[ScanIndiana] Re: ScanIndiana digest, Vol 1 #360 - 2 msgs

[David L Norris]

On Tue, 2003-06-10 at 19:04, Dave McCormick wrote:
> I would like to know how they have justified the cost of this statewide 
> system beyond the Homeland security funding. The current 800MHz TRS systems 
> are working now

You have to keep in mind the Motorola factor.  When Motorola says it's
time to upgrade there's not much arguing about it.  Motorola is bound to
make a bonfire out of the spare parts and service manuals just to get
the point across.

And, really, the new ASTRO Network systems are considerably better in so
many ways.  APCO25 is just a side issue and isn't even important.  The
benefits of the new system have nothing to do with digital whatsoever. 
There's no advantage to digital other than to say it's digital APCO25. 
They could turn off the digital junk and the system would still be
considerably better than the old disconnected sites.

> I am sure others have read about the issues 
> and problems that the city of Greenwood has had.

Greenwood had problems because there was no nearby SAFE-T site at the
time.  Franklin was just on the fringe.  I think it boiled down to the
politicians thinking they knew better than the engineers.  Surprise, the
engineers were right: Greenwood needed it's own tower.  The SAFE-T plans
always included a Greenwood site.

> SAFE-T system certainly will not be any more secure than the current 
> individual sites and the VHF frequencies for ILLEEN (155.475) will continue 
> to be the best way to communicate between police agencies, or Fire 
> statewide (154.370), SEMA (155.025), and IHERN (155.280).

Sure, those are still going to be useful.  But, the problem, you see, is
that those are restricted to line of sight communications.  Let's say
hypothetically an officer in Gary, IN needs to quickly relay information
to another in Terre Haute.  Not gonna happen on VHF even with a
repeater.  At best, it would require an officer to use the public
telephone system...which could feasibly be overloaded at the time.  With
SAFE-T the officer in Gary would simply turn his channel selector to the
Terre Haute officer's primary and the ASTRO network silently
interconnects the Gary officer's site to the Terre Haute officer's site
and lets them talk directly to each other.

You can hear the networking in action by monitoring Franklin, Greenwood,
and Mooresville sites.  You'll often hear the same talkgroups (even
analog groups) simulcast between the sites depending on who has people
in range of which towers.  The radio silently roams from one tower to
the next just like a cell phone and the talkgroup it's monitoring
follows along with it.


> http://www.nwjcra.org/apco25/review.html

Simply not a fair review of the SAFE-T system at all.  BC250D is total
garbage compared to something like a Motorola MTX 5000.  Ask anyone
who's used both the BC250D and a Motorola on the same tower and digital
talkgroup simultaneously.  Heck, have them demonstrate the difference to
you.  The APCO25 decoder for the BC250D is complete and total garbage. 
But, for scanner listeners, it's better than listening to nothing...

-- 
 David Norris
  http://www.webaugur.com/dave/
  ICQ - 412039