[Scan-DC] DC FEMS UNENCRYPTS 7 a.m. Sunday!

[Alan Henney]

We’ll probably just have to wait a few hours and see what happens.  I assume the fire apparatus will be directed to 0-3 and 0-7 for the primary firegrounds.  But what happens with EMS and rescue assignments, good question.  I believe it’s possible for the network controller to “poke” some holes on the encrypted talkgroups to make them unencrypted.  So maybe we’ll see some individual talkgroups converted back?

As far as affiliating, that would be a two-way radio.  I assume some agencies still have XTS5000s which are Phase 1 but not Phase 2 capable.  If one of those affiliates on a dynamic talkgroup, it will force it to FDMA which means slightly older scanners (BCD396T) can receive it (although maybe not perfectly).  But once it switches back to TDMA, you’ll need a newer radio like the BCD436HP.

I’m under the impression that MAIN and DISP are always set to FDMA.  Any thoughts?

Only six hours to go!

Alan

From: Brian Rokus 
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2015 9:36 PM
To: Eric C. Carlson ; Alan Henney 
Cc: David Schoenberger ; ScanDC 
Subject: RE: [Scan-DC] DC FEMS UNENCRYPTS 7 a.m. Sunday!

So I guess the follow-up question is does anybody know what the odds are of having older radios affiliated to force the FDMA fallback? 

And after Alan's very-helpful info, it seems at least to me that they aren't really fully unencrypting. For example, B-3 (where a lot of the rescue incidents seem to go) will not be open, correct? I suppose it's always possible that they will change the procedure for assigning incidents to channels.


> Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2015 19:54:18 -0600
> From: ecarlson at gmail.com
> To: alan at henney.com
> CC: davidschoenberger at gmail.com; scan-dc at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [Scan-DC] DC FEMS UNENCRYPTS 7 a.m. Sunday!
> 
> "Dual Dynamic Mode," if enabled for specific talkgroups, will allow them to
> revert to FDMA if FDMA radios are affiliated to the talkgroup.
> 
> -Eric
> 
> On Feb 28, 2015 6:41 PM, "Alan Henney" <alan at henney.com> wrote:
> 
> > Unlike MPD, I think the FEMS talkgroups are dynamic (TDMA with fallback
> to FDMA for older radios like the XTS5000). Can anybody confirm? So you’d
> need a new scanner and might be able to receive the FDMA (typically on MAIN
> and DISP and on the others when they are affiliating with a Phase 1 radio).
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