoles go dead until the dispatchers turn up the control stations. It takes an awful lot of simultaneous failures to actually have the system crash, and it doesn't come back up in 15 minutes when that happens

 

[k2hz]

It sounds like the link dropped momentarily to Onondaga. That would not be a crash. That is the most likely scenario. When that happens the console sites go offline which drops the conventional to trunked patches...oh and the consoles go dead until the dispatchers turn up the control stations. It takes an awful lot of simultaneous failures to actually have the system crash, and it doesn't come back up in 15 minutes when that happens

KD2DXF said his Unication showed out of range during the outage. Unless that was a coincidence, it seems like more than a link/console outage. It would seem to imply he had a loss of CC data reception.

 

[studgeman]

The other fairly reasonable possibility is they were pushing updates. It shouldn't take down the control channel, but they could have rolled it. The odds of both trunking controllers failing are slim to none. They take over for each other nearly instantaneous. If both controllers somehow cut out, it would push the system into failsoft....I have no idea how Oneida has the subscribers programmed to handle that

 

[GTR8000]

@k2hz is correct, losing the link to the core should not result in loss of the control channel, as Oneida's simulcast prime site should put the cell into site trunking. If the prime site failed, then the cell would go into failsoft, resulting in the loss of the control channel, which would explain an out-of-range condition. I'm going to guess that a simple control channel roll is not what happened here, as it's probably safe to assume that the alternate control channels are programmed correctly.

 

[studgeman]

If you lose the network link to the prime this could happen. If the link repairs itself it would come back up. I think the prime is out back at 911. This really sounds like a network issue not a radio issue.

 

[GTR8000]

While a network issue/loss of prime site might be the cause, it certainly becomes an RF issue when the cell goes dark as a result.

Hopefully we'll eventually get some facts about what happened from an official source, rather than speculation or anecdotal reports.

 

[seddy2222]

UPDATE

new tower locations for Oneida County VHF P25 Trunking system

Call Sign WRFE885

https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/licenseLocSum.jsp?licKey=4251515

There should be more towers than that as of today 4-29-22. I did notice my home patrol 2 doesn't pick up p25 here I know our fire department doesn't have the system yet. & Floyd doesn't have a tower up yet that's the tower for our area. I think I'll have to get the SDS 100 or 200 ?

 

[seddy2222]

I think you're right I heard the same thing a few days ago. It was a test.

Anyone know what TG 65048 is for? The conversation that I recorded involved two mobile units (485 and 486) testing with a lieutenant. I'm guessing these units belong to the Oneida County Sheriff.

 

[seddy2222]

Thanks for posting those new towers, great info.

The Floyd one should help Marcy/Holland Patent issues I'd noticed. Still weak in the eastern part of the county as RCjim notes. Why not one on Smith Hill or at the Power Authority facility in Marcy? Seems like they'd be exceptional locations to help in Deerfield and Trenton.

You would have thought they would have put towers on star hill & smith hill also Utica zoo . That's where the old towers are now. Along with the new locations. It will be interesting to see if this new radio system is worth a dam.

 

[seddy2222]

A lot of testing on 65024 past 2 days. Anyone have a clue as to its use yet?

OCMRD or OCFC. It's one of those.

 

[seddy2222]

I want to know what the little purple blotch is just east of the Floyd and Steuben sites. Looks like maybe Remsen area? I feel like if that actually happened that it would help parts of Trenton and maybe even Deerfield (and of course Remsen). Something east of SR-12 would be really helpful.

If you notice they don't show the Utica county bldg. That's the 2nd or backup 911 center.

 

[kc2hsu]

I am not sure if this is helpful or redundant, but while comparing a Uniden Bearcat BCD325P2 and a Uniden Bearcat SDS100, the difference between the two is night and day. Obviously, the price difference is substantial, but there's no way that I could go back to listening to Oneida County's P25 system on the BCD325P2.