Wood County 911 to upgrade radio equipment

Out of today's county commission meeting came this story about upgrades to the county's emergency radio system -

Wood County 911 Center Looks to Upgrade

This should be money well spent, both in improved coverage and updated radios. I've heard one instance on the scanner where EMS lost all radio contact, as described in the story. I'd like to see them migrate to SIRN, but I have my doubts that it will happen since it didn't happen when the fire departments upgraded last year ...

More info ...

New transmitters/antennas are planned for Belleville and Route 47. A new repeater will also be purchased. The radios in the EMS vehicles are apparently fine and do not need to be upgraded.

The 911 authority evidently has plans to put the transmitters/antennas on existing towers that are slated to be abandoned by cellular providers; according to the newspaper, there is a memorandum of understanding to do this.

So are they finally going full SIRN?

MOTOROLANUT said:

So are they finally going full SIRN?

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I have my doubts. I haven't seen or heard anything to indicate it thus far, but I'll keep watching. I sure would like to see the whole county go that way.

flythunderbird said:

I have my doubts. I haven't seen or heard anything to indicate it thus far, but I'll keep watching. I sure would like to see the whole county go that way.

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Sweet Jebus, they need to get PPD,WCSD, all fire and EMS switched over to the SIRN.
What the heck is the holdup? More political BS I suppose?

MOTOROLANUT said:

Sweet Jebus, they need to get PPD,WCSD, all fire and EMS switched over to the SIRN.
What the heck is the holdup? More political BS I suppose?

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Vienna PD, too (especially since what looks to be a new SIRN site will be adjacent to Vienna). It's purely a guess on my part, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was a "turf" thing, i.e. the agencies don't want to give up "their" systems. I'd think they would save money over the long term going the SIRN route, but we're talking about government here! :lol:

Keep in mind that volunteer fire departments need a conventional system for paging, so for them, the SIRN isn't really a full replacement for their communication system. That may tend to dampen the enthusiasm a little bit.

Can't they set up a paging talkgroup on these digital systems and then page who they want over it and the radio only activates if it gets the appropriate page?

Or something like paging a private call to a set of radios in particular? Maybe having each station assigned a talkgroup so the dispatcher can only alert over that particular talk group?

You would think with the sophistication of these new fangled radios selective alerting would not be an issue any longer.

Ghstwolf62 said:

Can't they set up a paging talkgroup on these digital systems and then page who they want over it and the radio only activates if it gets the appropriate page?

Or something like paging a private call to a set of radios in particular? Maybe having each station assigned a talkgroup so the dispatcher can only alert over that particular talk group?

You would think with the sophistication of these new fangled radios selective alerting would not be an issue any longer.

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Good questions. I wonder how Kanawha County does it, as their fire dispatch is on SIRN.

Actually Kanawha County Fire uses their conventional frequency as the main Dispatch, but they use their TG's also. I hear them using all of them. Analogue and Digital used quite a lot.

Ghstwolf62 said:

Can't they set up a paging talkgroup on these digital systems and then page who they want over it and the radio only activates if it gets the appropriate page?

Or something like paging a private call to a set of radios in particular? Maybe having each station assigned a talkgroup so the dispatcher can only alert over that particular talk group?

You would think with the sophistication of these new fangled radios selective alerting would not be an issue any longer.

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Those are good questions. Perhaps it is possible but prohibitively expensive? I'm not sure. But I've seen several posts on this site about paging and trunked systems, and it seems the general recommendation is to keep at least one conventional analog transmitter for paging needs.

fredva said:

Those are good questions. Perhaps it is possible but prohibitively expensive? I'm not sure. But I've seen several posts on this site about paging and trunked systems, and it seems the general recommendation is to keep at least one conventional analog transmitter for paging needs.

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Well since the cost of XTS/XTL Motorola equipment has come down due to discontinuance of TDMA phase 1 only equipment. Wood county could have at one time applied and received Federal Government grants for SIRN capable radios. Instead they screwed around with analog 800 meg trunking and P25 VHF systems.
Meanwhile the rest of WV is full steam ahead with the SIRN. Sounds most likely to be Wood County 911 poor leadership in future planning and lack of political persuasiveness.

