Say Good-By VHF - Buncombe County Sheriff....

Well for two days I been monitoring VHF Buncombe County Sheriff and heared nothing. The 700MHz System been tweeting like a little bird just fine.. So Good By VHF...

Is that just the SO? Fire still using the VHF and 700? And EMS still UHF and 700?

So far only Sheriff Department, Medical 50/50, same with fire.

Not a good Idea to abandon VHF.

700 Mhz. is just like 800 Mhz. when it goes down then they are without communications.

It is always good to keep a reliable back-up system for an emergency use.

David

Not true if it's a dtrs there is talk around and failsoft. Many agencies even have generators which power conventional failsoft repeater channels and the radio reverts to it. It isn't 1980 type 1 pre gen trunking era We are in. I should add if they licensed the vhf for 10 years or so and use dual band equipment the vhf could be used as fall back in any scenerio alongside 700 failsoft. So it's more logical then it seems.

The VHF system is predicted to be maintained for at least 10 years if not longer as a back up for SO,
Fire departments still use VHF for paging as 700MHZ will not support tones. So expect VHF dispatch for Fire to be around for some time. Not sure howling EMS will keep simulcast on uhf

yardbird said:

Not a good Idea to abandon VHF.

700 Mhz. is just like 800 Mhz. when it goes down then they are without communications.

It is always good to keep a reliable back-up system for an emergency use.

David

Click to expand...

C'mon David you are better than this.....on the 800Mhz system I help maintain maintain/manage there are 3 levels of available backup comms should something go wrong....we are never truly "without communications".
Any radio system is only as good as the back-up plans in place....VHF/UHF/700/800Mhz it is all the same....if you don't have backup SOPs then you are more than likely going to be SOL.
Marshall KE4ZNR

I am going out on a limb to say I think where David was going with that comment is that on legacy systems the redundancy is simpler to maintain. Most trunked systems do have a lot of redundancy built in but the resources required to maintain these systems and their redundancy can be quite extensive.

Lets take a group of county fire departments operating on VHF for example.......... If they are operating a VHF repeater for their main fire dispatch and the repeater goes of the air for whatever reason, they can switch to talkaround and still communicate (on the same frequency). Of course the range may not be as good, but we must remember that in any "failure" situation, system performance can/will be degraded. In addition, paging can still be accomplished from a fire station base radio without the need to contact personnel and have them switch to a backup frequency or radio. Also, if they have several simplex VHF frequencies in use for tactical/fireground ops, it is business as usual. No worries about fail soft occurring and dumpling multiple different working incidents all together on the same frequency.

To me, conventional/legacy systems will always be the simpler, easier to maintain solution. I understand the need for trunking and digital but there is nothing more reliable or interoperable than analog conventional.

Wes