Montgomery County Fire, Antennas

[bradam2001]

I am starting to see these antennas on fire vehicles now, what kind of antenna is it ?

 

[Radar412]

Montgomery Co

Stiico or Moto tri-band, vhf, uhf, 7-800

 

[mmckenna]

Motorola AN000131A01

https://shopwiscomm.com/AN000131A01...-Kit-Mobile-VHF-UHF-700-800-QMA-P5692560.aspx

 

[mmckenna]

Apparently made by PCTel:
PCTEL PCTWSLMR
https://www.tessco.com/products/displayProductInfo.do?sku=503018

Looks like Motorola likes to sell it with the APX-8500 mobiles.

Must be someone pretty important to have two of those in one car.

 

[bradam2001]

I also was by fire station 29 yesterday and they had a red 4x4 pickup with these antennas.

 

[Mr_Boh]

I also was by fire station 29 yesterday and they had a red 4x4 pickup with these antennas.

BC or Safety Officer.

A lot of people are having 8500s deployed to them. This is one of the three or four mobile antennas I know of that can support all bands of the 8500 in a single unit.

 

[bradam2001]

Are the 8500s going to be the replacements for the new radio system when every that starts ?
Are these phase 2 radios

 

[Mr_Boh]

Almost everyone in the county already has an APX and my assumption is with some of the neighbors already having phase II they are good to go for their new system.

Probably more of an interoperability thing more than anything else. 7500s only allow two bands and without extra equipment require two antennas. 8500s to add all bands require swapping out the radio and antenna - no new wiring and pretty much an in place swap.

WMATA is still UHF and will be for some time just not sure what the benefit is for fire rescue. Other than that the only UHF systems I could think of them needing are maybe Washington Co MD or Jefferson unless they plan on taking on the BCCRS repeater or some NIFOG freqs.

Could also just be part of their contract - the way they go it’s not usual for departments to get new toys in trade for things like upgrade clauses or to make up for a part of the contract a vendor fails to meet instead of paying the customer back.

 

[gesucks]

All their radios are Phase II
All new installs for the most part get 8500s. Why buy a 7500 when you can get a 8500.
has nothing to do with new system, all current radios will work on new system

 

[W8RMH]

https://www.theantennafarm.com/catalog/pctel-pctwslmr-8504

 

[troymail]

... the new radio system when every that starts ?

Next summer apparently...

http://forums.radioreference.com/ma...planning-new-radio-systems-6.html#post2869456

 

[jim202]

All their radios are Phase II
All new installs for the most part get 8500s. Why buy a 7500 when you can get a 8500.
has nothing to do with new system, all current radios will work on new system

The main problem with multi band radios that most users just don't understand, is that there generally is only one receiver in the radio. What you have is a very expensive scanner. What ever band frequency pops in first, it will capture the radio until the radio no longer receives that frequency. Then when the time delay releases, the radio will go back to scanning.

Now if your only using one band for most of your coms and only go to the other bands available for an Incident, then that puts a whole different twist on the use of the radios.

My bet is user training will be just about non existent. In my travels around the country dealing with radio interoperability and installing radio gateways, most agencies just hand out portables or install a mobile and say there you go. That is the extent of radio training. The users don't even have a clue about what frequencies are in the radios. Let alone how to be able to get to those channels.

Upper management just don't understand that the radios are the lifeblood for each of those out in the field. They don't think any time should be spent on how to use those fancy radios. Let alone what other channels are available.

 

[gesucks]

The main problem with multi band radios that most users just don't understand, is that there generally is only one receiver in the radio. What you have is a very expensive scanner. What ever band frequency pops in first, it will capture the radio until the radio no longer receives that frequency. Then when the time delay releases, the radio will go back to scanning.

Now if your only using one band for most of your coms and only go to the other bands available for an Incident, then that puts a whole different twist on the use of the radios.

My bet is user training will be just about non existent. In my travels around the country dealing with radio interoperability and installing radio gateways, most agencies just hand out portables or install a mobile and say there you go. That is the extent of radio training. The users don't even have a clue about what frequencies are in the radios. Let alone how to be able to get to those channels.

Upper management just don't understand that the radios are the lifeblood for each of those out in the field. They don't think any time should be spent on how to use those fancy radios. Let alone what other channels are available.

Actually Jim.... The problem is you have no idea what you are talking about.

You are not in Montgomery County, Not in Maryland, Not even close to the NCR area.

So here we buy radios not scanners. We follow best practices. We operate incidents on one channel. The user goes to the channel where they are told and stays there. They do not know what band it is on nor do they need to or care. We have a long standing, extensively used common name standard for channels in all bands.

They do not need 3 radios, a radio that listens to 3 channels at once or to change channels in the middle of an incident. They certainly have zero need to know what the frequency a channel is or the frequencies in the radio.

Our users get extensive initial and ongoing training. I am willing to bet that the group of about ten people (all users) who manage the radios for Montgomery County have about a century more experience in this both here an Nationally than you do.

