Orange County CORNet P25 System
- Thread starter GTR8000
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APX8000
Sarcastic Member
Nothing like letting it run for a little now that the last agency has cut over.
Thirst_Quencher
Member
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- May 29, 2020
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i am trying to use my 396xt to monitor the ORANGE COUNTY TRUNKED SYSTEM all i seem to be getting is just the control channel i have all the SYSTEM frequencies progrmmed in, what am i doing wrong?
APX8000
Sarcastic Member
That scanner is not capable of decoding TDMA.
Something is in the works, yes.
Why would it need to be more than one site?
You're looking at a cost of about $1 million per subsite, plus all the engineering costs, plus needing to link via microwave or high speed fiber, etc. Oh yeah, and you need a place to build the site, now add possibly leasing costs to that price tag. Where is that money going to come from? I don't think it's fair to go into detail about what is in the works, since I'm sure it hasn't been made public, but suffice to say that this particular situation probably falls under the category of some luck playing into things, and "it just worked out that way". Remains to be seen, ultimately.
APX8000
Sarcastic Member
I think the other thing a lot of people are missing is the system was not designed for in-building portable coverage. It was designed for on the street portable on the hip. They passed that tile/grid test with 96.5% talk in, and without Arden. Now, does that help a Woodbury PD unit inside a building at the Commons having portable coverage issues where he had no issues on EDACS from Arden....no. But they signed on knowing that they were never promised that. So yeah, you are going to have certain agencies complain what they want because they may have had it before, (let’s say a local village PD on their repeater right in the center of their village). Works great in their little area, but they don’t get Countywide coverage. So now you either have to eat it, go back to the old, or throw money at it. I’m sure if the County had $1 million bucks laying around they would have invested in other areas of the system such as infrastructure and redundancy.
I will also say the County was aware of the issues at Arden with CHI-na and didn’t have a backup plan....but did they need to have one...they are providing what they said they were going to. Now I would still throw my idea forward and repurpose the equipment that was supposed to go on Arden at another location....I recommended the West Point site over on Bull Hill. I’d also re-evaluate the antenna at some of their sites in regards to placement on the towers. They have other ideas, so hopefully their plan works.
I will also say the County was aware of the issues at Arden with CHI-na and didn’t have a backup plan....but did they need to have one...they are providing what they said they were going to. Now I would still throw my idea forward and repurpose the equipment that was supposed to go on Arden at another location....I recommended the West Point site over on Bull Hill. I’d also re-evaluate the antenna at some of their sites in regards to placement on the towers. They have other ideas, so hopefully their plan works.
In theory, yes, however the county system consists of two simulcast (multi-site) cells, which tend to give most scanners a hard time.
Ok thanks, just bought one and was wondering if I made a mistake. Guess I’ll wait and see when it gets here.
Take a look at some of the threads here on RadioReference. If you do have the simulcast issues with your new HP2, you might be able to mitigate with a directional antenna (yagi), attenuator or other tricks. How well those work for each person is variable depending on location, system, etc.
I know that this was mentioned back when the system first starting going online, but is there a chance that the County will put a Fire Paging talk group on the network? Personally, I think it would be a benefit, especially to the people who only regularly monitor/scan the CORNet system and not the VHF paging channel. Scanners can obviously scan CORNet and conventional channels, but they are slow and often miss transmissions on either side. Also with the new radio protocols, when an FD calls out to acknowledge a call, the type of call and the location of the call is no longer repeated, like it used to be. So, unless you are simultaneously monitoring conventional & CORNet, which to do correctly, you need 2 devices, you can miss out on what is going on. There has been a lot of recent sales of Unication G4 pagers in the County, to members of the media and as well as to individual members of fire departments, EMS agencies and law enforcement. It would be a nice convenience on behalf of everyone involved, to have the pages simulcasted over VHF and a CORNet TG.
After recently speaking with the owner of a communications shop in the area, the owner stated to me that there has been no issue with "loading" on CORNet system and it is his professional opinion that the addition of a paging TG would not cause an overload on the system or lead to getting a "busy" signal when someone else is trying to transmit. I know that Rockland County has more frequencies on their system, but the paging TG and having the Fire 1 TG repeated back over the UHF paging channel is great.
