SLERS, Why move over to it??

[wise871]

Two weeks ago I had a chance to tour some of the fire trucks in Okaloosa County. I noticed that many of the vehicles were equipped with Motorola CDM1250 VHF and M7100IP Mobile 800 MHz. I asked the fire fighters when they planed on switching over to SLERS and they weren’t sure yet. There most likely waiting for the new E911 Dispatch Center to be completed before the change over.

One thing I noticed with SLERS users in regards to EMS and Fire is they still have to maintain and carry the old equipment for Tone-Outs and Dispatches. In my area Okaloosa EMS and South Walton Fire District both switched over to SLERS in the last year. I monitor the old frequencies and I hear TO and Dispatch information just like the old days. After that they must be using SLERS because I don’t hear anything. I pretty much hear what I need with the old system.

My question is why switched over when you have to run two separate radio systems? I also noticed that there have been no additional members added to the SLERS partnership in quite some time. If this is such a great system, than how come other agencies don’t jump on the SLERS wagon? They clam all the towers are in place state wide and the Harris Corporation extended millions in credits to the State for radios, radio equipment and accessories. The going rate for airtime on the system is only a messily $9 per unit a month. Okaloosa put in an order for 700 radios. That’s about $75000 a year air time. I guess they figure why buy when you can lease/rent.

I just don’t get it.

[gcr33]

SLERS has limited capacity and has many problems. It has been dumped into Harris lap. I don't know who is happy with it other than the original owner MA Comm Critical Communications for unloading this dog on to Tyco or Tyco for giving it to Harris.
I think some of the agencies are in love with the encryption feature. I wonder how much additional law enforcement activity has occurred or how much officer safety has been sacrificed with SLERS?

[KS4VT]

Well there could be a number of reasons, one being NFPA. In order to conform to their rules I believe they technicially can't do station paging in a trunking environment. Also fire ground is supposed to be accomplished on simplex (non-repeated) frequencies, but many agencies, including PBCFR, prefer to have everything on trunking and alpha paging on UHF. I'm sure they do it so they can monitor anywhere in the county and can also have dispatch monitor the activities in real time like most of the larger FD's in the state.

I don't know if the FD's are that hung on encryption. I think they love to be monitored by the public vs LE who doesn't like to be listened to. Also signing up for the states program takes away a lot of "maintenance hedaches" like tower/light mainenance, generator maintenance/fueling, high lease costs for towers that they don't own, etc.

[trooper890]

This is one of the first fire/rescue agencies to go to SLERS. We'll have to see how it works out for them when they cut.

[Marty-Bishop]

Okaloosa fire will not be the only agency to keep a VHF channel once they move to trunking (SLERS or otherwise). There are several reasons but mainly because trunked systems and paging don't go well together. There isn't a pager out there made to work on a trunked system so unless you want to give all your reserve and volunteers a $5000 radio just to be on standby you better keep your VHF. In addition they won't be taking the VHF radios out of the trucks as they will still need them for fires when coordinating with DOF, using Red, White, and Blue channels as well as other agencies still on VHF. Check around and you'll find that the majority of 800 trunked counties still maintain a VHF paging system.

[n2hbx]

Originally Posted by KS4VT

Well there could be a number of reasons, one being NFPA. In order to conform to their rules I believe they technicially can't do station paging in a trunking environment. Also fire ground is supposed to be accomplished on simplex (non-repeated) frequencies, but many agencies, including PBCFR, prefer to have everything on trunking and alpha paging on UHF. I'm sure they do it so they can monitor anywhere in the county and can also have dispatch monitor the activities in real time like most of the larger FD's in the state.

I don't know if the FD's are that hung on encryption. I think they love to be monitored by the public vs LE who doesn't like to be listened to. Also signing up for the states program takes away a lot of "maintenance hedaches" like tower/light mainenance, generator maintenance/fueling, high lease costs for towers that they don't own, etc.

I don't believe that conforming to rules has so much to do with it as does the fact that tone paging doesn't work over a digital radio because of the audio processing. We found this out when Orlando Fire went to the Astro 7.x digital. Tone paging worked fine over the analog trunking, but the paging tones wouldn't reproduce properly at the station end and they wouldn't alert, or the wrong station would be alerted in digital mode. They alert the stations using Call Alert now. Works great!

Larry

[gcr33]

And no one makes a trunked portable pager.

Volunteers and many others rely on voice pagers.