But then again some people just resist change due to their ignorance.

MOTOROLANUT said:

Sounds most likely to be Wood County 911 poor leadership in future planning and lack of political persuasiveness.

But then again some people just resist change due to their ignorance.

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I think it's a combination of the three.

I don't know. I had read something about Mototrbo dispatching systems a while back and it said you could select multiple users into a group either on an as needed basis or a permanent basis. As in placing select groups of users into an overriding macro and then communicate to whichever group of specific users you selected merely by clicking on the user defined group of radio ids. It also allowed paging of groups or users including multiple users at one time.

I would think if Mototrbo had it then more advanced systems like P25 P1 and 2 would surely have it or possible at least.

Analog at my guess is because it works better and gets out farther vs digital. Its also easier and cheaper to do than digital. So cost I imagine would play into it especially for VFDs and Rescues.

I used to travel and would hear analog stuff out 50 or 75 miles or more from origination. I encountered some places who switched to digital and it wouldn't make it 5 miles out.

I can go to Roanoke now which is 50 miles from me and still pick up our FD paging in Alleghany while I can't pick up Roanoke's Digital system in Daleville which is only a few miles away from it.

So that is probably a big issue.

I miss the days of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbB4m2fLSuU

That's why they place multiple towers SIRN participating counties to ensure seamless roaming and coverage on P25 trunking.

Wood County 911 Center Looks to Upgrade

This above communication failure is just inexcusable for emergency services..Thank god no one has died over this yet.

MOTOROLANUT said:

That's why they place multiple towers SIRN participating counties to ensure seamless roaming and coverage on P25 trunking.

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Well, that's the ideal, but not every county on SIRN has 100% coverage. My home county has the sheriff's department and EMS primarily on SIRN, but there are parts of the county where they have to switch over to the old conventional system due to lack of SIRN coverage. Don't ask me why or whose responsibility it is to get the gaps filled in (county or state). But they would need at least one more SIRN site to have countywide coverage.

Politics and who sucks who the best pretty much covers it.

The games that get played and who is on the "In" and who is on the "Out" boggles the mind sometimes. How they can allow EMS comms to repeatedly fail in the first place is beyond belief. It never should have gotten to that point.

Also going back to cost having to put up a million towers to supposedly ensure that "Seamless" coverage for digital, if roaming is allowed even, goes to the root of the problem. Analog covers a lot more territory than digital and all the way around it costs a lot less to do it.

As others said I'm sure cost plays a big role especially for smaller jurisdictions. Plus maybe there is some common sense if it ain't broke don't fix it in play. That's all I can think of in terms of why not.

If digital worked as well and didn't cost so much then I'd bet more would be done on it.

Ghstwolf62 said:

Politics and who sucks who the best pretty much covers it.

The games that get played and who is on the "In" and who is on the "Out" boggles the mind sometimes. How they can allow EMS comms to repeatedly fail in the first place is beyond belief. It never should have gotten to that point.

Also going back to cost having to put up a million towers to supposedly ensure that "Seamless" coverage for digital, if roaming is allowed even, goes to the root of the problem. Analog covers a lot more territory than digital and all the way around it costs a lot less to do it.

As others said I'm sure cost plays a big role especially for smaller jurisdictions. Plus maybe there is some common sense if it ain't broke don't fix it in play. That's all I can think of in terms of why not.

If digital worked as well and didn't cost so much then I'd bet more would be done on it.

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Agreed, they should maintained the old repeaters as a back up system. But many counties in WV let their old VHF high band FCC licenses expire or did not want to convert over to narrow banding. So now with the SIRN its all pay to play. Every year the SIRN commission/board of governance has plans to build out towers. Perhaps they will revisit Wood county and place a couple more towers in the critical areas.
I guess we will have to wait and see.

You Will Not See Wood County Public Safety Go to The SIREN System Simply Do To The Cost Of The Radio Equipment Pricing Our Department Like All The Others Doesn't Have The Revenue To Do Full Conversion Plus There Isn't Enough Towers Also As Busy As We All Are The System Isn't Set Up To Handle The Volume Of Constant Traffic Load. We Do Have A couple Of SIREN Capable Radio's In Our Trucks But You Will Not See Us Going to It Full Time