Franklin county

[brey1234]

Harris Corporation, an international communications and information company, has been awarded a $9 million contract from Franklin County, North Carolina, to upgrade its legacy analog emergency communications. The upgraded solution, Harris P25(IP) (Project 25 to the power of Internet Protocol) includes an analog channel for tone paging which will significantly improve radio communication, coverage and regional interoperability for agencies and first responders in the county’s ten township.
http://wireless-headsets.tmcnet.com...is-corp-gets-9-million-from-frankl-county.htm

 

[FireCop]

I linked this to my post in the Community Announcements & News Forum under a thread in which this was originally posted.

http://forums.radioreference.com/co...anklin-county-north-carolina.html#post1361148

I'm still trying to figure out what alterior motives are behind this move. I just can't begin to believe that it would have cost them $9 million to join VIPER, which is pretty much all in place or nearing that phase in Franklin County.

One of my brothers lives there and had the same reaction to this news as I did.

 

[murrayustud]

Beyond belief, what a waste of $ I just naturally assumed they'd use viper..

 

[NCRanger]

This link is to the Franklin County Board of Commissioners June 22, 2010 Meeting Minutes. It has some info about the decision.

http://www.co.franklin.nc.us/Commissioners/minutes/2010/MINUTES - June 22 2010.pdf

 

[FireCop]

After reading the minutes, I still see somebody has put on a "snow" job of a sales pitch. I don't think the board or others adequately addressed additions to VIPER and improvements to the VHF paging. Evidently the powers that be have it in their heads to run everything through one vendor/company.

 

[WA4MJF]

It is my understanding that counties that get their own system are still able to use VIPER to talk to folks on the VIPER system. Our newest reprogramming has TGs for counties that aren't on VIPER like Johnson, Wayne, Franklin etc. My guess is that if one wanted to talk to one of those, you would call the county central on SW Calling and then have the folks that you wanted to talk with meet you on the County TG. I haven't needed to try that yet.

Also, have the 8 NCSHP line troops in a zone now, too.

 

[KE4ZNR]

Our newest reprogramming has TGs for counties that aren't on VIPER like Johnson, Wayne, Franklin etc.

Those are simplex conventional 700Mhz channels.
In fact they are the same 2 exact frequencies for every county:

County Direct 1 = 769.00625Mhz
County Direct 2= 769.01875Mhz

So Wayne Direct 1 is the same as Franklin Direct 1 which is the same as Johnston
Direct 1, etc.

Marshall KE4ZNR

 

[whitehelmet1202]

Those are simplex conventional 700Mhz channels.
In fact they are the same 2 exact frequencies for every county:

County Direct 1 = 769.00625Mhz
County Direct 2= 769.01875Mhz

So Wayne Direct 1 is the same as Franklin Direct 1 which is the same as Johnston
Direct 1, etc.

Marshall KE4ZNR

Is there a PL tone on those Marshall? More good info for my info bank

 

[NCFire11]

I know we dont use PL tones in franklin co, dunno if this is irrelavent or not.

 

[jaolson101]

"Mr. Kelly assured the benefit of a P25 system is compatibility with other P25 systems regardless of vendor as long as proper approval is granted and as long as the systems have the same VHF frequency band."

What other P25 compliant systems? And who would be going down that road with the existing VIPER infrastructure? Spend all this money and have no more interoperability than they have today.

I don't get it.

 

[RMPDCOP]

Why we didnt go with Viper, I have no clue. But I know P25 is something we have wanted for a long time and seems to give us what we need. I think most counties that we run mutual aid with have P25 with the exception of Wake, dont quote me on this.

Kelly Harris is the chief of my mutual aid department and he has been around and knows what is good for the county.

There are no P25 Counties around you. Nash, Halifax and Warren still run VHF with the capabilty of VIPER. Vance and Wake are running on VIPER in Digital mode.
I am not trying to be a smart a@# here, please do not take it that way. I am just stating facts that's all. I agree with you about the county switching over to VIPER. I also see where the county would like complete control over its radio infrastructure.

 

[WA4MJF]

I don't know about other Wake departments that MA Franklin, but our VHF radios are analog on the old wide band common fire frequencies, usually on 154.280. The VIPER is digital. I guess we'll be going to the new V-TAC narrow system before 2013 and I have no clue whether that
will be analog or digital..

 

[KE4ZNR]

Is there a PL tone on those Marshall? More good info for my info bank

CSQ on the 2 700Mhz frequencies.

Marshall KE4ZNR

 

[KE4ZNR]

*sigh* So much misinformation in the earlier linked pdf of meeting minutes:

Commissioner Dunston asked Mrs. Shearin to explain the value of the State’s VIPER
system as opposed to the system that is proposed for Franklin.

Mrs. Shearin stated the VIPER system is an 800 MHz system that is ineffective when
paging volunteers.

A simple VHF/UHF Simulcast of all 800Mhz dispatches makes the above a non-issue and a false argument.

She said VIPER is based on coverage that is in-street portable
rather than what the county is trying to achieve with building coverage.

Another false argument when you realize with a little tweaking and a few Intelli Repeaters the above issue can be solved.

She said VIPER
does not meet the robust coverage requirements the county proposes and said if VIPER
was put in place, a large sum of money would still be required to build out the paging
system.

Again, another false argument. How is a Harris system going to offer more "robust coverage"?

And the paging system argument is laughable. Wake County (along with many other counties) has a paging system setup that works with VIPER that did not break the bank.

She said VIPER was examined, but said the proposed system is the best
option.

In other words: Harris did a better sales job than Motorola/VIPER based off of half truths and questionable arguments.

Hey, I give Harris credit for having good salesmen.
Whether or not that means Franklin County will have a reliable system that can easily communicate with neighboring counties/agencies is still yet to be determined.

Marshall KE4ZNR

 

[KE4ZNR]

And for the record: VIPER is not perfect. No radio system is. But like many others in this thread I fail to see where a Harris system will offer the native interop and other features the county could have received on VIPER.

Marshall KE4ZNR

 

[RMPDCOP]

Amen brother!

 

[ts548]

Another false argument when you realize with a little tweaking and a few Intelli Repeaters the above issue can be solved.

This is the only thing I disagree with. It maybe that easy down in the flat land but you start getting part the great state of Mecklinburg and it does to crap. Were lucky if we even have in street coverage most of the time.

 

[NCFire11]

I know we have done some basic testing and p25 seemed to do all we needed it to, i dont think VIPER was even tested. (i dont really know how p25 was tested for that matter). But i agree the salesman for Harris must have been good but our county commissioners are uh.. nevermind.

 

[NCFire11]

They even considered locution as a way to cut costs but they were laughed out of that place.

 

[jaolson101]

Locution shows its cost savings in taking telecommunicators off the giving out the call task and freeing them for other mission critical work. The paging on VHF could have been accomplished a number of ways, whether simulcast from all sites or not. Prior to having microwave simulcast, Wake used geographical dispatching, based on the station being alerted. If a call was for a department in the East, tones were sent off a tower in the East. It worked, not as effectively as a simulcast scenario, but it worked better than when everything originated downtown on the rooftop of a building.