APX8000 mandown TX talkgroup

[speedway_navigator]

https://tacticalrf.com/reports/Fire_Development_Analysis_of_the_LODD_of_FF_Flynn.pdf

It should be noted that Firefighter Flynn did affect a MAYDAY radio call, however the radio was set to broadcast on a separate,
unmonitored radio talk group and was not recognized by the communications center or incident commander.
Firefighter Flynn’s motion activated “man-down” did eventually activate and was relayed to incident command by the communications center.

Based on this I'm assuming the mandown feature can be programmed to a different talkgroup from the channel knob.
Even though this pdf says Flynn was on a different channel you can hear his call at the start of this video.

 

[N4DES]

Around 38:42 it was stated by the ATF representative in the video that MAYDAY calls at both scenes were heard on the radio.
Yes the Emergency Button can be programmed to move the radio to a different Zone Channel Assignment, but this didn't look to be the case.

 

[APX7500X2]

It can be and often is,. His voice call would be on the channel the radio is on, but for emergency button and man down that can be programmed to go to another talk group or channel.
An FD close to me does around 250 calls per year and do not practice may days or emergency procedures at all as they only get 1 or 2 structure fires a year if that. Very poor excuses from the chiefs if you ask me
Every drill your department has should end with a mayday drill also

 

[speedway_navigator]

I got through most of the pdf and saw it was the captain who called the mayday, not Flynn. The ATF report said he called his mayday on bravo 2 but that TG was not monitored by the IC or dispatch. I did more digging and found the AAR on the response, not just the CSST aspect of the fire and found a log of Flynn's radio traffic.

https://tacticalrf.com/reports/Flynn_LODD_Report_FINAL_Declassified.pdf

He did TX at 02:19:45 "Mic Keyed up No message" and 02:21:05
"Transcript removed out of respect for the Flynn family; however, he transmitted his who, what, where."

I'm curious why their appears to be a classified report, I really hate when government thinks it's so much smarter than the citizens it is supposed to serve.

I wonder how he ended up on B2, from the time log it looks like he was on scene 12 minutes before the mayday and moved from one side to another to make entry a 2nd time. 3 minutes after Flynn was located engine 71A keyed on B2.

 

[speedway_navigator]

An FD close to me does around 250 calls per year and do not practice may days or emergency procedures at all as they only get 1 or 2 structure fires a year if that.

These guys looked to be well prepared, they looked at his SCBA in case it was empty.

 

[MTS2000des]

The decision to use either tactical revert or talkgroup revert and to what talk group, needs to be coordinated with the ops folks with the understanding that SOMEONE AT A CONSOLE should ALWAYS acknowledge and knock down (when appropriate) the EA. At my agency, the emergency revert is programmed to that agencies' dispatch primary talk group, with the thought process that the ones responsible for dispatching that agency will see, acknowledge and handle the EA so it never goes unanswered or "lost". Subscribers are programmed with EA RX, so they are situation aware that a user has declared an emergency.

 

[KE4ZNR]

The decision to use either tactical revert or talkgroup revert and to what talk group, needs to be coordinated with the ops folks with the understanding that SOMEONE AT A CONSOLE should ALWAYS acknowledge and knock down (when appropriate) the EA. At my agency, the emergency revert is programmed to that agencies' dispatch primary talk group, with the thought process that the ones responsible for dispatching that agency will see, acknowledge and handle the EA so it never goes unanswered or "lost". Subscribers are programmed with EA RX, so they are situation aware that a user has declared an emergency.

Yep. Our City FD has their Emergency setup with Revert to a City Fire Emergency TG on dispatch only. On the Fireground "OPS" TGs they have tactical emergency configured where the emergency stays on the OPS TG so that command staff (and any other on scene units) can quickly assist if needed.
It has worked well for our FD for several years now.

 

[speedway_navigator]

This is from the Motorola factory engineer analysis of Flynn's radio. The pdf is 40 megs so I did a screen print.

 

[ElroyJetson]

Am I the only one who finds the audio quality, particularly where it's MOST important, to be severely lacking? Probably not.

Has the radio industry simply decided to accept substandard in-mask audio for firefighters?

Personally I've thought that the radio industry has been pushing a bill of goods off on its customers with digital radio. Digital
audio, even at its BEST, is a significant step down from analog audio under good conditions.

Yeah, digital audio does have some advantages. But let's face it, P25 audio, even with the latest and greatest codec revision, isn't equal to analog audio with a good S/N ratio. I find that it always sounds muffled.

But I'm not blaming only P25 for bad audio. I have recently listened to firefighters doing exercises on an EDACS system, that's analog voice,
and it was unintelligible to the point that scene command was getting frustrated with the audio from a firefighter in SCBA gear.

