Bucks county
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Here's a true, and might I add interesting comment that someone posted in response to this news article:
I personally have the very same equipment (Motorola ASTRO Spectra & XTS3000's) that Bucks County and Burlington County use at it's all narrowband compliant at firmware revision R07.71.00 and above.
Sounds like someone is trying to sell cash strapped counties a bill of goods they really don't need...
I personally have the very same equipment (Motorola ASTRO Spectra & XTS3000's) that Bucks County and Burlington County use at it's all narrowband compliant at firmware revision R07.71.00 and above.
Sounds like someone is trying to sell cash strapped counties a bill of goods they really don't need...
fineshot1
Member
Both the response you cited and your opinion are rater short sited.
Bucks County is trying to do the right thing by spending less $ in the long run
and also trying to move to frequencies that are not interfered with by DTV stations
during the spring, summer and fall months there by solving two problems with one
purchase which by any measure is more cost effective.
By purchasing equipment that is compliant to both narrow banding dates they will
be spending less $ later. The fact that all of the future specs regarding the future
narrow band compliance having not been determined yet is irelavant due to the fact
that flashing the radios can correct anything that has not been covered at the time
of purchase and an upgrade deal for this can be negotiated at the time of purchase
making the future narrow band updates more logistically efficient and cost effective.
Why is it that all the arm chair quater backs always worry about $ spent now and
never about the total expenditure for the long run.
If you have a more cost effective solution to the multiple issue problems for Bucks
County please share it with the rest of us.
Well I can say that I am not surprised by the comments regarding this posting. That said, having worked in the communications field for several years, having a wife employed as an senior hardware engineer for a major communications manufacturer and being employed in public-safety for over 14 years; I guess I am an arm chair person making uneducated comments regarding wasteful spending of government agencies.
The fact remains, Bucks County has had and continues to have a perfectly working solution that can be utilized well into 2015 and beyond if the right measures are taken. With increased tax burdens on the citizens of these municipalities and government workers being laid-off; I'd much rather have the public servant protecting the citizens and keeping the community clean than a multi-million dollar radio system that TRULY isn't needed.
Truth, the county can and WILL save millions by simply upgrading they're existing network. If they choose to move to 700 MHz.; the costs will double and triple of the course of the project. Point in case, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania OpenSky... The added costs of tower locations, surveys, equipment purchases, etc simply isn't worth the tax burden when they have a full operable system that has little interference from DTV these days. Burlington County, New Jersey on the other hand does have some of these issues because of the propagation throughout New Jersey.
In any case, I agree with the newspaper posting, and all I am offering is that the community open its eyes to where the wasteful spending is...
There are many solutions to be investigated; in this case, there are county officials that are most likely trying to spread the government wealth to lobbyists in hopes of kickbacks as was grossly the case with PA's OpenSky system...
The fact remains, Bucks County has had and continues to have a perfectly working solution that can be utilized well into 2015 and beyond if the right measures are taken. With increased tax burdens on the citizens of these municipalities and government workers being laid-off; I'd much rather have the public servant protecting the citizens and keeping the community clean than a multi-million dollar radio system that TRULY isn't needed.
Truth, the county can and WILL save millions by simply upgrading they're existing network. If they choose to move to 700 MHz.; the costs will double and triple of the course of the project. Point in case, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania OpenSky... The added costs of tower locations, surveys, equipment purchases, etc simply isn't worth the tax burden when they have a full operable system that has little interference from DTV these days. Burlington County, New Jersey on the other hand does have some of these issues because of the propagation throughout New Jersey.
In any case, I agree with the newspaper posting, and all I am offering is that the community open its eyes to where the wasteful spending is...
There are many solutions to be investigated; in this case, there are county officials that are most likely trying to spread the government wealth to lobbyists in hopes of kickbacks as was grossly the case with PA's OpenSky system...
radioman2001
Member
This all such BS, reprogram the existing radios for narrow band compliance (about $20.00 TO $50.00 per radio or less if done in house) If they are not having problems with interference with TV stations now, why would they later? Bucks county is along way from the New Jersey shore, those departments DO have an interference issue that is being resolved by changing frequencies to get as far away as possible from the offending signal. The 6.25 mandate doesn't exist, YET. 2020 MAYBE ! If you have radios that are 12 years old, and if you can get another 5-10 years out of them, that makes more sense. 700mhz is not the cure all for radio problems, especially in the sticks. Interoperability? What makes you think that going to 700mhz will cure that ill. It will take another 20 years before a working build out could be accomplished. The Feds created this mess they should fix by paying for it, or allow agencies to continue to use perfectly good working radio equipment. My agency is not going the digital route until mandated. BTW a lot of technology improvements can happen in 10 years, why buy a radio today for a use 10 years from now.
