259 replies to this topic

[Bingo]

Crest improvements could cost $10 million

By Brennan Clarke
Apr 26 2007

Greater Victoria's troubled CREST emergency radio system will cost between $6 million and $10 million to fix, according to a consultant's report released Thursday.

The $206,000 report's key recommendations were increasing the number of towers, buying in-vehicle repeaters to improve hand-held radio coverage, adding satellite receiver sites and changing how the portable radios are worn by users.

CREST board chair Hy Freedman said the system’s 36 members - including Greater Victoria municipalities, police forces and fire departments, BC Transit and the BC Ambulance Service - will have to review the report before the exact costs and technical details of fixing the system can be pinned down.

CREST, short for Capital Region Emergency System Telecommunications, cost about $17.5 million when it was acquired five years ago. Freedman, who spoke at a media briefing alongside CREST general manager Gordon Horth, said even with the improvements, the system will reach the end of its “useful life” between 2015 and 2020.

Police officers and firefighters in Victoria have been among the system's most vocal critics, arguing that substandard coverage in downtown buildings is a job hazard.

The board has already set aside $1 million in cash and borrowed an additional $4 million for the anticipated upgrades.

CREST's voting structure will require unanimous approval if any more money is to be spent on the system.

© Copyright 2007 Victoria News

 

And here we are 7 years later...millions later... the police had to resort to cell phones.

 

 

A system-wide failure of the CREST radio system late last year left all Greater Victoria emergency responders without dispatch services for 40 minutes, forced Victoria police to ignore lower-priority calls and prompted Jamie Graham, Victoria police chief at the time, to deem the situation “nothing short of a catastrophe,” according to freedom-of-information documents obtained by the Times Colonist. - See more at:

http://www.timescolo...police-1.812542

Edited by Bingo, 04 February 2014 - 07:32 AM.

[larrobb]

anyone else had trouble with the feed from ScanBC of late?    the Victoria area police scanner feed "times out" or just stops working for unknown reasons.  always starts again after going through the motions of clicking, but why the timing out?  sometimes it's only five minutes, other times longer.....

[sebberry]

I've had days where that's been an issue.  I haven't listened lately.  You might want to try alerting the folks at the ScanBC forum if it is an ongoing problem.

[eseedhouse]

I've had days where that's been an issue.  I haven't listened lately.  You might want to try alerting the folks at the ScanBC forum if it is an ongoing problem.

I listen on a real scanner so I can at least tell you that I've noticed nothing unusual about the way the actual radio frequencies are working.

[Benezet]

Just caught the tail end of a story on CFAX, saying a replacement system will cost 24 million. Anyone know more?

[sebberry]

Just caught the tail end of a story on CFAX, saying a replacement system will cost 24 million. Anyone know more?

 

http://crest.cmail1....3AB5F5EEC5F0895

[sebberry]

I listen on a real scanner so I can at least tell you that I've noticed nothing unusual about the way the actual radio frequencies are working.

 

I thought I'd ask you because this seems your area of expertise. 

 

Have you played around with Software Defined Radio at all?  I've bought a couple of cheap TV dongles and have an application called UniTrunker set up and after much fiddling I have managed to get the SDR to trunk-track CREST. 

[sebberry]

Taken from the BC Transit thread:

Well a friend of mine paid $15.00 at a thrift store for a digital capable scanner.

These scanners are all tricky to program by hand so most people use software for that and there's a few zero cost programs for that available.

I seriously doubt if they will be using encryption because it's such a pain to set up and use and is, furthermore, easily jammable. They do plan to go to 700mhz when I will have to reprogram my scanner which is, however, perfectly capable of receiving at those frequencies.

700 mhz radio waves are about 45cm in length and can get through normal windows fairly easily. This will make reception in concrete with rebar high rises better and more reliable.

Current frequencies are slighly more than two meters wavelength and can't leak through normal sized windows very easily.

Encryption is available on the current system but rarely used, for the reasons given above. If they want to discuss sensitive topics they just call each other on their cell phones.

The Vancouver system is all encrypted, right? And they're still not happy so I heard that they're going with an entirely IP based system.

Many major cities are going with ENC, and the guys on CFAX this morning said Victoria will be following suit.

I'm sure they'll figure out how to implement it.

[sebberry]

I thought I'd ask you because this seems your area of expertise. 