If someone can engineer a good SCBA mic solution, there's money laying on the table for him. Lots of it.

 

[KE4ZNR]

Am I the only one who finds the audio quality, particularly where it's MOST important, to be severely lacking? Probably not.

Has the radio industry simply decided to accept substandard in-mask audio for firefighters?

Personally I've thought that the radio industry has been pushing a bill of goods off on its customers with digital radio. Digital
audio, even at its BEST, is a significant step down from analog audio under good conditions.

Yeah, digital audio does have some advantages. But let's face it, P25 audio, even with the latest and greatest codec revision, isn't equal to analog audio with a good S/N ratio. I find that it always sounds muffled.

But I'm not blaming only P25 for bad audio. I have recently listened to firefighters doing exercises on an EDACS system, that's analog voice,
and it was unintelligible to the point that scene command was getting frustrated with the audio from a firefighter in SCBA gear.

If someone can engineer a good SCBA mic solution, there's money laying on the table for him. Lots of it.

Sounds like you are monitoring a poorly maintained system/radios. We worked extensively with both our city FD and our volunteer county FDs to make sure the P25 audio on our system was not only acceptable but worthy of use during a possible life endangering situation. No system is perfect but I could not sleep at night if the system I help maintain endangered the FFs I know instead of providing quality comms.

As usual it comes down to how the radio system and radios are maintained/managed.

 

[KevinC]

I'm trying to figure out the purpose of this thread? Was it simply to ask how the mandown feature works or to point blame?

 

[speedway_navigator]

I was curious about the mandown feature and started to ask if the radio recorded TX audio or kept a record of TX and RX times since the report indicated he did TX on the unmonitored B2. Subsequent (yes I had to use spell check...) reports gave details on the time he transmitted and a synopsis of what he said so I'm assuming the TG was monitored because the radio analysis did not mention this data being recovered.

 

[KevinC]

I was curious about the mandown feature and started to ask if the radio recorded TX audio or kept a record of TX and RX times since the report indicated he did TX on the unmonitored B2. Subsequent (yes I had to use spell check...) reports gave details on the time he transmitted and a synopsis of what he said so I'm assuming the TG was monitored because the radio analysis did not mention this data being recovered.

If this was a trunked system (and a MSI one), then ATIA data will show the times his radio transmitted, if he got a reject, pushed the emergency button, changed channels or a host of other actions. And any agency worth anything records as much as possible.

 

[rr60]

If this was a trunked system (and a MSI one), then ATIA data will show the times his radio transmitted, if he got a reject, pushed the emergency button, changed channels or a host of other actions. And any agency worth anything records as much as possible.

Interesting ATIA data (will search and learn more) may I assume that data is only as good as the path between subscrIber and repeater receiver?

Does ATIA data record the lack of talkpath, timestamps of loss. Thanks.

 

[KevinC]

Interesting ATIA data (will search and learn more) may I assume that data is only as good as the path between subscrIber and repeater receiver?

Does ATIA data record the lack of talkpath, timestamps of loss. Thanks.

ATIA records all data the core received from the subscriber and the responses from the core to the subscriber.

 

[speedway_navigator]

I guess that ATIA data was used in the I35 bridge collapse AAR that showed increases in PTTs and queue times.

If someone can engineer a good SCBA mic solution, there's money laying on the table for him.

When I was with Racing Radios our engineers in the non racing side at Diversified electronics did lots of work on mics for SCBA masks. That was in the late 80s. I think bluetooth mics have reduced their popularity.

Some interior radio traffic is so garbled it reminds me of this part from Police Squad!

 

[MTS2000des]

I guess that ATIA data was used in the I35 bridge collapse AAR that showed increases in PTTs and queue times.

Genesis provided me a tool that allows easy searching and parsing of the ATIA data. IIRC they developed it specifically for the i35 collapse, but I may be wrong. It is very granular and forensic level.

 

[KevinC]

Genesis provided me a tool that allows easy searching and parsing of the ATIA data. IIRC they developed it specifically for the i35 collapse, but I may be wrong. It is very granular and forensic level.

I use an excel based parser.

 

[iowajm780]

Don't mean to hijak this thread but if a subscriber hits their emergency button how is the alarm cleared?. I have hear the dispatcher tell the office to reset his emergency button by pressing the purple button. This is when they had XTS2500's back in the day. I also thought the dispatcher clears it at their console but prefer the officer to do so on their end. So which would be the best way?. Some officers are more prone to accidentally hitting the button than others.

 

[MTS2000des]

A dispatcher has to acknowledge the alarm on a console, which allows them to "knock down". User can cancel the emergency call by long pressing the emergency button until a long tone is emitted from the subscriber.
There is no "best way", it depends on what your agency policy is.