RFS The Hills district going GRN

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tsunami_australia
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Re: RFS The Hills district going GRN

Post by tsunami_australia » Tue Aug 14, 2018 11:18 am

Though change is guaranteed and was especially so after the 91/94 (can't remember which year) bushfires of Sydney and the coronial inquest on it and the lack of comms because the only standard comms medium was 27/477meg CB. That's what spurred the original Motorola vote network PMR (and wasn't it a flop when it first come out!!!). The newer ASTRO25 network has a MAJOR advantage already in that ALL towers in the area have the same RX/upload/radio tx frequency and then the repeaters decide which one should talk for the group and then the radio only has to decide which repeater output to listen to. The original PMR would preference a channel and stick like glue even when out of that area requiring you to hit home to come back and be able to transmit on a frequency you could be heard on/were in range of.

With the new state gov telecomms authority change is definite and they've been told apparently this (xyz) is what EVERYONE is doing that is state based agency and we don't give a shit if you like it or not this is the way it's happening get ready. My only concern is that not being local they may not have our interests at heart and do the best thing for the area. That said they can't be any worse than the ridiculous oversights the locals have made atm (in regards to solar powered sites dropping out for up to a week because they don't have enough solar capture or battery capacity to deal with the extra blabber coming from central dispatch).

system_tech
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Re: RFS The Hills district going GRN

Post by system_tech » Tue Aug 14, 2018 12:21 pm

Motorola Vote Network PMR??????? The NSW GRN was designed and building commenced prior to the Jan 94 Bush Fires. The system was called Motorola SmartZone Trunking (not PMR) and was APCO P25 compliant, and it certainly wasn't a vote PMR network. Built by Telstra to NSW Government specifications, it was what it was, a first attempt. It was managed by TCU, the Telecommunications Unit of the NSW Government. The system was always owned and controlled by the NSW Government and any deficiencies in the early years can be firmly aimed at the NSW Govt, who at all times had control of design parameters and funding.

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Re: RFS The Hills district going GRN

Post by citabria » Tue Aug 14, 2018 12:29 pm

system_tech wrote:and was APCO P25 compliant
Correction - not APCO P25 compliant - it was, however APCO P16 compliant.

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Bigfella237
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Re: RFS The Hills district going GRN

Post by Bigfella237 » Tue Aug 14, 2018 6:08 pm

I believe t_a is talking about the old analog PMR network, it sucked because all the repeaters had unique tx/rx pairs and the radio could only "vote" to the strongest signal AFTER receiving traffic.

If you'd just turned the battery tap on, jumped in and grabbed the mic, chances are you'd be transmitting on something other than the closest repeater. What they didn't take into account was that the "HOME" channel needed to be different from one brigade to the next (depending on the station location) to initially transmit on the strongest repeater.

In a perfect world, there is nothing more user-friendly than the GRN... park the radio on the correct talkgroup and you've got comms where ever you go, no looking up who's district you're travelling through, no trying to guess which vote group you should be on etc.

And before you all jump in, I did say "In a perfect world"... solar power systems and network dropouts and coverage issues are the Telco's problem!

This doesn't so much apply to the Hills District, but one thing I've noticed with the new North Coast GRN network that concerns me is that they seem to be relying on microwave links from one tower to the next to the next...

Image

...but my question is, if the two sites circled in red go down for some reason, does that mean ALL the sites within the orange circle also lose their wide area connection?

The above is just a random example, but if you follow the microwave links around the map you'll find almost all the sites across huge areas of the North Coast are all connected via these links, I just wonder how much of a risk there is of large areas losing coverage in an S44?

Andrew

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tsunami_australia
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Re: RFS The Hills district going GRN

Post by tsunami_australia » Tue Aug 14, 2018 9:20 pm

system_tech wrote:Motorola Vote Network PMR??????? The NSW GRN was designed and building commenced prior to the Jan 94 Bush Fires. The system was called Motorola SmartZone Trunking (not PMR) and was APCO P25 compliant, and it certainly wasn't a vote PMR network. Built by Telstra to NSW Government specifications, it was what it was, a first attempt. It was managed by TCU, the Telecommunications Unit of the NSW Government. The system was always owned and controlled by the NSW Government and any deficiencies in the early years can be firmly aimed at the NSW Govt, who at all times had control of design parameters and funding.
If you are going to throw shit get your shit right! It wasn't a P25 network at ALL! It was a T2 analogue system during the Olympics even (XTS3000 mass purchases for the GRN). It was only upgraded perhaps 05 upward.

And YES IT WAS A MOTOROLA VOTE NETWORK that I was talking about (again get your shit right). I was talking about the RFS PMR network NOT the GRN. I never stated GRN once!

