Harford buys more portable radios for police, firefighters, but some glitches persist

In an ongoing – and expensive – program to improve communications among area police agencies, fire companies, emergency medical personnel and other first responders, Harford County government is buying another 346 portable radios at a cost of $1.7 million.

Harford buys more portable radios for police, firefighters but some glitches persist - Baltimore Sun

Towards the end of the article it isn't perfectly clear but it sounds like they might create a patch from Cecil to Maryland FiRST to assist with radio Communciaitons?

I thought Cecil (dispatch) had 800 capabilities through MESIN? Why don't they use it? It's not perfect but it should work in a pinch...

Probably scarce in-building coverage on the tac-stacks. Not so good for fire ops.

(just a guess)

The new Harford radios are APX6000 departing from the dual band APX7500 concept in fire service mobiles. Cecil is budgeted to be P25 in the next few years so going with VHF/800 subscribers could be an ideal solution.
as for MESIN, sites are currently at Conowingo, Elk Neck and Cecilton.

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DisasterGuy said:

The new Harford radios are APX6000 departing from the dual band APX7500 concept in fire service mobiles. Cecil is budgeted to be P25 in the next few years so going with VHF/800 subscribers could be an ideal solution.
as for MESIN, sites are currently at Conowingo, Elk Neck and Cecilton.

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Click to expand...

Harford still issues dual-band fire mobiles/portables to companies that border York County. But I agree. An 800/VHF platform and the use of Cecil's VHF simplex fireground channel would be a solid on-scene solution.

I think Cecil should be on the hook for this solution since they were the idiots who decided to use an off-band and an off-platform for the region.

Cecil had no choice but to select VHF as there were no 800mhz pairs available for them. Multi band radios should be the standard for any department that has a multi band region. There are VHF, UHF and 700/800 P25 rafios available for less than the cost of the single band APX6000 on Maryland contract.

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