There are some purpose built radios for HAZLOCS, most of them are 800/900 such as the APX4000H. Designed for the oil/gas industry.
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Why P25 phase II instead of DMR tier 3?
- Thread starter knockoffham
- Start date
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- Tags
- digital dmr p25 public safety
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Your words above. Not looking for a battle. I was simply showing, continue to show, that there are just as reliable, feature rich, interoperable, solutions, for a fraction of the cost, without giving up safety. It is clearly working here. Whether you choose to acknowledge that is irrelevant. We all move on.
You offered no facts, just sales puff typical of an old school LMR saleman. No documentation. Nada. Plenty of documentation exists on P25 being a go-to solution for secure, robust and purpose built for IDLH and public safety. Is it expensive? Sure is. So is everything. But when you need it, if f-ing works. Is it perfect? Nothing is. But the name of the game is minimizing risk. One day you'll wind up in a court room and feel what I am saying.
I asked for coverage maps. Nothing.
I asked for what TIA standardized testing you utilized to achieve the reported "100 percent street level and other coverage claims". Nothing.
I asked for your failsoft plan. Nothing.
I asked for how you secure your AES keys or OTAR them and crickets. Some mantra about the FBI. But no direct answer.
I get it. Those of us P25 system owners, technicians and managers are all dumb. We just buy stuff without asking questions. The O/P wanted to know why P25 Phase 2 versus Tier 3 DMR and it has been well covered, which is the simple fact that DMR is not designed for public safety in the USA. Some may choose to implement cost cutter solutions, but as always a lazy man works twice as hard and it just ends up costing more in the end.
Ready for the flames, but I'd rather not have any and y'all just let me state my opinion. 
When an law enforcement officer or firefighter that uses this system dies and the family wants money and the attorney's get involved and they blame the radio system all heck will break loose. The attorney's will claim DMR isn't "mission critical" and should have never been used as such. They will sue MSI and whoever owns the system. Laws/mandates/whatever will be enacted that all mission critical communications be on P25 system.
Some will say this is all silly and will never happen, but I speak from experience about families blaming the radio system and going after who has money. And don't ask for any details as this specific incident is still in litigation for one of the families even after 10 years.
When an law enforcement officer or firefighter that uses this system dies and the family wants money and the attorney's get involved and they blame the radio system all heck will break loose. The attorney's will claim DMR isn't "mission critical" and should have never been used as such. They will sue MSI and whoever owns the system. Laws/mandates/whatever will be enacted that all mission critical communications be on P25 system.
Some will say this is all silly and will never happen, but I speak from experience about families blaming the radio system and going after who has money. And don't ask for any details as this specific incident is still in litigation for one of the families even after 10 years.
Nothing for nothing, you know this system is SaiaNet, you know there are online coverage maps. I answered your failsoft, AES, questions, but apparently you take time to comment, just not read the replies, or simply don't understand the answers. Either way, you keep implying if Public Safety isn't P25, people die, there will be litigation, and you have all the answers. It's good to hear you and your supporting staff walk on water, and the system, radios, programming, never has a point of failure that creates communications problems. You my friend are literally the only one, system in the world that has achieved a level of service superior to others, and completely anticipated single points of failure with 100% mitigation, and 0% liability. My hats off to you!
"DMR is not designed for public safety in the USA", but it is elsewhere? Same protocol, but built different? You're entitled to your opinion, yet here we are.
"Today" there are no laws stating what is or isn't Public Safety grade. As I said in a past post, a year ago, a local fire fighter died, wearing his APX4000. People blame everything, see what sticks. When people die, all involved, even on an edge, are left defending themselves. It's how the world works. How you prepare for that event, is what prevents blanket accusations, explains cause and effect. All transmissions, GPS, system metrics, recorded, held for one year. This is no different than servicing an analog fire channel (MDC Signaling), even with APX radios, when "mandown" button pressed, and it doesn't work correctly, wrong channel, whatever. Someone is getting sued. P25 doesn't, can't prevent that, so inferring it does, is only lying to yourself. No worries, the band marches onReady for the flames, but I'd rather not have any and y'all just let me state my opinion.
When an law enforcement officer or firefighter that uses this system dies and the family wants money and the attorney's get involved and they blame the radio system all heck will break loose. The attorney's will claim DMR isn't "mission critical" and should have never been used as such. They will sue MSI and whoever owns the system. Laws/mandates/whatever will be enacted that all mission critical communications be on P25 system.