Bigfella got it at least and knew EXACTLY what I was talking about with the random shit that happened.

Re the northern GRN Bigfella I'm less than impressed for what I'm seeing Bulahdelah->Kempsey. Between Marie, Yarras and Middle Brother for example is some real shithouse territory and I foresee coverage issues. Running Talawahl (Nabiac) from Berrico (Gloucester) seems ridiculous. It would have been far better Cabbage Tree (Bulahdelah) facing SW->NW and up to Coolongolook (Wattle Hill?). Then Mt Ganghat Linking everything from Copeland & Berrico up through Marie, Mt Talawahl etc and even it could have been driven as a hub from Middle Brother. The prime sites for that area are Cabbage Tree and Middle Brother with Ganghat close behind. Middle Brother could hub to near everything Gloucester -> Wauchope but has that 1 fail all fail element doing that. That said I see a LOT of turf loosing radio coverage if either Cabbage Tree, Ganghat or Middle Brother go down in their existing model. I'm going to assume that VKG etc have some fiber infrastructure up to Cabbage Tree since it's their primary site as well for November so that would be the link to there. I'm curious as to where the base will be for Taree/Middle Brother. That said the Ganghat/Middle Brother circuit has no "site" listed here either so would that still be up in the air? I actually see a LOT of these remote relay sites with no hub or "site" to run off.

So my next question there ... when you look at the rest of the GRN network it's primarily all "sites" but when you look at North East it's all relay crap. How are they supposed to relay them distances in that crap scrub with that many jumps and maintain uptime and coverage? And why so many satellites vs sites/hubs like the rest?

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Bigfella237
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Re: RFS The Hills district going GRN

Post by Bigfella237 » Tue Aug 14, 2018 9:32 pm

The North Coast on our map is all "Relay" sites (temporarily) because the only freqs that are licenced ATM are microwave link freqs. Once the wide area (ie. 400MHz) freqs start getting added to the ACMA I'll change those sites over to "Unknown" sites and add the freqs to the unknown sites list on this forum, but for the moment, I can't tell which sites will be wide area and which will remain as relay sites, so I've just been marking them all as relay sites.

Once they start licencing the actual GRN bases the map will look very different. Then the hunt begins to ID all these new site numbers!

We first saw the microwave linking en masse in the North West CCEP trial, I assume it's a cost thing, probably cheaper to install microwave gear instead of renting landlines (where there are landlines available) or satellite bandwidth?

I don't know much about the technology but these microwave links must be capable of transporting a huge amount of data, possibly similar to LTE, because there's only a single microwave frequency pair that needs to carry data for up to a dozen GRN sites, each with a dozen talkpaths simultaneously (once Phase II gets here).

Obviously they're all line-of-site, but I'm wondering if they're affected by heavy weather or dense smoke from a fire too, whereas a landline would (should) be more reliable under those conditions?

Andrew

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tsunami_australia
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Re: RFS The Hills district going GRN

Post by tsunami_australia » Tue Aug 14, 2018 9:39 pm

Hmm further to my last looks like Taree may potentially be the hub??

http://web.acma.gov.au/rrl/client_searc ... _NO=525851

Looks like they are getting the up/down infrastructure in before throwing the 420meg stuff up ther

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Re: RFS The Hills district going GRN

Post by tsunami_australia » Tue Aug 14, 2018 9:44 pm

Oh wow ... so assume Taree is the feedpoint for that bounce ... that means if that link goes dark then Middle Brother, Taree chop shop, Mt Marie, Mt Ganghat, Mt Myra, Coolongolook and Forster water tower goes dark .... holy shit that's like 60-80% of the area dark from one link failure.

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Re: RFS The Hills district going GRN

Post by Bigfella237 » Tue Aug 14, 2018 9:51 pm

Previous post edited.

Yep that was my point with the network being setup like that, may well be cheaper but is it more reliable than landlines?

Andrew

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Re: RFS The Hills district going GRN

Post by tsunami_australia » Tue Aug 14, 2018 9:58 pm

Worst yet just looking at the ACMA DB ... the spur up at Yarrowitch (west of Wauchope) is driven from Mt Marie so we loose them 2 sites as well. So now we are up to 70% at least of the area out of coverage especially up around the 3 brothers, Yarrowitch/Pappinbarra, Comboyne, Tipperary, Ganghat, Krambach, and more where the bigger fires often are. I can't believe the oversight on this. I'm going to go watch something on YouTube so I can yell at it instead the arrogance here on this map (including links like Marie->Yarrowitch not even on the map) is doing my head in.

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