Okaloosa County Changes - Page 3

KG4YNH · #41 (**permalink**) 03-14-2012, 10:55 AM

Its unfortunate. SLERS markets itself as "interoperability" but it takes a a small army of people to make it happen. I have been involved in incidents where a P25 Fire Department was assisting with a SLERS Fire Department and had to patch via the FIN network. It took 30mins to get everyone on the same channel and to get the dispatch centers on the same page. And because the 8tac91 site was not on the closest tower, the coverage was horrendous. Not to mention the link audio was crap.

ki4wbn · #42 (**permalink**) 07-29-2012, 1:15 PM

Update:
The north end of Okaloosa County will be remaining on the SLERS/VHF patch for the foreseeable future, at least 2 years the way it's currently looking. This is due to the lack of reliable coverage of SLERS in parts of the north end, and VHF being the best option.

Also, Okaloosa County will be installing 2 wideband VHF repeaters in the county, both on the same frequency for tone outs. From what I have heard [and understand], this will be in addition to the 4 other repeaters currently doing tone outs (on narrowband eventually). Once these wideband paging repeaters are up and running, narrowbanding for the county VHF is slated to continue to move forward. This all is possible/likely to change as it moves forward, but that is how it stands currently.

treybell · #43 (**permalink**) 08-28-2012, 1:07 PM

As of today 8/28/2012 is okaloosa county fire/ems north and south up and running on narrowband or are is all radio traffic still working off wideband? also do you know if the old Niceville FD freqs Rx 151.04000 Tx 153.83000 with a pl of 156.7 as well as crestview FD, South walton, north walton, pretty much anyone within 100 miles of okaloosa county have switched over to narrowband or are they still wideband only?

BamaScan · #44 (**permalink**) 08-28-2012, 1:37 PM

I think eveyone is Narrow Band now. If not they need to be by December. Most of Walton County is on SLERS. It can not be heard.SLERS is growing every week with new users.

BamaScan · #45 (**permalink**) 08-28-2012, 1:39 PM

If they are narrowband you can still hear them.

treybell · #46 (**permalink**) 08-28-2012, 2:07 PM

The reason i am asking is because as a radio user i am a volunteer firefighter that uses his own radio/pager and i want to make sure all my radio/pager programming is correct and narrowband compliant even if the narrowband mandate dont come into effect till Jan 1st 2013.

BamaScan · #47 (**permalink**) 09-06-2012, 11:13 PM

Just found the Database was updated today with the New Okaloosa County Fire Frequency 157.450. According to the Database Okaloosa County Fire is going to SLERS. The 157.450 will be a pagger frequency only come January. Add another agency we will be loosing to SLERS. :-(

ki4wbn · #48 (**permalink**) 09-10-2012, 6:49 PM

The south end has been SLERS only for a few months now. The north end will stay patched to VHF for the foreseeable future, due to coverage issues.

ki4wbn · #49 (**permalink**) 11-10-2012, 3:18 PM

Update: The new 157 frequency is to come online this upcoming week. However, it's not going to be all "all jump over" event. The departments will slowly one by one migrate over to the new paging frequency from my understanding.

ki4wbn · #50 (**permalink**) 11-30-2012, 2:11 PM

157.450 came online today. They will keep tone outs on the former VHF channels for a next few weeks as agencies get their equipment changed over to the new tone frequency/narrowbanded.

ki4wbn · #51 (**permalink**) 11-30-2012, 3:35 PM

Just got an email from Okaloosa Dispatch, with an official update.

First thing, on December 10th, the plan is to have all tone outs off of the current north and south VHF and onto the new wideband paging VHF frequencies. Logistically it's too hard to figure out which departments have changed over and which haven't, especially for big multiple agency calls, so instead they will keep them on both for now (makes sense really compared to their earlier thought of not toning out departments on the widepage paging until after they had switched over).

Second, due to coordination efforts, north end tone outs (wideband paging ONLY) will occur on 157.450. South end will be on 152.0075 (wideband paging ONLY). The planned single frequency for the entire county did not work out, due to the delay it could cause in toning out departments for calls.

The current north and south VHF will be converted over to narrowband for regular use-if SLERS isn't being used by the agency (This is primarily only for the north end). Dispatch will not have any ability to listen to the wideband paging frequency.

wise871 · #52 (**permalink**) 12-01-2012, 10:41 AM

I'm only picking up pager data burst on 152.0075.

ki4wbn · #53 (**permalink**) 12-01-2012, 11:50 AM

They have stopped toneing out on the new wideband freqs for the weekend, since nobody is on them yet, until monday. However, if you are hearing data bursts (from a common known pager frequency) that could cause some problems....will have to keep an ear open for that...

ki4wbn · #54 (**permalink**) 12-06-2012, 9:46 AM

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A523 Safari/8536.25)

Well, the data burst is causing interference on their wideband paging frequency 152.0075........
Next step? Don't know yet.......

wise871 · #55 (**permalink**) 12-06-2012, 6:18 PM

You figured someone would have checked out the frequency before hand.

ki4wbn · #56 (**permalink**) 12-07-2012, 11:57 AM

You would think.....

ki4wbn · #57 (**permalink**) 12-14-2012, 10:32 PM

Well, Bay County Medical Center is the source of the interference. They are running a LOT of wattage out of their system, but fully within their license. Okaloosa is looking to add a PL to their paging frequency in the south end to help combat the issue. It'll help block the signal to an extent. It's actually randomly setting off station tones in some stations (which will be helped with the PL tone added in) North Bay and Okaloosa Island and covering up tones in others (from intermod-nothing much they can do about that).

bravo14 · #58 (**permalink**) 12-14-2012, 11:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ki4wbn

Well, Bay County Medical Center is the source of the interference. They are running a LOT of wattage out of their system, but fully within their license. Okaloosa is looking to add a PL to their paging frequency in the south end to help combat the issue. It'll help block the signal to an extent. It's actually randomly setting off station tones in some stations (which will be helped with the PL tone added in) North Bay and Okaloosa Island and covering up tones in others (from intermod-nothing much they can do about that).

I'm in Bay County. If BCMC puts out more watts than normal I only get 1 bar to hear them where I live at. I think the complex I live at has alot of interference.

wise871 · #59 (**permalink**) 12-17-2012, 7:54 PM

ki4wbn
Whats going on with South Okaloosa Fire Dispatch? It's been reported that no one is picking them up on either of the south frequencies.
Thanks
Dan

wise871 · #60 (**permalink**) 12-19-2012, 8:28 PM

Never mind. There using the new frequencies with tones.