902
Member
It's difficult to read a newspaper article about narrowbanding because it's all opinion and no fact. The narrowbanding initiative is nearly 20 years old and has nothing to do with 9/11. It began as "refarming" but would have cost more than the Sprint/Nextel 800 MHz debacle. The 7.5 kHz splinters created for VHF are still narrower than most of the proposed modulation techniques, meaning adjacent channel use requires geographic separation. In general, VHF and UHF channels are poorly used, warehoused by sporadic operations, have power levels or antenna heights that far exceed the needed coverage areas, and get lots of interference from other similar stations (not to mention VHF isn't paired, so a repeater output could come up on your simplex channel or block your repeater input). 800 seems to be consumed by large systems.
YES, you CAN reprogram most radios to narrowband - IF you have the software and the time. Bringing in a technician isn't free and narrowbanding several hundred or thousand radios takes money for technician time and logistics to track down who has what and what is done versus what is not. And it's an all or nothing deal (can't have half wide and half narrow). If you do it in-house, you: A) are lucky, and B) may not know what you're getting into. I've done it. Diving into 300 police car trunks to get to the radio (always inconveniently mounted) or trying to round up who's on sick leave or vacation or working special detail and can't come in (so you go to them at 3 AM) is not fun.
YES, you CAN reprogram most recent vintage base stations. If you have a simple system, you're probably good to go. If you have simulcast you may have destroyed your timing and overlap areas and you just might have to put in more sites. If you have voting, you may have changed your levels and voting characteristics. Not simple anymore - especially without a pre-plan. Surprises = big money and irresponsible management. The definition of wasteful is trivializing an issue that's bigger than one's understanding of it.
Only 700 MHz requires a migration to 6.25 kHz equivalency, and that can be done by whatever P25 phase II becomes (if that part of the standard is ever codified), 2-slot DMR, NXDN, or even OpenSky. Only the interoperability channels must remain P25 phase I. Below and above 700, there is no current mandate for 6.25 kHz, although there might be at some point. The legacy equipment that's already been deployed on 700 (XTS1500, XTS2500) will not be flashable for whatever waveform phase II becomes and only the latest base stations are capable of a TDMA solution. It's not a venture for the squeamish and chances are that whatever is purchased will undergo an accelerated depreciation (forget about Motrac-like life cycles anymore).
So, with all that headache, why is 700 so desirable? Fineshot1 hit the nail on the head. TV Channels 14-20 (19 and 20 are used in the Philadelphia area) are susceptible to DTV interference. There are many documented cases where stations in Massachusettes and Connecticut take out (literally) trunked control channels. Some systems are splitting their control and voice channels between the TV channels (like 19 and 20, or 15 and 19) so that hopefully only half the system goes down during tropo. (High power) broadcasters have vacated 700 MHz, and exclusive channels have been allotted for use within defined areas, so this is as good as public safety will get (until the FCC allows "flexible use" of narrowband spectrum to extend LTE operations in the D block).
At the end of the day, the only currently available viable solutions seem to be 700 and maybe lowband if you could find base modern station equipment without blue-wiring mobile radios.
So there! :wink:
YES, you CAN reprogram most radios to narrowband - IF you have the software and the time. Bringing in a technician isn't free and narrowbanding several hundred or thousand radios takes money for technician time and logistics to track down who has what and what is done versus what is not. And it's an all or nothing deal (can't have half wide and half narrow). If you do it in-house, you: A) are lucky, and B) may not know what you're getting into. I've done it. Diving into 300 police car trunks to get to the radio (always inconveniently mounted) or trying to round up who's on sick leave or vacation or working special detail and can't come in (so you go to them at 3 AM) is not fun.
YES, you CAN reprogram most recent vintage base stations. If you have a simple system, you're probably good to go. If you have simulcast you may have destroyed your timing and overlap areas and you just might have to put in more sites. If you have voting, you may have changed your levels and voting characteristics. Not simple anymore - especially without a pre-plan. Surprises = big money and irresponsible management. The definition of wasteful is trivializing an issue that's bigger than one's understanding of it.
Only 700 MHz requires a migration to 6.25 kHz equivalency, and that can be done by whatever P25 phase II becomes (if that part of the standard is ever codified), 2-slot DMR, NXDN, or even OpenSky. Only the interoperability channels must remain P25 phase I. Below and above 700, there is no current mandate for 6.25 kHz, although there might be at some point. The legacy equipment that's already been deployed on 700 (XTS1500, XTS2500) will not be flashable for whatever waveform phase II becomes and only the latest base stations are capable of a TDMA solution. It's not a venture for the squeamish and chances are that whatever is purchased will undergo an accelerated depreciation (forget about Motrac-like life cycles anymore).
