Morris County 700 MHz Simulcast Discussion

[APX8000]

There are several towers around Chatham....you also have the Morristown site and the Randolph site in addition to those other two. Of course, depending on the orientation of the antennas, signal quality may be affected since their isn't a site to the southeast. I would have put a site up on the water tank on Buxton Road where the 460.3125 Fire repeater is personally.

 

[RocketNJ]

They initially had a site at Buxton. The neighbors had the NIMBY effect.

Not In My Back Yard

 

[rr60]

The last time I checked, approvals at the local level were not required by NJSA chapter law for a County or State Public Safety need. This is a courtesy notice only.
If denied locally, the Superior Court appeal would likely overturn any local NIMBY. Politics aside.

 

[EagleStrikeX23]

That's ridiculous and a shame. Buxton water tower would provide amazing coverage for the Chathams, Green Village, Long Hill. "Several towers around Chatham" but portable coverage is still significantly weak, especially indoors. Some locations you have to step outside or use the mobile to get out, which was never a problem with the previous Long Hill site. I am curious if as a result of Buxton not coming into fruition, an alternate location will be selected.

 

[rr60]

My .02 is you never really know the reason unless you are on top of the decision making tree. One approach might be to OPRA request pertinent documents. Of course that ship has already sailed.

What is a head scratcher is NIMBY took it out (apparently). Certainly anyone in the legal profession at the County level knows the County prevails in these matters.

Why fold, where does it begin and where does it end?

How about the local folks impacted ask the governing bodies to pass and then forward a resolution asking the County to reconsider. Cite specific issues.

 

[K2NEC]

It's never a big deal until someone loses their life because their E button didn't go through or they couldn't call for help because their radio was out of range. Why carry a portable if it's gonna be useless half the time?

 

[strk3seeya]

It's never a big deal until someone loses their life because their E button didn't go through or they couldn't call for help because their radio was out of range. Why carry a portable if it's gonna be useless half the time?

I agree with it being a safety issue. But what are the towns/officers doing about it? If they are not properly documenting the issues and having a strong paper trail then not much is going to change. Hopefully they are documenting and getting their Union representatives involved. Typical response will be "this is the first we are hearing about this"

 

[APX8000]

Or....if they are not happy with the coverage they go back to the County and say, "we are not using your trunked system because it doesn't work in our area" and they use the one that actually does work (their current repeater at the site I mentioned in their town). Or attempt to get the County to program their repeater in the console for comms until a new site is constructed at millions of dollars the County does not have and will never do after the fact. If the County says no (which they will) and they truly do care about all those points, they leave and hire town dispatchers.

I see this happen over and over again....town XYZ gets rid of their dispatchers because of cost and goes to County. County radio system sucks in their area. They complain and County says oh well. And they they stay and cry officer safety and pass the buck back to the County ("until someone can't get out on their E button"). Meanwhile they have a solution right in their backyard but "cost" is more important than lives.

 

[rr60]

Or ISSI into something that is built. Madison.

https://www.motorolasolutions.com/content/dam/msi/docs/astro-25/project_25_issi_solution_brief_global_.pdf

 

[K2NEC]

constructed at millions of dollars the County does not have and will never do after the fact.

Yet they spent multi millions of dollars to give every single subscriber an all bands enabled APX8000 and APX8500. Which I'm sure every officer on patrol switches zones regularly and utilized all of the enabled bands on a daily basis.

 

[rr60]

No dog in this, just my .02. Clearly the intent is for Morris to add a NEW additional simulcast cell to the initial 700 MIRS system in 2024.

The new MIRS location is not in the Chatham’s but on the southwest corner of the County, Chester, just off Route 206. Filed but not built is “Seeing Eye” or Rodger’s Road. This is the pin on the RR map link below just north of Bernardsville. This new MIRS location requires a new tower and the associated equipment. This location will serve a small population of Morris (it borders on Somerset). Chester already has a site just 3 miles away, 300 Main Street.

Circle back to Green Village and the Chatham’s. There is a much greater population in Chatham. The Chester’s are more rural (think farmland) more cows and corn.

Chatham’s send almost double the tax revenue to Morris County than the Chester’s. Chester’s send property tax revenue based on 2.24 billion valuation and Chatham’s send revenue based on 5.45 billion (2022 State data).

On NIMBY (2015 cellular), I only see Superior Court affirmation of denial of a cell site at 63 Buxton. Did the County actually send an advisory notice on its own and get a negative response? I highly doubt it. Legally a hearing is not required. 8 Longwood Ave in Chatham is also interesting. There are plenty of potential sites (including Buxton) in the Chatham area that do not need a tower nor approvals.