In addition, in the future, with the proper equipment, paging (both voice & text) of agencies or people such as the coordinators, F.I. can be done over CORNet, In some cases, CORNet provides better and clearer coverage than the current VHF paging system.
After recently speaking with the owner of a communications shop in the area, the owner stated to me that there has been no issue with "loading" on CORNet system and it is his professional opinion that the addition of a paging TG would not cause an overload on the system or lead to getting a "busy" signal when someone else is trying to transmit. I know that Rockland County has more frequencies on their system, but the paging TG and having the Fire 1 TG repeated back over the UHF paging channel is great.
In addition, in the future, with the proper equipment, paging (both voice & text) of agencies or people such as the coordinators, F.I. can be done over CORNet, In some cases, CORNet provides better and clearer coverage than the current VHF paging system.
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LOL very nice attempt to write a convincing post...although it's probably falling on deaf ears. All I can say is that a number of years ago when the topic was brought up, the answer was "no", and so far that has held.
If you do it for 154.205, you have to do it for 157.450 as well, and that counts against the system loading. I'm familiar with the daily loading on each cell, and while so far there hasn't been an issue where either cell has reached full capacity, there are also some agencies not yet fully operational on the system such as DPW/EFS and the State Park Police (whose activity picks up drastically in the warmer months). If more EMS agencies decide to follow the path of those in the Town of Warwick, using one of the EMS District talkgroups for routine ops, that's another potential increase in loading.
Then a storm blows through the county, and all of a sudden you're at or near full capacity on each cell. Sure, the paging talkgroups could be provisioned at a lower priority and would theoretically get bounced off the air by higher priority transmissions, however once you put talkgroups like that online, people will inevitably depend on them despite any warnings that they may get preempted. Now you have Fire and EMS complaining that they're not receiving dispatches because they've made the choice not to carry an analog pager anymore, and who wants to deal with that nonsense?
Perhaps the county ought to work the bugs out of the VHF simulcasts first, before worrying about provisioning paging over trunking. 🤷♂️
If you do it for 154.205, you have to do it for 157.450 as well, and that counts against the system loading. I'm familiar with the daily loading on each cell, and while so far there hasn't been an issue where either cell has reached full capacity, there are also some agencies not yet fully operational on the system such as DPW/EFS and the State Park Police (whose activity picks up drastically in the warmer months). If more EMS agencies decide to follow the path of those in the Town of Warwick, using one of the EMS District talkgroups for routine ops, that's another potential increase in loading.
Then a storm blows through the county, and all of a sudden you're at or near full capacity on each cell. Sure, the paging talkgroups could be provisioned at a lower priority and would theoretically get bounced off the air by higher priority transmissions, however once you put talkgroups like that online, people will inevitably depend on them despite any warnings that they may get preempted. Now you have Fire and EMS complaining that they're not receiving dispatches because they've made the choice not to carry an analog pager anymore, and who wants to deal with that nonsense?
Perhaps the county ought to work the bugs out of the VHF simulcasts first, before worrying about provisioning paging over trunking. 🤷♂️
APX8000
Sarcastic Member
More talkgroups ? Between all the PD Tac's, Interops, 16 Special Events, MCI/Staging/Treatment, etc., Indian Point, Coop, Emergency Management, 4
SOG's...I could go on and on discussing all of these talkgroups that hardly ever get used. Looking at what ACTUALLY gets used, you could easily trim a ton of fat. As others have posted, they need to work on the simulcasts working right, fill in some dead spots as they are not going off all the towers where they have the trunked system (hey its VHF...we need less sites even though everyone carries pagers indoors), etc. Lets fix existing issues before we take on new projects.
SOG's...I could go on and on discussing all of these talkgroups that hardly ever get used. Looking at what ACTUALLY gets used, you could easily trim a ton of fat. As others have posted, they need to work on the simulcasts working right, fill in some dead spots as they are not going off all the towers where they have the trunked system (hey its VHF...we need less sites even though everyone carries pagers indoors), etc. Lets fix existing issues before we take on new projects.
Would that be the owner that orders everything off Amazon and has EZ pass chasing him down because he doesn't pay his bills...
Crucom
Member
You guys know they added Fire & I think EMS paging simulcast right ?
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