So, with all that headache, why is 700 so desirable? Fineshot1 hit the nail on the head. TV Channels 14-20 (19 and 20 are used in the Philadelphia area) are susceptible to DTV interference. There are many documented cases where stations in Massachusettes and Connecticut take out (literally) trunked control channels. Some systems are splitting their control and voice channels between the TV channels (like 19 and 20, or 15 and 19) so that hopefully only half the system goes down during tropo. (High power) broadcasters have vacated 700 MHz, and exclusive channels have been allotted for use within defined areas, so this is as good as public safety will get (until the FCC allows "flexible use" of narrowband spectrum to extend LTE operations in the D block).
At the end of the day, the only currently available viable solutions seem to be 700 and maybe lowband if you could find base modern station equipment without blue-wiring mobile radios.
So there! :wink:
radioman2001
Member
I challenge you prove that you cannot mix narrow with wide band radios. We are doing it right now, there was no way to reprogram over 2000 in one shot, so after considerable testing we found that all of our analog radios WILL work mixed with narrow and wide transmissions. They are a mixture of GE Orions and P7100's, Motorola Spectra's and Mitreks, CDM 1250, HT-1250 and Vertex 9000's.
Figure this, the average bandwidth of a wide band receiver is about 7kc, anything narrower and you would get chopping on a loud 5kc transmission. When the radio is programmed narrow, the average bandwidth is almost 4kc, so unless the radio operator is screaming at the top of his lungs, there isn't a problem. Digital radios are another animal, they convert the incoming signal to digital, then decide which path to take to decode. Havn't had much luck with getting them to work consistently in mixed mode, but you can program them wide RX and lower the TX deviation to work.
BTW we do have voting, so unless the voters are set up wrong they should vote on the quietest signal, not the loudest transmission. There are very few simulcast systems out there below 800mhz, and they are not mandated to go narrow.
No one said it was going to be easy, but throwing more down for unbuilt and untested radio systems is foolish. I will wait and let the problems be solved by someone else with more money. I am not convinced that 700 mhz is the cure all that everybody hopes it is. Maybe in 20 years, but not now.
By the way you speak I would suspect that you are either a salesman for a radio manufacturer or from an agency that wants the latest and greatest and spare no expense. To hell with education, I want my MTV.
Figure this, the average bandwidth of a wide band receiver is about 7kc, anything narrower and you would get chopping on a loud 5kc transmission. When the radio is programmed narrow, the average bandwidth is almost 4kc, so unless the radio operator is screaming at the top of his lungs, there isn't a problem. Digital radios are another animal, they convert the incoming signal to digital, then decide which path to take to decode. Havn't had much luck with getting them to work consistently in mixed mode, but you can program them wide RX and lower the TX deviation to work.
BTW we do have voting, so unless the voters are set up wrong they should vote on the quietest signal, not the loudest transmission. There are very few simulcast systems out there below 800mhz, and they are not mandated to go narrow.
No one said it was going to be easy, but throwing more down for unbuilt and untested radio systems is foolish. I will wait and let the problems be solved by someone else with more money. I am not convinced that 700 mhz is the cure all that everybody hopes it is. Maybe in 20 years, but not now.
By the way you speak I would suspect that you are either a salesman for a radio manufacturer or from an agency that wants the latest and greatest and spare no expense. To hell with education, I want my MTV.
902
Member
For the sake of disclosure, I worked for two manufacturers - one 20 years ago, the other 12 years ago - never in sales! Both have changed radically and I have no allegiances to either of the "new" companies (maybe the opposite). I recently retired from doing communications engineering for a public safety agency. Latest and greatest includes Midland Syntec mobiles with some new Astro Spectras, XTS-3000, XTS-2500 radios, simulcast Quantars, and some stand-alone MASTR-III bases, with still a bunch of MSR, MSF, and Micor stations. I like radio better as a hobby. I've also got 3 decades as a "responder," now watching my kids volunteering while the geezer rolls over and goes back to sleep.
MTV? Bleh. WNEW-FM, WDHA-FM, or WMMR. Preferably 1979. With headphones, no less.
Anyway, back to narrowbanding. Glad yours is working out, but my experiences were different. The passbands were a lot tighter for narrowband (~3.5 kHz before distortion). At best case, there will be volume differences. At worst case, your wideband radios will pop out of the receiver passband of the narrowband radios. Narrowband signaling deviation might not consistently decode on wideband radios. Some systems may have unique audio characteristics going across remoted lines and alert paging may be inconsistent. I'm not saying it SHOULDN'T be done, but if you do that, you may run into snags. Those snags may be safety issues. Especially when screaming (but at least it's not wind noise in P25).
