York County to offer two-tone over P25 paging
- Thread starter ocguard
- Start date
- Status
Russell623
Newbie
Hopefully this time we get it. Quite a few bought unications for that purpose while back and then was told no. Way the alpha paging been lately need the backup of voice. Keep hopeful
Russell623
Newbie
That's awesome to hear!
Not my county but as someone that despises alpha paging this is great to hear. I do visit Adams county frequently and travel through York to do so, so this will make my listening while in the area much more enjoyable. Can they get Adams to reconsider the glacial alpha shift and get Lebanon and Dauphin off of this plague next?
Now though. The nerdist in me is curious. The York Wiki has lists of the old tone sets in there from when the switch to alpha happened. There’s been some changes and consolidations since then. Do we think they’ll basically drag the old tone sets out of the moth balls or just create new ones? I can see the benefits of starting fresh. But at the same time I can see the old dinosaurs like me also saying I want to hear my hip make the same beep-booooppp noise it made years ago.
The tones that can be used effectively on two-tone over P25 are limited to highs and lows much more than analog FM.
Also, I highly doubt you'll see multiple tones for each department (such as duty officers, fire police, etc). Likely one tone for each station. And administrative notifications through the alphanumeric paging system and by text message/third party systems.
Also, I highly doubt you'll see multiple tones for each department (such as duty officers, fire police, etc). Likely one tone for each station. And administrative notifications through the alphanumeric paging system and by text message/third party systems.
Interesting. We're still building out our P25 system to go in service at some point later this year and plan on keeping our existing high band paging channel when the cutover eventually so I'm only familiar with the P25 systems in my travels. Good to know. Thanks!
The three systems in Maryland that are currently transitioning from SmartZone / Smartnet to P25 are retaining or upgrading their VHF paging systems, and not moving personnel alerting to their new trunking systems - seems to be a conscious decision.
York has Alpha Numeric paging.. FF want tone and voice.. Squeaky wheel gets the grease.. York will add Tone and voice on the trunked system as a backup from what has been told... Truth be told, MOST FF don't even carry a pager, they rely on IMR and Other phone based services..
York abandoned all of their legacy analog tone and voice paging and replaced it with a wide-area simulcast alphanumeric paging system. I'm not sure what the cost would be like to engineer a new analog system to run a parallel tone-and-voice paging system.
What're your thoughts on two-tone over P25 versus the other alerting protocols that can be used with P25/Unication? I really hoped York would try something different.
talviar
Member
I'll give my perspective as a system manager of a radio system...
I manage the PA Fayette County TRS operating as Site 6 on the PA ICORRS wide area trunking system.
2500 radios, 7 channels on a 7 tower (sub site) simulcast system providing 911 dispatch for 50 fire departments, 10 EMS agencies, 25 police departments, a handful of county wide special response teams (water rescue, hazmat, rehab, etc), and search and rescue.
Our departments on the border of the county while dispatched by Fayette have base radios and portables that while they talk back to Fayette= utilize towers 2 different simulcast sites in Westmoreland, and the simulcast site in Somerset. So my normal dispatches occur across a lot of RF infrastructure to happen.
Alerting via Talkgroup (use)-ie alert occurs when Talkgroup has activity- from a dispatch center perspective and system perspective... very inefficient- basically requires a unique talkgroup for each dispatched department. In my case- around 70-75 talkgroups for this to work. Some of my activations for calls have 12-14 departments on initial dispatch.... having to set up the multiselect for each unique call is not quick and easy and has to be redone every time a dispatch occurs.
Alerting via Call Alert- I have enough issues with a multi site system and call alert. Things we have found out with the way consoles dispatch.... u have to assign a primary talkgroup to the call alert dispatch even though the call alert is occuring in the data stream on the control channel or the data stream riding with the voice. If that talkgroup is not affiliated anywhere on a particular coverage site, the call alert will not occur even if the radio is affiliated and present there. And call alert only occurs to the RF coverage site that the radio is affiliated to.... Pager basically has to be in the same RF coverage site as the alerted base radio for that department.
Alerting via Tones over a talkgroup- we are already forcing the Dispatch talkgroup to the various RF sites for Fire and EMS needed to ensure calls/dispatch are mare- so... tones go over the primary dispatch talkgroup, pager alerts (in cases where radio supports P25 Tone paging, radio alerts), channel opens up, voice announcement heard. Dispatcher does stuff the same way they always have and really has nothing else to do.
I know a few will argue with my view point on this- and I'll put my last spin on this- my 911 center uses "automatic" dispatch where the tones thru the console and the call alerts are done automatically via the CAD system and an interface to the radio system. Something we have done since late January 1997. 24 years of this automatic dispatch occuring. The alerting via talkgroup can't be set up thru the automatic means.
the Unications work well with Tone paging on the Talkgroup. The APX series radios work well with Tone paging on the Talkgroup. starting to look at the Kenwood/Johnson Viking series tone paging now......
Just my $5.25 (adjust for inflation, fuel costs, and COVID issues....), as always YMMV, no warranty expressed or implied, and this is my opinion and thoughts, not my employers.
T
I believe they are looking at P25 Two Tone with the G4 pager.. The alpha will stay as is and be primary from what I have been told (Could be wrong).. They will not , can not modify the existing alpha to do voice.
why don't we quit speculating and wait and see what will happen when it happens.
- Status
Similar threads
