Did FDNY increase the power output on their fireground frequencies?

To my knowledge the fireground Tac channels are programmed for 1-2 watts output but today I was able to hear fireground chatter from about 1.5 miles away in Manhattan. It was clear as day and I was honestly surprised. Did they up the power output on the fireground Tac channels?

Oh yeah I should include that I was on the street level and not elevated up high in a skyscraper.

Danny37 said:

To my knowledge the fireground Tac channels are programmed for 1-2 watts output but today I was able to hear fireground chatter from about 1.5 miles away in Manhattan. It was clear as day and I was honestly surprised. Did they up the power output on the fireground Tac channels?

Oh yeah I should include that I was on the street level and not elevated up high in a skyscraper.

Click to expand...

Could be band conditions, or you were just in a perfect spot. Or the new APX8000s are progarmmed for 4 watts. But I can't see 4 watts making a huge difference.

Fdny uses low power on tactical.

Who were you hearing? Roof ff at top of hi rise?
Maybe a post radio, was it a fire?

All the HT's are getting changed out citywide and you are probably noticing that they perform better than the old ones. No idea if they are programmed for different power outputs or not.

AlexC said:

All the HT's are getting changed out citywide and you are probably noticing that they perform better than the old ones. No idea if they are programmed for different power outputs or not.

Click to expand...

New radio, power the same.

Probably transmitting from a high floor.

Same thing occurs - for example - out here in SI or anywhere if ESU asks Aviation to go to TAC 'G" - which like the HT channels is low power. I can hear the Aviation transmissions due to theor obvious height and not ESU on the ground.

tbendick said:

New radio, power the same.

Click to expand...

Lets hope not, The APX8000 has the multi-band antenna and would not put out the same power as the way old XTS3500 with a UHF antenna if they were both set for 2 watts.
The loss on the multi-band antenna is much more than a straight up UHF antenna
But you have to expect that as your trying to do 4 bands out of 1 antenna, its designed to work ok on all bands.

We found this on the APX7000 dual band with the mult-band antenna compared to the just VHF antenna on our stuff, But the 7000 on VHF gave 6.2 watts so it matched the 5 watts out of our old radios

A little work with a service monitor at the radio shop can figure out what to set the 8000 at to get the same performance as a radio with just a UHF antenna.

Can you tell me the relative measurements that were taken to determined antenna performance and in what environment?