Will rural police move to a digital encrypted network?

vkcpolice · Post by **vkcpolice** » Tue Jul 31, 2012 3:03 pm

Hi guys i currently listen to vkc wangaratta coms that is still smr trunked analogue and can be monitored by any conventional scanner. my fear is that rural police will try and move to he new p25 digital encrypted network.
does anyone know if this will ever happen due to the long distances and hilly areas around rural area's i dont think digital is a option for police at the moment i hope this is the case. i have trouble listening to the cfa here for some reason 163.2875mhz is the cfa frequency and is analogue however it just sounds all distorted and mumbled. im not sure why this is. i can monitor ambo's and police fine. using my uniden bct15x and ezi30xlt

Post by **Phil** » Tue Jul 31, 2012 6:22 pm

My best suggestion for you in the future will be to upgrade to a p25 scanner as the cfa are upgrading to digital. I know there are rumors that the Vic rural police are already trialling digital with encryption

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Post by **Comint** » Tue Jul 31, 2012 7:31 pm

vkcpolice wrote:Hi guys i currently listen to vkc wangaratta coms that is still smr trunked analogue and can be monitored by any conventional scanner. my fear is that rural police will try and move to he new p25 digital encrypted network.
does anyone know if this will ever happen due to the long distances and hilly areas around rural area's i dont think digital is a option for police at the moment i hope this is the case. i have trouble listening to the cfa here for some reason 163.2875mhz is the cfa frequency and is analogue however it just sounds all distorted and mumbled. im not sure why this is. i can monitor ambo's and police fine. using my uniden bct15x and ezi30xlt

I can assure you that VKC Wangaratta is NOT SMR Trunked. Their frequencies are in the range 163.5750 - 164.0500 MHz, and the SMR is 164.0625 - 165.9875 MHz.

The CFA has been "rolling out" their P25 Digital network for about the last six months, so that is why it would sound distorted and mumbled. Supposedly they will not be using encryption, so that the volunteers can still monitor the calls with a suitable scanner. Whether that is fact, remains to be seen.

ALL Land Mobile Radios WILL go Digital eventually, be it in 2, 5, or 10 or more years.

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Comint

vkcpolice · Post by **vkcpolice** » Tue Jul 31, 2012 10:42 pm

i was told that all rural police use smr radio's i even here them talk about it over the scanner. hope they never go digital for the cfa still have no idea why its all mumbled if it was digital you would think you would not hear anything at all on a analouge scanner. im not sure how digital will work in the country but get i just have to hold my breathe and hope for the best

Post by **Pumper_50** » Sun Aug 05, 2012 10:33 pm

They're not trunked. People have long confused their VHF Voting allocation as 'trunked'. They have a VHF Network interlaced with access to the SMR Network.

They're two separate networks and systems. It just so happens that because they access both and they're around the same band most people see it as one system.

vkcpolice · Post by **vkcpolice** » Sat Sep 08, 2012 1:44 am

Thx guys for your reyplys. This whole smr network. Confuses the crap out of me. Was in melb and was scanning around the VHF band and descoverred the ses are now using the smr network. So I spent around 2 hrs programing all the smr freqencys into my conventenal alinco dj-x10 scanner. I've heard Seymour and kilmour see from melb however when. In Seymour the only smr frencys r 165.6125mhz. And 164.800mhz and all I hear on those. Freqencys r ambo,s so how come I can hear them bouncing of melb repeaters but not in Seymour and in melb on wall the smr freqencys u have to skip through so much garbage just to find a ambo or see transmission is there any scanner that can track smr?

Post by **Comint** » Sat Sep 08, 2012 9:19 am

vkcpolice wrote:. . . is there any scanner that can track smr?

Short answer. NO.

If you have a scanner that is capable of PC control, you can try TrunkView which will allow you to listen to the SMR (which is an MPT1327 Trunked Radio System). Your BCT15X is a suitable scanner.

UniTrunker also allows MPT1327 to be monitored, but it requires two scanners. TrunkView only requires one.

The nearest SMR Site to Seymour appears to be on Mt Hickey, which is about 17 km South, near Broadford. The Control Channel is 165.0125 MHz, and SysID = 5D41. The SMR requires a Custom Bandplan.