If I had a dog in this, I might ask, why a second MIRS Chester (with tower) site is to be built instead of the Chatham’s first. BOLO.

Morris County Site: 700 Simulcast

 

[GTR8000]

Clearly the intent is for Morris to add a NEW additional simulcast cell to the initial 700 MIRS system in 2024.

They're not going to add a new cell for one site, in fact that doesn't even make sense, as a single site is an ASR (standalone). Adding a subsite to the existing cell, well that makes much more sense.

 

[rr60]

Indeed. Poor terminology on my behalf. Mixed apples and oranges.

Whether it be Chester or Chatham similar dollars for RF infrastructure.

Less dollars for Chatham’s as tower likely not required. More population and structures covered.

 

[RocketNJ]

Well I won't get into the details on Buxton but if they had put the site there instead of Long Hill, there would be no portable coverage in Long Hill. Now the Long Hill site has been relocated to improve coverage in the valley on west side of the Passaic River. The Long Hill site caused a shadow in coverage along the river.

One thing to keep in mind when designing and building a system. The higher the percentage of coverage you want, exponentially the more sites you need. You need to draw the line someplace. Typical system design is 95/95, meaning you will have 95% coverage 95% of the time. That is the typical design goal. Now different customers have specific requirements. CTSP had 98% voice but only 75% on their private DataTAC system (4.1 SZ system)

The 700 system has two benegits over the UHF. No tropo ducting taking down the system and with the diversity RX at the tower sites, slightly better portable talk-in (overal coverage, not specific "dead spots" that other have referred to)

 

[APX8000]

There may be a site at 300 Main in Chester but 206 is hard terrain to cover from that. Hence the additional site. Somerset I believe did the same along that stretch/area on 700.

That move in Long Hill was needed. It was bad over there. While Buxton would have been nice as well, it's not happening.

 

[RocketNJ]

Buxton would never have covered around the turn in the ridge along the river. Coverage at the bottom of the hill in Long Hill would have been worse than with the site in Long Hill.

A site across the river (east) on first ridge halfway from Long Hill to Chatham would be preferred but the new site LH was moved to was available and did improve Long Hill coverage.

When you have a river such as the Passaic and the ridge just west of it, to cover with one site is tough. Livingston helped into Chatham and Long Hill helped Sterling and Millington, although being just over the ridge, coverage tucked up against the east side of the Long Hill ridge suffered.

Look at a terrain map and drop a pin on Buxton Road then look at Sterling and Millington. The ridge has a bowed shape and the ridge would have impaired coverage in those areas.

Just as a footnote - each town was given portables and pagers to test coverage before signing to go to the county for dispatch. It was each town's decision, not the county.

 

[APX8000]

I'm interested in knowing your opinion with something up on Overlook hospital with a directional setup. I was up there the other day and it looks nice to the West.

 

[EagleStrikeX23]

Overlook sits up high, and can be seen line of sight from the Fairmount Avenue section of Chatham Borough. Though, at the same time, there is a lot of Chatham Borough + Township, and Green Village that is at significant less elevation past Fairmount which might reduce coverage two fold or not be sufficient. Parts of deep Chatham Township also have weak inside residence portable coverage. Regardless, of location, it would be awesome to see some additional coverage in that area.

On an unrelated note: Is there any word if there will be an internal extender for MMC? That was crucial when they put the UHF extender in to do turn arounds and maintain that communication. Now the ER is a dead zone.

 

[FT752]

Yet they spent multi millions of dollars to give every single subscriber an all bands enabled APX8000 and APX8500. Which I'm sure every officer on patrol switches zones regularly and utilized all of the enabled bands on a daily basis.

Couldn't even do that. Dual-band only, UHF2 7/8. No SPEN, no VHF resources for agencies who may need it for mutual aid purposes. Not to mention, the only UTAC is UTAC43 which I understand is due to be pulled at some point.

 

[RocketNJ]

They are multiband radios with only two bands enabled. If an agency wanted to add VHF, they could pay for it. The problem doing that is the radio will be listening to the crap on SPEN instead of where they should be listening. Even towns that had their own system on UHF it was recommended for them to have two separate radios. That way they would not miss a message on their dispatch channel or MIRS. It was OK for them to have their frequencies added to the County radios as a backup in case their primary radio failed.

Overlook (looking at topology map) would have similar coverage problems into Stirling and Millington that Buxton would have had.