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cvrules90 wrote:And like one of the other forums says it. There is nothing worse than when a corrections officer puts the HT into Scan mode, forgets, and then tries transmmitting some gibberish only to find out it was heard by one of the patrol stations. Who can't figure out what's what.

That was probably me that said it, because it happens a lot. Especially embarrassing when the patrol channel is 10-33 and some tard keys up and says "Open the 4A slider please."

Maybe what they should consider for the new system is a simplex radio system for the jails that can be patched or linked to the PSEC.

That was my point with the UHF system, it worked well & no chance to screw up talking on a wrong group/freq. They could have bought a shit ton of new UHF HTs and batteries for the price of just a couple of the EDACS radios. The PSEC radios they put in service in corrections are already beat to crap and deputies are trying to steal the lapel mics for when they go to patrol. Like an old range master used to say "these deputies could fuck up a free meal."

sp1989 wrote:That was my point with the UHF system, it worked well & no chance to screw up talking on a wrong group/freq. They could have bought a shit ton of new UHF HTs and batteries for the price of just a couple of the EDACS radios. The PSEC radios they put in service in corrections are already beat to crap and deputies are trying to steal the lapel mics for when they go to patrol. Like an old range master used to say "these deputies could fuck up a free meal."

And what was so wrong in staying on VHF? LASD still have their UHF radio system and they're not getting rid of it anytime soon.

cvrules90 wrote:And what was so wrong in staying on VHF?

There were lots of outside political factors involved in vacating VHF for the jails. Some of the VHF frequencies had to be released in order to get concurrence from other agencies for 800 MHz frequencies. But it's a lot more complicated than just that.

cvrules90 wrote:And what was so wrong in staying on VHF?LASD still have their UHF radio system and they're not getting rid of it anytime soon.

UHF is their "new" radio system... they were on low band for many many years. And they'll probably have to get rid of their UHF system long before tehy really want to. Unless something changes, those frequencies are getting auctioned off in about 10 years, and LASO will once again be looking for some new frequencies.

zz0468 wrote:

cvrules90 wrote:And what was so wrong in staying on VHF?

There were lots of outside political factors involved in vacating VHF for the jails. Some of the VHF frequencies had to be released in order to get concurrence from other agencies for 800 MHz frequencies. But it's a lot more complicated than just that.

cvrules90 wrote:And what was so wrong in staying on VHF?LASD still have their UHF radio system and they're not getting rid of it anytime soon.

UHF is their "new" radio system... they were on low band for many many years. And they'll probably have to get rid of their UHF system long before tehy really want to. Unless something changes, those frequencies are getting auctioned off in about 10 years, and LASO will once again be looking for some new frequencies.

And LAPD

LAPD is on about their 4th "new" system. When I started my monitoring hobby, LAPD was at the high end of the AM radio spectrum, 1700 khz or thereabouts. I thought it was really cool that the big radio in my garage would pick up police radio traffic. They switched to VHF high band in the 60's, then UHF in the 80's. In the 90's they went digital and added a ton of new freqs. Encryption is probably next, I think they thought they ditched the public listening in when they went digital.

sp1989 wrote:Making corrections switch to the EDACS system was one of the biggest wastes of time, money and equipment imaginable. Jails used to have a perfectly wonderful UHF radio system that used reliable (and cheap) HTs with 6 channels, 3 repeated and 3 simplex. But when the EDACS system came on line, some upper echelon MF decided that everyone was going to use the "new" system by God. The UHF system had local repeaters placed at the jails and had great reception. The EDACS radios however, would rarely, if ever, work inside the jails or RCRMC because they could not "find" the control frequency of the trunked system due to interference from all the metal in the buildings. Besides all that, no one in the jail needed to talk directly to dispatch or patrol stations, or had any use for any of the other features of the EDACS HTs. What they ended up doing was programming the jail EDACS radios into non-trunking radios and placing a repeater on a fixed frequency nearby. So now the jails had HTs with a bunch of fancy features which were programmed out, which did not work as well as the UHF radios they had in the first place. EDACS HTs supposedly cost a couple thousand each, and they could have bought lots of new UHF radios (maybe even reprogrammed some GMRS radios, they are about the same) to the old UHF freq. Talk about waste and fraud....

You hit on a disturbing trend I have noticed recently (though it's probably been going on a good long time). People who plan these radio upgrades, or the people who decide to go through with them at any rate, seem to have skipped the step where they ask themselves, "What are the radio needs of xxx organization, what is the environment in which the radios will be used, and what type of system would be the best fit for that environment?" They seem to be much more interested in getting everyone onto one system because they refuse to maintain multiple systems. This is the way people are talking about the nationwide public safety broadband network. "We want everyone to eventually leave their LMR systems and migrate all radio usage to the broadband system because we don't want to maintain the broadband system AND an LMR system." Is it really so expensive, so difficult, or such a bad thing to maintain multiple systems?

The problem, of course, is that when you try to come up with a single system that handles everyone's needs it will end up being way more than 90% of the users need it to be. I wonder if that added expense of subscriber equipment and usage fees for unnecessary features cancels out the savings due to not maintaining multiple systems.

I suspect it's simply politics where the experienced technical-minded people come up with a reasonable solution and the politicians who "know better" completely ignore them. Everyone is enamored of his own idea.

Sir/Madam...your post was quite illuminating. Thank you for sharing your thoughts here, and I shall look forward to future communication with you.

Jlanfn wrote:

sp1989 wrote:Making corrections switch to the EDACS system was one of the biggest wastes of time, money and equipment imaginable. Jails used to have a perfectly wonderful UHF radio system that used reliable (and cheap) HTs with 6 channels, 3 repeated and 3 simplex. But when the EDACS system came on line, some upper echelon MF decided that everyone was going to use the "new" system by God. The UHF system had local repeaters placed at the jails and had great reception. The EDACS radios however, would rarely, if ever, work inside the jails or RCRMC because they could not "find" the control frequency of the trunked system due to interference from all the metal in the buildings. Besides all that, no one in the jail needed to talk directly to dispatch or patrol stations, or had any use for any of the other features of the EDACS HTs. What they ended up doing was programming the jail EDACS radios into non-trunking radios and placing a repeater on a fixed frequency nearby. So now the jails had HTs with a bunch of fancy features which were programmed out, which did not work as well as the UHF radios they had in the first place. EDACS HTs supposedly cost a couple thousand each, and they could have bought lots of new UHF radios (maybe even reprogrammed some GMRS radios, they are about the same) to the old UHF freq. Talk about waste and fraud....

You hit on a disturbing trend I have noticed recently (though it's probably been going on a good long time). People who plan these radio upgrades, or the people who decide to go through with them at any rate, seem to have skipped the step where they ask themselves, "What are the radio needs of xxx organization, what is the environment in which the radios will be used, and what type of system would be the best fit for that environment?" They seem to be much more interested in getting everyone onto one system because they refuse to maintain multiple systems. This is the way people are talking about the nationwide public safety broadband network. "We want everyone to eventually leave their LMR systems and migrate all radio usage to the broadband system because we don't want to maintain the broadband system AND an LMR system." Is it really so expensive, so difficult, or such a bad thing to maintain multiple systems?

The problem, of course, is that when you try to come up with a single system that handles everyone's needs it will end up being way more than 90% of the users need it to be. I wonder if that added expense of subscriber equipment and usage fees for unnecessary features cancels out the savings due to not maintaining multiple systems.

I suspect it's simply politics where the experienced technical-minded people come up with a reasonable solution and the politicians who "know better" completely ignore them. Everyone is enamored of his own idea.

For people who don't understand, like myself, what is LMR?