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Comint

vkcpolice · Post by **vkcpolice** » Thu Sep 27, 2012 12:03 am

hi thx comint i programed 165.0125 into my bct15x however all i hear is a terrible beeping noise wish things could be more simpler lol

vkcpolice · Post by **vkcpolice** » Thu Sep 27, 2012 12:40 am

ok so i got trunkview however have no idea how to use it. i can have a bit of a play with it however just one question how does the scanner plug into to pc do i need the seriel cable?

Post by **Comint** » Thu Sep 27, 2012 8:35 am

vkcpolice wrote:ok so i got trunkview however have no idea how to use it. i can have a bit of a play with it however just one question how does the scanner plug into to pc do i need the seriel cable?

You need two cables:-

an audio cable from the scanner Speaker/Earphone socket to the PC Mike or Line In, and

a Serial cable (with USB to RS232 adapter, if necessary) to allow the PC to control the scanner.

When the PC directs the scanner to a Traffic (Voice) channel, the audio comes out the PCs speakers.

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During initial setup, you can get away with just using the audio cable, until you get something displayed on the screen. Then you can worry about the Serial cable.

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Comint

vkcpolice · Post by **vkcpolice** » Thu Sep 27, 2012 11:58 am

hi i found a usb cable that fits the uniden scanner however its a radioshack brand one. anyway im trying to enter the band plan for smr in the custom channel profile that i read up on in a instruction sheet i found on the net there are 300 odd freqency's i need to put in to it i got up to ch 30 and it wont let me put in anymore i found the base frequency and the control ch but hats as far as i can get nothing happens when the scanner is plugged into the usb and nothing happens when the line in audio is set up into the pc so im just lost went to the trunkview website followed all he instructions however none of it makes much sense to me think i might give smr a pass

vkcpolice · Post by **vkcpolice** » Thu Sep 27, 2012 12:20 pm

oh well by the looks of things most of the victorain police force will move to digital encypted cfa are digital ambos will slowly make the move its the end of the police scanner. hobby is basically dead

Post by **Comint** » Thu Sep 27, 2012 1:02 pm

vkcpolice wrote: . . anyway im trying to enter the band plan for smr in the custom channel profile that i read up on in a instruction sheet i found on the net there are 300 odd freqency's i need to put in to it i got up to ch 30 and it wont let me put in anymore

Forget the Serial cable for the time being. Get the program decoding first.

Have a look at this thread for information about the Custom Band Plan.

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Comint

Post by **knightcon** » Tue Jan 07, 2014 8:18 pm

The emergency services in Victoria use a wide variety of systems for critical communications.

VICPOL in Melbourne - They use the Metropolitan Mobile Radio (MMR) network.
VICPOL Regional & Rural - They use a dedicated network of VHF repeaters in a voting group configuration. Each repeater in the voting group is cross-linked with the StateNet Mobile Radio (SMR) network to provide links back to police VKC in Melbourne for dispatch communications.
CFA - State wide use their own VHF repeater network, some are isolated repeaters, others are voting channel repeaters which are connected via SMR back to VICFIRE Ballarat for dispatch and operations control.
SES - Dispatch and large scale operations are run using the SMR network which each vehicle and unit location is enabled to access using both a dispatch group (connected to ESTA Dispatch) and a dedicated network of UHF repeaters enabling small scale operations and general local level communications.
Not positive on the others but reasonably sure RAV use the SMR network and DEPI use their own isolated VHF repeater network.

vkcpolice · Post by **vkcpolice** » Tue Apr 22, 2014 4:30 pm

Looks like they will now with the RMR working just hope theres no encryption

Post by **matthewn1983** » Thu May 22, 2014 6:45 am

There is a stack of VHF P25 conventional channels active at the moment with a constant tone from RadioID 1, NAC 293. Hearing them from the border and through the alpine region. Coverage testing??

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Post by **matthewn1983** » Thu May 22, 2014 6:46 am

(Frequencies are registered to RMR)

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Post by **Pumper_50** » Thu May 22, 2014 11:40 am

Correct. Test tones keyed up to permit coverage testing of RMR.

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vkcpolice · Post by **vkcpolice** » Mon May 26, 2014 12:58 pm

district 20 now operational on RMR

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