AVON TO SCRAP ITS REQUEST FOR A HIGHER TOWER IN CANTON

[n1chu]

IMO they don't. Most town have a "radio guy" who knows enough to be dangerous and then they bring in the consultants that sell them massive systems rather then repurpose the existing infrastructure into something better. Not always the case of course, sometimes things need to be upgraded but not everyone needs to go to the latest and greatest 700/800 trunked multimillion dollar trunking system.

This was the case in Farmington when the FD finally moved off a VHF low band simplex system. The Motorola consultants pushed for a trunked 800 MHz system, using the excuse the VHF high band and UHF bands were saturated-no available frequencies for a pair to do a conventional repeaterized system. But Motorola wasn’t entirely truthful when it was learned there were frequencies available, from me... I was one of those “radio guys who know just enough about radio to be dangerous”! Motorola didn’t tell us about the availability to procure two VHF high band frequencies, just not within the (at the time) designated portions reserved for FD’s on the VHF high band. Farmington’s FD’s are currently using a VHF high band repeater with one frequency within the old designated FD portion of the band (154.19 MHz) and the other taken from Forestry (159.42 MHz). It blew the Motorola consultants right out of the park-when I was invited to sit in on their next meeting the daggers flew fast and furious. Motorola stated it couldn’t be done. I told them to ask Windsor Locks how they did exactly the same thing... that shut them down. They still got the contract and built our system, but at a fraction of the cost of a trunked 800 MHz system!