PD is going from analog to Digital, slowly phasing in new radios both in car and handhelds. What will change, is it more secure, and what do I need to know ahead of time?

Pros?
Cons?

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This is a joint effort with both the sheriffs office, and municipal pd. I believe we are also using Highway patrols towers as well

Think of it like the switch from analog to digital cell phones.

When the system is working, you have great coverage. When it's not, you have NO COVERAGE.

When our agency switch from analog to digital in the late 90's we had some growing pains. At the far border of our city we didn't have enough repeaters to cover newly annexed area. This was remedied by piggy backing off another agency's towers. As long as you are in range of a repeater, sound quality is good. As far as security, it depends if your system is encrypted or not. Originally ours were, but we changed out to an unencrypted system so we could tie our radios in with the sheriffs office... Should have been in the other way around, imho, but no one asked me.

This has been years in the planning so I hope... hope they have enough repeaters.

You left out a very important part. What radio brand and radio type?

Digital- It's either on or off.  No more garbled signals where if a guy talks louder or tries again you can figure out what he's saying.  If you have no signal you come across as digital beeps, like a bad fax machine.
No more talking over your buddy's or "squishing" their signal.  Only one person can play at a time.  

We have some back country dead spots, and a few "shadows" where even in town the signal is hid behind hills.

In theory our whole state is on the same system.  Thus one can travel from north to south through several counties and be in some sort of contact with a dispatch center.  "In theory."

It is Motorola but I don't know what type..

this.

J-

We were told that too....that the signal would be on or off. Not true. We get garbled digital transmissions. I preferred the old analog system. In my city it is rather hilly, and digital doesn't seem to do well there. Also we have to wait for the beep to start talking, when things go sideways people forget to wait and cut themselves off. Give me analog any day.

i have a question for you guys with digital systems (non-LEO here)...

as you are probably aware, digital systems come in a variety of flavors and with widely varying capabilities.  modern digital systems designed for LE use have some really cool/handy/clever features -- some of which are always in place and some of which require a bit of "radio system administrator control".  by the last part i mean that there are features which can be enabled/disabled on the fly by a person sitting in front of a computer screen.

for example, take the following situations:

1) lost radio -- the system administrator can deactivate the wayward radio from the network, effectively turning it into a useless brick.  that's an easy one.
2) non-responsive fireman or officer -- after several verbal retries from dispatch, the system administrator can remotely "open the mike" of the officer's radio and listen in to what is going on.
3) non-responsive fireman or officer -- the  system administrator can remotely "squawk" the radio associated with that individual -- it makes a loud chirping sound and this helps locate a downed fireman, for example.
4) site talk group bonding -- EMS, fire, and police on scene of major event?  three clicks on the system administrator's screen and they are all on the same talk group; no more "what frequency?", and no more "can't talk to them".  no individual officer action needed whatsoever -- just press the PTT button as usual and all of the folks around them hear it.
5) etc etc etc -- there are tons of features.

my question is, do you guys in LE have radio system administrator who does stuff on the fly?  what size dept typically does?  if you lose a radio, for example, how long until it is disabled from the network if you don't have a radio admin?

ar-jedi

We just switched in January. Disaster.

Volume- Changes from high to low without the user adjusting anything

Have to relearn everyone's voice and signal cues in their voices, some people sound exactly the same over the radio

We have dead spots in town, including inside the PD. Radio system wont work in the bordering towns.

Portable issues- 3 guys standing next to each other and only one radio picks up a transmission. This is happening daily and quite annoying. I wear an earpiece and leave my portable on in the car. I often will hear the mobile radio transmit and dont get anything in my ear from my portable. On traffic stops I can hear the mobile going off standing at the suspect car and I dont get anything in my ear.

Battery life- Batteries started out working for 14-16 hours straight when working a double. After a week they wont even last 6 hours.

While all of these might not be b/c of digital, I am disgusted. Thanks for letting me vent a bit

We have used #1 and #4 several times. The site talk group is pretty awesome. Our Admin was able to tie in a neighboring departments analogue to our digital channel. pretty nifty stuff. We just went microwave for interop a few months ago. Coverage is outstanding.