I did mine in two steps. Program narrowbands into one bank, keep widebands in another. Change less-used channels' infrastructure, switch over, then change most common channels. Then take out the widebands (couldn't do that because all of the mutual aid channels were still WB).
Be careful with compandoring. Each manufacturer has a different scheme. Using a Kenwood and Motorola both with compandoring enabled will result in distortion. Compandoring also changes audio characteristics, so going through a comparator might yield soft, mushy audio below compression and then booming audio above, with inconsistent transitions. My 'spatchers only stopped complaining about funky sound after turning off any compandoring.
I ran the Astro Spectras, XTS, and Quantars (and one EFJ mobile) in mixed mode with the P25 mode strapped to encryption. I also had several same-frequency repeaters with different input NACs and PL/DPL codes, but the same output (they wouldn't budget me for an AstroTAC, master oscillators, or more connectivity). What are you trying to do? PM me if if you want to exchange notes.
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Radioman2001: You CANNOT mix narrowband (12.5 kHz) and wideband (25.0 kHz) in the same Motorola SmartZone Trunking System. When they make a migration, it needs to be all or nothing because of the bandplan changes. That said, Bucks County could easily perform these changes in house; they've been doing it for years since the system first went online back in the 90's. They can part the system out, basically separate the north zone from the south zone for the migration period and with the amount of users their system currently has, they could knock out the whole system in a few weeks, including firmware updates, radio testing, etc; however, the powers that be in Bucks County want a 700 MHz. system to be inline with the surrounding counties such as Montgomery, Philadelphia, Berks, and the PA OpenSky system, though not needed for interoperability, those in charge of making decisions up there can't seem to fully grasp modern technology and various other solutions available to them. Fact is, they have taxpayer money and they'll will spend it as they see fit unless the public steps forward and begins to make an issue of it...
I fully understand the potential interference issues with T-Band; however, Bucks has been unaffected by these since the 90's, so why all of a sudden is 700 MHz. the cats meow???
That's right, M/A-COM, sorry I mean Harris wants to suck the entire state of Pennsylvania is like they did in Florida...
Stupid government politics that put the publics tax money and the users of the radio system at potential risks; 700/800 isn't the best solution for terrain such as Bucks County; it isn't the sole solution for all agencies; it's just the 21st century buzz word in radio... Perhaps in 2020 it will be 220 and 1200 when they take the bands away from amateur radio.
I fully understand the potential interference issues with T-Band; however, Bucks has been unaffected by these since the 90's, so why all of a sudden is 700 MHz. the cats meow???
That's right, M/A-COM, sorry I mean Harris wants to suck the entire state of Pennsylvania is like they did in Florida...
Stupid government politics that put the publics tax money and the users of the radio system at potential risks; 700/800 isn't the best solution for terrain such as Bucks County; it isn't the sole solution for all agencies; it's just the 21st century buzz word in radio... Perhaps in 2020 it will be 220 and 1200 when they take the bands away from amateur radio.
fineshot1
Member
I love it when I shake the tree to see what falls out. 
This is a good and healthy discussion.
Here is the slide presentation from 3/31/10 for the BC Public Safety Seminar.
myfirecompanies.com/down_files.php?file=4528_orig.pdf&org...30...
There are many issues the board is attempting to resolve in this one move.
In addition the DTV issue is going to get far worse due to the fact that
most of the DTV broadcasters that are known to be causing interference
now have filed to greatly increase there power output. The fcc media bureau
is likely to grant such a request as the public safety users are secondary to
to broadcasters. Also there are other potential additions to the sources of
interference from the "white space" applications issue looming in the near
future.
EDIT: OK - not sure why the link is not showing up - try the one below.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...sg=AFQjCNGjTkv261E8usj3zxP5xdwdO-pQSg&cad=rja
This is a good and healthy discussion.
Here is the slide presentation from 3/31/10 for the BC Public Safety Seminar.
myfirecompanies.com/down_files.php?file=4528_orig.pdf&org...30...
There are many issues the board is attempting to resolve in this one move.
In addition the DTV issue is going to get far worse due to the fact that
most of the DTV broadcasters that are known to be causing interference
now have filed to greatly increase there power output. The fcc media bureau
is likely to grant such a request as the public safety users are secondary to
to broadcasters. Also there are other potential additions to the sources of
interference from the "white space" applications issue looming in the near
future.
EDIT: OK - not sure why the link is not showing up - try the one below.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...sg=AFQjCNGjTkv261E8usj3zxP5xdwdO-pQSg&cad=rja
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