GRN and PMR

[Scotty]

My original question was in relation to the Illawarra... NSW ambo's used mainly PMR in this area but are moving over to P25, so was just wondering if the PMR sites will stay active...

I believe Richard answered that in relation to they may keep them but only as a disaster backup... The GRN might have government backing but if it does break down there has to be a level of redundancy for individual agencies to continue their own work...

What about site trunking mode? I wonder if that would be sufficient?

Sure, redundancy is important, but prior to the switch the GRN they had a PMR system with no major redundany/back up network. I don't see why now that they are on the GRN it would need to be any different.

[Bigfella237]

Site trunking is almost useless, it does allow a radio to talk to another radio so long as it's affiliated with the same site but all other communications are lost, you cannot talk to a radio affiliated with any other site and you also lose the link with your comms centre? As I understand it, the FRNSW DISREC talkgroups allow their comms centre to continue to use certain "site trunking" sites because the agency has it's own independent direct link to those sites, by-passing the trunking 'network' should any part of it fail. It may be possible to leave part of an agency's old PMR link network in place to achieve this on a much wider scale?

You have to put yourself in the mindset of the various agencies, once you've handed over control of such a vital part of your operation to a third party (albeit the state govt.) you start to get a little nervous about them holding up their end of the bargain (at least I know I would)!

Andrew

[ivahri]

Andrew,

I totally agree... site trunking by itself is almost useless.

Scotty, you are right that they never had any redundancy before but that doesn't mean that we don't try to improve things if possible. Our PMRs used to use a single Telstra line too, but when RoIP made redundant links possible we implemented those. Now the links virtually never fail. I spent time living in the bush & I get cranky when the country stations get given second rate systems compared to the city when there is no reason for it. There is no reason why there can't be a back-up PMR, the gear is there now so why pull something out that can actually make things more reliable?

Cheers,

Richard

[aircadet]

Thanks "centralcoastscanman"... my follow up post was pointed towards "soupbones" as i may have not made my first post clear...

Cheers

[Scotty]

Yeah copy. When I referred to site trunking mode I was meaning something similar to the duties DISREC setup, although I should have made that more clear. I guess though if they don't already have that set up it may cost more to implement than just keeping the current system they have.

[soupbones]

Thanks "centralcoastscanman"... my follow up post was pointed towards "soupbones" as i may have not made my first post clear...

Cheers

No, as you didn't mention Illawarra in your first post at all. But they would probably keep the sites, as Richard said, for a DISREC backup system.

[aircadet]

Cheers mate...

[Garry]

Northern Control operate PMR and GRN in the Newcastle channels