MPD165

I have had similar issues as others here so far with the transfer to the 800mhz digital system. I believe the state call it the Viper system. In rolling or mountain type areas it is useless in some areas. Before with analog VHF we could at least reach someone else on scene if we could not key a repeater, but now its all or nothing. Same goes for basements, or concrete type buildings with thick walls. Even in a good area, you may have a dead spot, move the radio 2 inches and it gets out good.

We also get a lot of garbled transmissions. I call them "alien talk" because it sounds like an alien from an old movie.

Bleed over from several counties away at times. Never explained as to why.

We have to go back to VHF several times a year as well for a shift or so. Politics really. The people over the system locally want to control who has what freqs programed in the radio, so what happens is when there is an event and its switch to "x" freq, we cant do it.

System goes has gone down completely several times as well, so we have had to revert back to VHF at times. May be a shift, may be a bit longer until it gets back up.

we (90% of the depts on our county) run through a central dispatch and the rest are monitiored by the central. We are all on a statewide system which is also monitored by a state central dispatch/admin center.

Our central dispatch can do 90% of the stuff you mentioned, from their office. The only thing that the state central center is needed for, IIRC, is to brick the radio if it is lost.

Not sure how other agencies work it.

We occasionally get "digitized sounding skip." It wasnt too hard to "relearn" eveyones voice as they are pretty close to normal with our system. We have 13 towers in our county with a minimum of 10 repeaters per IIRC. Very rarely do you get "bonked" and not beable to hit a repeater (I'm 30 miles outside of Detroit so we are very busy). With our system I can be in Detroit and talk to someone in the far corner of the Upper Pennisula, by nothing more that switching my radio to the correct talk group, as it is a linked system state wide.


J-

Went to P25 a little while ago from analog.

Got the new radios before the transmitter was switched over so we had all the new ones shoehorned onto a single analog signal.  Sounded like everyone was talking through a toy transformers mask.


Better overall clarity once the change was fully implemented.  Rough spots became dead spots, though.  Sucks because you can hear traffic, you just can't transmit.  Supposedly the "ohshit" button still works in those cases.

Our state is on the 700mhz system.  All radios run through local repeaters, then they get sent to one big digital radio complex location 300 miles away.  There the radio magic happens and the signal gets sent back to the local dispatch center.  We can go car-to-car in a pinch if the state system goes down.

We have a dept guy who is our system administrator.  He takes care of programming portables and car units.  He also sets up the various talk groups and makes you you are assigned the proper ones and cut out of the ones you shouldn't be on.
1- Maybe, don't know
2-I believe out dispatch can do this.  
3- I believe our dispatch can do this.  They also "tone" out priority calls and non-responsive officers for status checks.
4- Yes.  Have it and use it.  

The big catch in all this is that our system administrator works M-F 9-5.  When do radios go down...?  On a weekend at 3am.  So we can do a  lot of cool stuff, if the guy is in the office during normal business hours.  

I've been following the system since it first got grants to put the switch in in Chattanooga.

It was the Tennessee Valley Radio Trunking System, and covered some of mideast tennessee and part of georgia. Now, it's morphed into the statewide something something system. TACN?

biiiiig motorola Astro 7.4 P25 system. Mostly 700Mhz. And, getting ready (if not already rolling out) to go to yet another standard.

Many areas are encrypting, which is a poor decision.

OP, I don't know where you live, but the system is kind of unforgiving. Either you're in the repeater, or you're not. They are being skimpy on the repeater sites, only to have to add coverage.

You can monitor it now with a new scanner, but when Phase II or whatever the next iteration is rolls around, it will be awhile before the scanners catch up.

There are some inherent issues with how this is rolling out, but it is what it is. Ask for car radios and don't trust using just handhelds and don't trust the techs doing their driving tests. I listened to them do all of Blount Co, and they still had issues afterward that had to be addressed.

Pros - no more six radios in a car.

Cons - wait til a serious multiagency incident happens. bah-bah-bah. system is busy. bah-bah-bah
sketchy coverage, 700mhz is a shit band for public safety.
you are carrying a tiny computer that runs a radio.
You probably wont be able to use a stubby antenna.

there's more, but it's bedtime. Hope you don't have to buy your own radio!