Somerset County TRS Update

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W2SJW

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Nice to hear the PD North TGID alive with traffic today! I also heard P25 on a TGID in the upper 54000 range. Any idea who might be using that (it was in the clear)?
 

mikea7531

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PD North became active on Monday or Tuesday - it's nice to hear them on Trunking finally. If you are referring to the talkgroup 59XXX that is in clear digital - it is the Montgomery School District, mostly school buses.

A few notes of interest:

The County is receiving the delivery of their new command bus at the end of next week. They are hoping to have it at the Public Safety Day in Somerville next month. Local OEMs should be getting their trunking Base Station and Portable sometime next month as well. No word on the squads within the county - they are finalizing plans for that distribution.
 

W2SJW

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mikea7531 said:
If you are referring to the talkgroup 59XXX that is in clear digital - it is the Montgomery School District

Now THAT'S a town with no money problems!!! :D
 

robbinsj2

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mikea7531 said:
If you are referring to the talkgroup 59XXX that is in clear digital - it is the Montgomery School District, mostly school buses.
Is this confirmed? The ESC's old Montgomery Bus channel (12080) has been silent since the start of this school year, I thought they just moved up to 59248. I'll try to see if the district's own old VHF bus channel is still in use; it was back when 12080 was active.

A few Montgomery schools were doing some testing earlier this week on 10384 or one of the talkgroups numerically near it.

Jim
 

mikea7531

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This is confirmed - 59248 Clear Digital is Montgomery School District, mostly used for school busses. I do see a few radios re-affiliating every evening about the same time which i believe are base stations in the individual schools. I remember when they were on the Analog talkgroup that they were conducting a fire drill over the talkgroup - which told me it was used for more than just busing.
 

W2SJW

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Has anyone else been hearing activity today on 11312? I can't grab enough of it to make out who it is, but that TGID fits right in with the rest of the PD sector groups...
 

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I thought these were in the database already, but I see now they're not.
11312=Police North Ops 2.
11408=Police South Ops 2.
11504=Police Central Ops 2.

N/S/C "Tactical" should be changed to "Ops 1". All 6 are analog, none are routinely monitored by dispatch.

Far Hills was using North Ops 2 a lot yesterday for some sort of traffic or crowd control; I locked it out quickly. SBB has occasionally been on S Ops 2, and I heard an unknown department doing coverage testing on C Ops 2 a while back.

Jim
 
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W2SJW

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If I remeber correctly, no squads are on the system yet. Neshaic (Sta. 48) and one of the Montgomery FD's (not sure which one) are over there on the system for normal ops.
 

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As of today - there are only two fire companies operating on the County TRS. Station 48 - Neshanic and Station 45 - Montgomery #1. Eventually, Montgomery #2 will come online. Rocky Hill may come online in the near future, but i haven't heard anything new yet.

There are no First Aid and/or Rescue Squads operating off the system. They are still operating off of multiple VHF and UHF frequencies.

The reason why Fire Depts and EMS is not coming on to the system quickly is the cost issue. Trunking radios are about $3k each and with the push on all of these towns to keep taxes down - no one is approving the purchase of the trunking radios. Somerset County built the system and will pay to maintain it - but it is up to each agency to purchase the radios for it.

The first squad you may see on there is Sta 52 East Millstone and/or Sta 71 Franklin-Somerset as Franklin Twp paid for their own zone on the trunking system and is slowly trying to get all of their entities on it.

There is also a great wealth of information on the county trunk system over at http://www.scan-nj.com. Direct link to the Somerset County TRS topic: http://forums.scan-nj.com/index.php?showtopic=722
 
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W2SJW

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Just a minor update - My best friend (and former Asst. Capt. at Sta. 71) told me Franklin had excess comm funds to burn by the 1st. of Jan., and that the Franklin squads will be on Franklin's site within the system possibly by the end of Q1 '07 (and in digital-clear mode).

They choose site 2 for ops due to the greater in-building coverage percentage...
 

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Scott,

Do you know anything about the Fire Districts? Will they be getting radios soon too - or is the township leaving that up to the districts to fund?

Also, do you know what are they doing with the squads that cover franklin, but aren't in franklin such as Rocky Hill, Kendall Park, and Kingston? Personally, i think if there was any way to utilize the South Brunswick EDACS for Kendall Park and Kingston and patch them into Franklin - that would save some money, but i have no idea if any equipment exists to patch Motorola to EDACS.
 
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W2SJW

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I'm not sure about those things - give me a day or so to talk to my friend...
 

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Kingston Fire and First Aid had been planning on getting capability on the Franklin/Somerset system by way of state/federal grants and/or gifts from the township. I believe Kendall Park First Aid was too. I have no idea about recent developments with the squads; Kingston Fire expects to move up in the not-too-distant future but doesn't have a specific timeline.

South Brunswick wouldn't go for a hard patch and a soft patch would require a dispatch center have ability on both systems, which I doubt either has any interest in. Much of Kendall Park's and Kingston's coverage areas of Franklin Township aren't served very well by South Brunswick's EDACS anyway. Even with co-channel users, JEMS 1 and F-1/F-3 often work better than the 800 MHz trunked system.

Jim
 

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Interesting points there Jim. I didn't know what kind of coverage they had from the EDACS system. I know up here in South Bound Brook - the system comes in very weak with a discone antenna on the roof.

It sounds like to me that Kingston and Kendall Park Squads are now going to have three radios in each of their rigs if they decide to get the UHF radios:

800Mhz - So Brunswick EDACS
UHF - Franklin/Somerset Motorola TRS
VHF - State Required for JEMS.
 

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mikea7531 said:
It sounds like to me that Kingston and Kendall Park Squads are now going to have three radios in each of their rigs if they decide to get the UHF radios:
Hopefully Kingston FAS and FD will choose to remove the handful of low-band mobiles that are still in some vehicles.
 

mikea7531

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Low Band Radios? I wasn't aware they still had those floating around yet in So Brunswick. So they already have 3 mobiles in some of their rigs - and franklin/somerset TRS would make 4 if they choose not to remove the lowbanders.
 
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