 

Have you played around with Software Defined Radio at all?  I've bought a couple of cheap TV dongles and have an application called UniTrunker set up and after much fiddling I have managed to get the SDR to trunk-track CREST. 

 

I need to find better antennas for my little receivers.  I can get the Camosack site, but not any of the others. 

[eseedhouse]

Have you played around with Software Defined Radio at all?  I've bought a couple of cheap TV dongles and have an application called UniTrunker set up and after much fiddling I have managed to get the SDR to trunk-track CREST. 

 

I haven't played with the new dongle/usb SDR's.  I have an ICOM PCR 1500 SDR but it came with it's own software and is fairly large, though not as large as my H.F. transceiver.  A lot of other Hams in the Victoria area have been doing that, though.

[eseedhouse]

I need to find better antennas for my little receivers.  I can get the Camosack site, but not any of the others. 

 

Get a dual band magmount antenna from Radioworld or Durham Radio and maybe 25 feet of RG8X coax.  You also might need a couple of adaptors.  Most scanners have either a BNC connector for input or an SMA connector and mag mounts typically come with a PL-25 jack. 

 

Mount the antenna outside on a piece of metal and get it as high in the air as you can.  Or just stick it on top of the fridge if that is metal and you can't put it outside.  I use my Ham band external antenna when I am not gabbing on the two meter band and it does a great job.  I can pick up emergency services in the San Juans and Bellingham with that.

 

This won't work so well when CREST migrates to 700 mhz, though.  For the moment almost all the public safety systems around here are close to either the two meter ham band or the 70 cm band so one designed for those bands will do great for receive.

 

However be careful if you are very near one of CREST's towers or another high powered transmitter site as a good antenna might then only overload the front end of your receiver and work worse than the little rubber ducky that came with the radio.

 

Also Fleetwood Radio supplies magmount antennas and they are just across the water so will deliver faster in most cases.

[Mike K.]

With sticking a cable up along a metal pole above your home, obviously that presents a lighting strike hazard, yes? I've heard from some amateur radio guys in Victoria grounding the pole isn't required here. What's the right answer?

[eseedhouse]

With sticking a cable up along a metal pole above your home, obviously that presents a lighting strike hazard, yes? I've heard from some amateur radio guys in Victoria grounding the pole isn't required here. What's the right answer?

 

Actually a properly grounded antenna will reduce (though not prevent) the hazzard from lighting by draining electrostatic charges to ground.  In any even the hazzard from ground strokes in Victoria is slight, most thunderstorms around here feature mainly cloud to cloud strokes (we used to call is "sheet lightning" when I was a kid). 

 

You should ideally ground the outer braid of your coax to a ground rod as a matter of good practice.

 

My VHF/UHF antenna is at the top of a 6 foot pole and the top is under 15 feet above my lawn.  I have several 60+ foot fir trees in the near vicinity and a power transformer about 75 feet away, also elevated well above the top of my antenna.  I do not normally have the coax grounded because I live on top of a big rock and driving a proper ground rod is about impossible.

 

A "proper" ground rod would be a copper tube driven about 8 feet into the ground.

 

In B.C. the code requres a house ground to be a copper plate buried in the ground, so that should be OK too.  Ideally your ground should also be bonded to the house electrical ground.  I imagine you can get grounding plates from an electical supply store.

 

An actual electrician will probably give you better advice on that.  I am not one.

[Mike K.]

Thanks for that. That's good info.

I guess the "sheet lightning" thing explains why so many guys scoff at proper grounding. Makes sense why they're so casual about it.

[eseedhouse]

Thanks for that. That's good info.

I guess the "sheet lightning" thing explains why so many guys scoff at proper grounding. Makes sense why they're so casual about it.

 

There are different kinds of "grounding".  What we've been talking about is safety grounding to ameliorate risk of lightning.  But RF grounding is more important in the short run although easier to accomplish.

 

Radio Frequency current will not flow unless it can flow in two directions simultaneously.  For every change in voltage in one direction there MUST be an equal and opposite voltage in the other direction.  The simplest, though not necessarily best, way of doing this is to connect the outer shield of a coaxial cable to the local ground.  If there is no "ground" to act as a counterbalance then current cannot flow in the antenna and it won't receive anything.

 

But there is always a counterpoise.  If your antenna system doesn't provide one then your radio will act as one and this may also involve your local electrical ciruitry.  The trouble is that in this case the system will be unbalanced and this allows noise into the radio that wouldn't be there if there were a proper counterpoise.