So thanks for crashing our thread about a radio system you know nothing about, and contributing nothing useful, accurate or relevant to the discussion the thread was about.

 

[ResQguy]

The main problem with multi band radios that most users just don't understand, is that there generally is only one receiver in the radio. What you have is a very expensive scanner. What ever band frequency pops in first, it will capture the radio until the radio no longer receives that frequency. Then when the time delay releases, the radio will go back to scanning.

Now if your only using one band for most of your coms and only go to the other bands available for an Incident, then that puts a whole different twist on the use of the radios.

My bet is user training will be just about non existent. In my travels around the country dealing with radio interoperability and installing radio gateways, most agencies just hand out portables or install a mobile and say there you go. That is the extent of radio training. The users don't even have a clue about what frequencies are in the radios. Let alone how to be able to get to those channels.

Upper management just don't understand that the radios are the lifeblood for each of those out in the field. They don't think any time should be spent on how to use those fancy radios. Let alone what other channels are available.

This jurisdiction has been using VHF and 7/800 for many years with two radios. Once they became available they issued V/7/8 APX7000s to all unit officers with appropriate training. As technology improved they replaced all with multiband radios as this county has a very robust VHF simulcast as well as 800 system. Moving forward into P25 systems they will continue to maintain both bands as their topography requires it.

This region sets the standard for how to communicate across state lines.

 

[dwlipp]

Must be someone pretty important to have two of those in one car.

The Operations Chief; the only staff vehicle with two APX 8500s installed.

 

[dwlipp]

The main problem with multi band radios that most users just don't understand, is that there generally is only one receiver in the radio. What you have is a very expensive scanner. What ever band frequency pops in first, it will capture the radio until the radio no longer receives that frequency. Then when the time delay releases, the radio will go back to scanning.

Now if your only using one band for most of your coms and only go to the other bands available for an Incident, then that puts a whole different twist on the use of the radios.

My bet is user training will be just about non existent. In my travels around the country dealing with radio interoperability and installing radio gateways, most agencies just hand out portables or install a mobile and say there you go. That is the extent of radio training. The users don't even have a clue about what frequencies are in the radios. Let alone how to be able to get to those channels.

Upper management just don't understand that the radios are the lifeblood for each of those out in the field. They don't think any time should be spent on how to use those fancy radios. Let alone what other channels are available.

Our command and staff radios don't scan across bands, only within systems, and generally only within our own system using priority scan for the most part. We use the multiband radios to provide access to our VHF conventional channels which are either used when our 800 trunked coverage is unreliable or if it has gone away altogether. We currently use the UHF capability to access the State of Maryland's Emergency Medical Resource Communication (EMRC) system and plan to use it to provide direct interoperability with the Metro Transit Police (mass transit police) once some interagency stuff is worked out, a hole that we have been working to get filled for years.

Of course, we also program regional and national conventional interoperability channels across all bands that our radios are capable of to help to deal with those unusual situations, like when we respond mutual aid to New Orleans and such (Hurricane Katrina).

As the guy who chaired the Internation Association of Fire Chiefs Digital Project Working Group Best Practices subcommittee some years ago, I am probably a bit more attuned to user training issues than most, and I know that our agency is more attuned than most. One of the things that I highlighted in that role was the limited (to non-existent) radio training most radio users receive; I know I literally got more training on an axe when I started doing this ~40 years ago than I did on the radios.

We provide extensive user radio training to all of our new personnel and radio training is one of our annual recertification requirements that our staff has to complete to maintain their operational status. All of that said, we (I) know that we still have folks who don't get it all the time, but as mentioned in other replies, for the most part, our users are told exactly where to set their radios and only rarely do they have to make radio-related decisions on their own initiative. The ones that they do have to make are trained on pretty extensively and they normally execute them well. We also integrate radio-related aspects into other training activities that we conduct.

Many in our upper management are very attuned to the communication environment, that is why we get the resources to implement things like all-band capable APX 8500s into our fleet.

While we are not perfect, we have very robust interoperability capabilities that get used on a daily basis in the complex operating environment of the National Capital Region, and for the most part that capability gets used with little to no drama. There is always room for improvement, but there probably aren't too many agencies/regions that do interoperability and radio in general better than the NCR (also being a consultant, I have traveled the country some too and gained an appreciation for the sophistication of our capabilities and users).

Dallas

 

[WG3K]

While we are not perfect, we have very robust interoperability capabilities that get used on a daily basis in the complex operating environment of the National Capital Region, and for the most part that capability gets used with little to no drama. There is always room for improvement, but there probably aren't too many agencies/regions that do interoperability and radio in general better than the NCR

I'll second that. Being the lone comms guy down here on our SAR team in Calvert County, I'm always relieved to see the Montgomery County truck on scene for exercises and events with the NCR radio cache and the usual suspects of COML and COMTs. At least I know that I won't have to explain a proper comms plan to anyone and feel that at least communications has been properly handled (there have been other incidents...).