State of Delaware - P25 Phase 1 System (2024)

[trailhiker73]

At this point, Kent County Fire and EMS seems to utilizing the P25 site quite a bit now from dispatch, ops, and hospital channels.

As I monitor the New Castle County site, I’m not hearing much from Fireboard. I occasionally hear traffic on Tac-3, but that’s about it.

I am hearing traffic on the New Castle County site with Animal Control and TMC, so I’m wondering what the status is with Fire and EMS traffic? I thought I read that a full statewide switchover from the legacy to the P25 system was to be in February, so I wonder what the challenges were with that time frame 🤔

 

[magiclightman]

At this point, Kent County Fire and EMS seems to utilizing the P25 site quite a bit now from dispatch, ops, and hospital channels.

As I monitor the New Castle County site, I’m not hearing much from Fireboard. I occasionally hear traffic on Tac-3, but that’s about it.

I am hearing traffic on the New Castle County site with Animal Control and TMC, so I’m wondering what the status is with Fire and EMS traffic? I thought I read that a full statewide switchover from the legacy to the P25 system was to be in February, so I wonder what the challenges were with that time frame 🤔

I believe the Fire/EMS agencies in Kent were directed to start using the new system on their radios. No such directive has been given to the NCC agencies yet, I assume as testing is still underway as evinced by there being activity/no activity on the Fire TGs.

I can also confirm that the out of county/out of state mutual aid companies will be adding the fire/ems TGs to their units now that the SOD system will be P25. There will be no patching of the IOP to a Tac channel just for mutual aid calls as the units will be on TAC3/TAC4 directly.

 

[maus92]

So the new system is the system that will allow for programming of the Unication G5 700/800? I have mine programmed for MD but want DE for Sussex Fire/EMS.

I can attest that the G5 works well on this system.

 

[hey]

The G5 and the SDS100/200 work very good with the new system. Only thing is that the State of Delaware and Motorola is taking time putting the system fully online

 

[maus92]

Some of the larger systems can take a year or more before they are finally accepted and become fully operational after the first sites start transmitting RF.

 

[Bill24]

I am going to Sussex Delaware this weekend, does anyone have a G5 UHF-D 700/800 Codeplug they are willing to share so I can compare mine

 

[maus92]

I am going to Sussex Delaware this weekend, does anyone have a G5 UHF-D 700/800 Codeplug they are willing to share so I can compare mine

You will need to specify your firmware version on the G5 and your PPS version.

 

[Bill24]

You will need to specify your firmware version on the G5 and your PPS version.

PPS V0.4.0.41
Firmware V 2.03

 

[maus92]

My test config only includes the Sussex site and the single "wildcard" / Allcall talk group of 65535 (FFFF) - likely not what you are looking for. There is info in this thread about the likely tg assignments based on the current SmartZone tgs and some math if you wanted to build a more useful configuration.

 

[maus92]

In the SWIC meeting this morning, the DivComm expects to have the P25 system refresh completed by May 1st. The fire side is to be transitioned first; law enforcement a few months later when AES licensing is fully procured - AES licensing costs $850 per subscriber in the DE Motorola contract. The radios themselves should have the necessary hardware if they were purchased through the contract. AES is not going to be widespread in the fire service, but there will be some encrypted tgs.

Teams have been deployed to distribute PC laptops to fire companies and train point persons for reprogramming radios. The process has been automated to the extent that any knucklehead could do it; the PC will report if the radio is capable of being reprogrammed or not, so private radios may be out of luck if they are not compatible. Kent County is just about complete; the rest of the state is in progress.

The DOC 700 MHz system has completed their refresh however some of their subscribers are not AES capable so they will need to be upgraded to fully interoperate with the 800 MHz system. They have the channel capacity to create one interop tg to deploy for special events. Theoretically any user of either the 700 or 800 systems could join it.

 

[trailhiker73]

In the SWIC meeting this morning, the DivComm expects to have the P25 system refresh completed by May 1st. The fire side is to be transitioned first; law enforcement a few months later when AES licensing is fully procured - AES licensing costs $850 per subscriber in the DE Motorola contract. The radios themselves should have the necessary hardware if they were purchased through the contract. AES is not going to be widespread in the fire service, but there will be some encrypted tgs.

Teams have been deployed to distribute PC laptops to fire companies and train point persons for reprogramming radios. The process has been automated to the extent that any knucklehead could do it; the PC will report if the radio is capable of being reprogrammed or not, so private radios may be out of luck if they are not compatible. Kent County is just about complete; the rest of the state is in progress.

The DOC 700 MHz system has completed their refresh however some of their subscribers are not AES capable so they will need to be upgraded to fully interoperate with the 800 MHz system. They have the channel capacity to create one interop tg to deploy for special events. Theoretically any user of either the 700 or 800 systems could join it.

Thanks for the update! I wonder if the fire radios will have their company channels encrypted or the hospital talk groups encrypted as well.

 

[maus92]

I'm not super familiar with how radios in EMS units and hospitals are procured - does the state provide those radios? If so, then hospital tgs *might* be encrypted because they would have the necessary hardware and an AES license could be procured. I'm skeptical about fire company channels as that would require every subscriber to be AES capable and a license would need to be procured for each radio. Considering that there are a lot of company owned and privately held radios, it would be expensive to deploy that scheme.

 

[KB3PTP]

They will not be using the 800MHz p2 system for station alerting, that will remain on the UHF alerting system.

 

[maus92]

Keep in mind that dates in radio projects are fungible. The May 1st in-service date is a target, not hard deadline, lol.