Some will say this is all silly and will never happen, but I speak from experience about families blaming the radio system and going after who has money. And don't ask for any details as this specific incident is still in litigation for one of the families even after 10 years.
DeoVindice
P25 Underground
Yes. I've carried an XPR in H2S-hazard areas (IS not required but a plant-wide alerting system was used to initiate an evac if gas levels exceeded TLV) and would not do so again for safety reasons. The department went round and round with the radio shop about subscriber and system issues and got nowhere.
Regarding the APX4000 LODD, just having the proper equipment is no guarantee. Testing, training, and maintenance are all required. Of course, none of that is worth anything if the underlying hardware is not suited to the use case. Just for giggles, I tested emergency button engagement with an XPR7550e while wearing typical leather work gloves. The emergency button could be activated maybe half the time with a gloved finger, and none of the time with my thumb. I then tested the same function with a VP6330* and could engage the emergency button every time with all digits while wearing the same gloves. I don't have an XPR RSM with emergency button to test, but the results with a KMC-70 mirrored the VP. This was in a well-lit area under no stress - in a smoked-up building with adrenaline and heavier fire gloves affecting fine motor skills, it would be even worse.
*Results would be about the same with an APX XE, Harris XL, or BKR. The 6330 is just what I have on hand at the moment.
If you could throw an ergonomically superior non-Motorola radio on SAIA, that would be a major improvement. Of course that's not possible with a walled-garden system, hence the attraction of standards-based systems that support subscribers from various vendors to be selected to match use cases and budgets.
I don't sell radios. I work for the people who use them. You conveniently skipped over KevinC's excellent post. Guess what, my agency went through a similar event in 2005 that made worldwide news. A 548 page AAR has en entire section to it spelling out communications failures. We learn from failure or choose not to. One major failure comes when those refuse to learn from those who know and have been there.
You now have two people who have experience you lack dealing with such sentinel events. You can think your county of 60,000 are insulated. All good, until it isn't is the understatement.
DMR is the wrong tool for the job. It's why those that know do better. Is P25 perfect? Far from it, but it was designed for public safety and no one else which is why it stands apart. But I am sure the citizens of your county won't care until....I am sure internet searches will bring them here where the big city radio guys who know nothing and are dumb tried to inform. Can't say one didn't know (this was the "until it wasn't" part). Happy new year!
LMAO, the arrogance...
Before you keep making yourself look uneducated, look at a map, get a handle on geography, population, application vs cost, political history, etc. You sound like the typical government employee that knows his or her little fiefdom, hangs his webinar certificates on the wall, trying to feel self important, while having no real accountability for prudent spending. Other than the top 25 cities in country, or State systems, few can afford what the unimaginative repeat from their 4 day seminars. Without options, most small communities can't even think about what it takes to put any kind of trunk system together, and operate it. With the mentality "It's P25 or else" would keep most agencies on conventional analog systems. Introduce each entity picking what the "preferred" spectrum is (VHF, UHF, 700), and there is essentially no interoperability, flexibility. We have solved that, with it's end users very happy with the system, despite opinions from 900 miles away.
Seeing as you're too unmotivated to look yourself, you asked for coverage maps.
Scale :
Red is => -60dBm
Green is => -75dBm
Blue is => -110dBm
Pot meet kettle. Only on RR forums does the small town radio hero show us big city radio folks we've been doing it wrong.
Guess I'm gonna tuck my tail between my legs and go trotting towards the hills after I swap out all my 7,000 APX and EFJ/Kenwood radios with school bus radios and throw em on my LCP system. Not.
Thank you everyone. Due to being a dingus I somehow couldn't find this thread I made until it was recommended to me just now. Very interesting information. Unfortunately looks like it did devolve into keyboard wars however I think I've learned some interesting things.
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@ OP
All for giggles and ****s, you can put an ASTRO KMF on a MOTOTRBO (SSCP, MSCP, CON+, Capacity Max) system to roll AES keys via OTAR. Those who know the Morocco Capacity Max project should remember that fun experiment. There are also three newer Capacity Max system in the states running AES with OTAR.
The keys are not as secure when comparing software based XPR/R7 to physical MACE based APX, but that’s a different topic that has already been beaten.
All for giggles and ****s, you can put an ASTRO KMF on a MOTOTRBO (SSCP, MSCP, CON+, Capacity Max) system to roll AES keys via OTAR. Those who know the Morocco Capacity Max project should remember that fun experiment. There are also three newer Capacity Max system in the states running AES with OTAR.
The keys are not as secure when comparing software based XPR/R7 to physical MACE based APX, but that’s a different topic that has already been beaten.