 

Fortunately most commercial antennas come with a proper counterpoise.  Magnet mount verticals are an exception.  These must be placed on a fair size piece of metal, such as the roof of your car, in order to work well.

 

Your scanner antenna normally has no counterpoise and the radio itself acts as one.  This makes for a poorly performing antenna.  But there are times when a "bad" antenna is actually going to work better than a good one.

Edited by eseedhouse, 05 September 2014 - 04:38 PM.

[snub]

This just in!

CREST to receive $25 million upgrade

 

 

Victoria News

 

• posted Sep 19, 2014 at 4:00 PM

"Shareholders in the Capital Region Emergency Telecommunications system have approved a $24.5-millon upgrade and loan.

The CREST system is used by the region’s various emergency services agencies, including the Victoria Police Department, Esquimalt Fire Rescue and Victoria Fire Department.

The current system, which has been in use since 2003, is nearing the end of its life, say CREST officials.

The new funding will be used to install new transmitters/receivers, convert existing sites, purchase new radios and take the system to P25.

“We are very much looking forward to the implementation of the new 700 MHz system and its significant benefits for public safety,” said Victoria Police Chief Frank Elsner.

This will be the third major investment since CREST was formed 15 years ago.

“P25 will make radio communications within and between agencies more effective, efficient and reliable,” said Gordie Logan, CREST chair."

 

 

 

Good grief. 25 million dollars for walkie-talkies. How much did they pay for the first system that didn't work? It's 11 years old and obsolete? I still have my 22 year old Mitsubishi TV and it works just fine.

[sebberry]

First off, it's not some walkie talkies.  The radios are expensive and so is all the infrastructure and antennas to support them. 

 

They seem confused about the P25 technology, however.  P25 is already in use, it's the frequency change that's the big change.

 

What bothers me though is the switch to encrypting all radio traffic.  While there are times and places for using encryption, I believe the public should have a right to know what's happening in the community in real time.  Your average car thief isn't sitting in the stolen Corolla with a $500 Uniden scanner trying to figure out where the cops are. 

 

At the very least, the main dispatch channels should be in the clear.  If you have sensitive information you need to exchange, then switch to a secure channel. 

 

Example: I often start checking the Drive BC website after I hear chatter about a collision.  You hear them making arrangements to contact MoTI, but it's often half an hour or more before the route information is updated.  By that time you've gotten yourself stuck in a nasty traffic jam that you could have avoided.

 

Or the time a civilian listening to a scanner called 900 to report the suspect the police were chasing was in his parking lot.  (Dispatch specifically mentioned someone listening to the scanner).

[Mike K.]

What about the media? Don't they rely on scanners?

[HB]

They do especia;;y TV stations. Their news rooms all have them

[sebberry]

The problem with the media is that they filter out so much of what happened that you never get a good idea of what went on.

 

Case in point:

 

CFAX reported this morning about a house fire near the Gorge, said no cause was determined.

 

Here's a post this morning on Reddit about the incident:

 

Yeah so my dad picks me up from work and we're driving home along Gorge. We're nearly home to and start seeing a TON of police cars and fire trucks and one of the turn offs to Cowper (my street) is blocked off so we go around.

He says "Huh, must be a fire close by". So we go around the Admirals way but notice that they have a car by the bridge pretty far away from the other one and I ask him "Is it normal for them to block off that much for a fire??" and he's says "No, there must be something bigger going on".

So we go up the street onto Cowper and notice the entire police department has come out so whatever's going on is big. As we get closer we see that the epicenter of Whatevers Happening is MY HOUSE and there's a bunch of police officers on the front lawn holding someone down.

My heart starts beating because I live in my sister's basement suite and she's got an entire family in there.

We almost run over a police officer (She was in the middle of the road at night without reflective tape) as we're driving up to this scene freaking out and my Dad calls out "That's my daughters house what's going on?" So we get out and talk to a neighbor since the whole neighbourhoods out at this point and apparently some guy twacked on meth set fire to a house on Austin (IIRC) and then went to my sisters and was banging on the door.

Someone called the cops and they dog took him down on the front lawn. He was still there when we got there screaming nonsense hysterically. My brother in law says the guy was calm but aggitated when he opened the door when he heard banging and the guy asked for water and for him to call a cab but then my brother in law noticed a knife up his sleeve and got him out of the house.

 

You don't get that level of detail from the media, but you often get it listening to the scanner.