K9WG
Member
If a major disaster occured requiring a very large response, would IDPS and/or SAFE-T be able to carry the traffic?
Not all of them. I was in the Public Safety Compound on Saturday afternoon and saw a steady stream of ISP troopers come in to get IDPS radios because the radios they normally carried didn't have IDPS talkgroups. My assumption was that they normally worked outside of central Indiana so would have no need for IDPS TGs.The Indiana State Police troopers and the Excise police Officers that all worked downtown as part of the Super Bowl all had the IDPS channels programmed into their radios well before the Super Bowl events started.
That's nothing more than a programming issue. Almost all MECA-programmed radios (depending on the template) have at least some SAFE-T talkgroups in them, and many ISP radios - at least the ones issued to troops in District 52 - have valid IDs and talkgroups on the MECA (IDPS) system. Its not a fundamental failure of the system, its an issue with inter-agency coordination and programming to be able to talk to each other.A simple answer is what K9WG was asking for and that is in "No" IDPS could not talk to FBI swat teams duing the Super Bowl. Safe-t could not talk to IDPS. Indiana State Police Troopers had to use IDPS Radios to talk to others on the IDPS talkgroups.
The original MECA system used dedicated microwave links for connectivity between the sites. Is that not the case with the current IDPS system?Anything that relies on terrestrial leased lines for connectivity between sites is at the mercy of the terrestrial wireline network. I have seen MECA go into site trunking occasionally...
Heck, a big snow storm can easily tie up a site when ISP, INDOT, and local police and fire all get busy. Makes me wonder if it isn't time to move INDOT and some of the other admin stuff to a different system.IMHO, SAFE-T is a different story...When there is a big disaster like the recent tornadoes in Clark County, you are going to have busies. It doesn't even have to be a big disaster.
Heck, a big snow storm can easily tie up a site when ISP, INDOT, and local police and fire all get busy. Makes me wonder if it isn't time to move INDOT and some of the other admin stuff to a different system.
That's nothing more than a programming issue. Almost all MECA-programmed radios (depending on the template) have at least some SAFE-T talkgroups in them, and many ISP radios - at least the ones issued to troops in District 52 - have valid IDs and talkgroups on the MECA (IDPS) system. Its not a fundamental failure of the system, its an issue with inter-agency coordination and programming to be able to talk to each other.
Very good point sir. Yes, the newest EDACS subscriber equipment is also P25 capable, and allows easy interop for Hamilton County users switching to MECA. Unfortunately, it doesn't work the other way around since Hamilton County is still EDACS, and the MECA (and we all still call it MECA) and SAFE-T subscriber equipment (Motorola and sometimes EFJ) won't do EDACS. So that's where NPSPAC comes in, in theory at least. In a real world situation, people will just relay through dispatchers as they always have done and everybody will just stay on their own channel. I think the issue is (and always has been, even with analog conventional so long as everybody was on the same band) that we have the tools, we just don't use them right.Even certain Hamilton County EDACS radios have been programmed with MECA (IDPS) systems and talk groups. Those radio's function properly when the units switch systems and if SAFE-T were true P25, those radios would have also been programmed for the SAFE-T systems. As you suggest, the issues lie with training and inter-agency coordination.
Very good point sir. Yes, the newest EDACS subscriber equipment is also P25 capable, and allows easy interop for Hamilton County users switching to MECA. Unfortunately, it doesn't work the other way around since Hamilton County is still EDACS, and the MECA (and we all still call it MECA) and SAFE-T subscriber equipment (Motorola and sometimes EFJ) won't do EDACS. So that's where NPSPAC comes in, in theory at least. In a real world situation, people will just relay through dispatchers as they always have done and everybody will just stay on their own channel. I think the issue is (and always has been, even with analog conventional so long as everybody was on the same band) that we have the tools, we just don't use them right.
As for INDOT, they are "analog 800" on SAFE-T, save for a few talkgroups that are digital voice. Most of the day to day operational talkgroups are analog. IMHO, they probably could have just stayed on low band, at least until the system went P25 Phase II, which would mean a whole lot more available radio IDs and a more traffic capacity due to TDMA in the Phase II spec. There is still nice new low band equipment available out there that they could have used, and had they used PL or DPL, they could have cut down on or eliminated interference from DX and other sources. It probably would have been much cheaper than buying Motorola subscriber units for their entire fleet.
This business of trying to jam everybody in the state onto a mixed-mode Type II system before the system is built up enough to handle it is a bit foolish. Its a great concept, don't get me wrong, but the infrastructure has to be able to handle it, and individual agency SOPs absolutely must be re-evaluated and changed as necessary to make it actually work as the planners intended. So often, users are just handed a radio and a charger and told "here you go", with no training at all. Most of the time, non-radio people are expected to figure out how to use these extremely capable radios and systems with no formal training whatsoever. Then we wonder why we can't talk, and the answer always seems to be that we need to throw more money at it,
RXR, as for the backhaul between MECA sites, I don't know how they're doing it now. There are microwave antennas, but I am not privy to the system's design details. Even if I was, I wouldn't blab about it on the internet. I'm just a user.