CaptainEqs
Member
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2004
- Messages
- 10
There's something ironic about a discussion of firefighter comms turning into a flamewar . . .
My contribution:
I'm in a rural area. Several years back, I worked for a company that had gone to MotoTRBO on their fleet of buses, used to haul miners to even MORE rural areas, to and from work. Contracts with some of the mining companies required forward positioning buses for standby, in case one broke down -- not only a real risk, but a common event. Tour buses are not intended for dirt roads, and especially not for dirt roads running 50 - 90 miles, both ways, twice a day.
We got some complaints that one particular prestaged coach wasn't responding to calls. Being the one guy in the company who wasn't fuzzy on the difference between DC and RF, I was asked to check into it. I discovered that if it were parked in one particular spot, it was like talking simplex across the parking lot -- but if it were as little as half a coach length out of that spot, NOTHING. Seriously. We ended up painting marks on the ground for the driver to put the wheels in, and having the driver check in on arrival.
The Sheriff's Office P25 repeater was in the same building as the commercial repeater, antenna on the same tower, and was allowed to put my P25 15 watts on their system for SAR. I had P25 coverage in areas that the 25W MotoTRBO had nothing. I had coverage with my Astro Saber in places where the coaches were NORDO.
Such was my experience comparing the two, and this would be why public safety keeps P25. It doesn't matter how much less expensive it is, if you can't communicate when you have to.
I played with XPR 7550s on the DMR machines in the nearest coverage area, and just wasn't impressed.
My contribution:
I'm in a rural area. Several years back, I worked for a company that had gone to MotoTRBO on their fleet of buses, used to haul miners to even MORE rural areas, to and from work. Contracts with some of the mining companies required forward positioning buses for standby, in case one broke down -- not only a real risk, but a common event. Tour buses are not intended for dirt roads, and especially not for dirt roads running 50 - 90 miles, both ways, twice a day.
We got some complaints that one particular prestaged coach wasn't responding to calls. Being the one guy in the company who wasn't fuzzy on the difference between DC and RF, I was asked to check into it. I discovered that if it were parked in one particular spot, it was like talking simplex across the parking lot -- but if it were as little as half a coach length out of that spot, NOTHING. Seriously. We ended up painting marks on the ground for the driver to put the wheels in, and having the driver check in on arrival.
The Sheriff's Office P25 repeater was in the same building as the commercial repeater, antenna on the same tower, and was allowed to put my P25 15 watts on their system for SAR. I had P25 coverage in areas that the 25W MotoTRBO had nothing. I had coverage with my Astro Saber in places where the coaches were NORDO.
Such was my experience comparing the two, and this would be why public safety keeps P25. It doesn't matter how much less expensive it is, if you can't communicate when you have to.
I played with XPR 7550s on the DMR machines in the nearest coverage area, and just wasn't impressed.
Interesting. So the take away is, all things being equal, the P25 modulation format was able to overcome any other design issues, that the Mototrbo modulation couldn't. Or is the XPR (the same internals as the APX 900) not as reliable? For this discussion, we have to assume all hardware went through correct alighnment procedures, the repeater site used same antennas, hardline, combiner insertion loss, so ERP was the same,as well as RX multicoupling, so the receivers react the same.
MotoTRBO: school buses, construction workers, security guards...MSI calls it "operations critical", built to a price point, performs to a price point.
Astro 25: Police, fire, EMS, 911...MSI calls it "mission critical", price is "if you have to ask, you probably can't afford it", performs as best as any system can be intended for IDLH, safety of life applications.
Their engineering, their marketing. Two different products with two different intended applications.
Astro 25: Police, fire, EMS, 911...MSI calls it "mission critical", price is "if you have to ask, you probably can't afford it", performs as best as any system can be intended for IDLH, safety of life applications.
Their engineering, their marketing. Two different products with two different intended applications.
Marketing narratives, nothing more. Rubber meets the road, RF propagation, sysyem design, like feature sets, level the playing field. Can debate this infinitum, but actual use in these environments proves (high tier fire rated radios aside) there is no discernible differance. Is what it is.
I think we have.
The way he defends Saia he must be on the payroll... At least Niagara county was smart enough to put a real radio system in...
And yet, here we are, continuing to add public safety, PSAP. Clearly others, that write the checks, have all the protocol comparisons in front of them, choosing one over the other. The keyboard warriors can push back all they want, offer their "opinions", all the while public saftey, others continue to jump onboard. Facts are facts.
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