Emergency radio system back up and running in Detroit

[E-Man]

Earlier Friday, Detroit police Sgt. Erin Stephen said a technical problem forced dispatchers to contact police officers, firefighters and paramedics by mobile phone

Read more: Emergency radio system back up and running in Detroit - Fox 2 News Headlines

 

[szron]

Does anyone know what really happened? There's a fallback site after all...

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[marcp90]

I assume the Detroit City Simulcast 701 went down. If that's the case than if they did not deny Detroit radios affiliation to the other towers (Northville, Southfield, Wayne County Simulcast and Grosse Pointe) they would still have communications. It would not be great service but at least it would be someting and not a total blackout.

 

[nsrailfan6130]

They (DPD & DFD) had been coming in off the Washtenaw Tower this morning.

 

[tilt404]

Not hearing anything on the fall back system or the detroit simulcast system still. So will try the Washtenaw. Got in Washtenaw now too along with the other two I mentioned. Silence is all I hear.

Finally hearing bit on detroit simul.

 

[Thunderbolt]

Apparently, Site 2-26 failed to activate for some reason. It's supposed to go live if Site 7-01 goes down for any reason. Hopefully, the fallback site will be repaired so if this does happen again, they will have some form of communications.

73's

Ron

 

[szron]

So much for having a fallback.

 

[Thunderbolt]

According to the new chief of police in Detroit. The fallback system failed, and it has never been tested to confirm if it works or not. Sounds like someone screwed up big time!

73's

Ron

 

[tilt404]

Saw that on the news today too. Hearing DPD on the Detroit City Simulcast now but they are still saying they are having trouble with the radios. Heard the Chief say if they would of tested it every 3 months or 6 or whatever this might not have happened. So guess it was never even tested. : (

Wonder if that would of been the radio tech's job?

 

[szron]

Now who's responsible? Who actually manages the site? City or MPSCS?

And why there's no failsoft? Simplex 800 frequencies or analog repeaters for stuff like that. I guess you shouldn't need it if you have fallback site but apparently fallback haven't been ever tested.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[SCPD]

Back to the basics

Maybe, after all the dust settles from getting this back up and running, Detroit should think about putting a simple one channel repeater up at each precinct.
A nice cheap effective backup.
Programmed into each radio, and only used when the "system" goes down.
Four or five repeaters, antennas, other than the programming, you'd have a nice little effective "backup" for under $20 grand.
Don't have to depend on computers and microwave links and any other score of things that could go wrong.

 

[Thunderbolt]

Now who's responsible? Who actually manages the site? City or MPSCS?

The city of Detroit is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of their radio system. They decided to network with the MPSCS, rather than being a stand alone system. Also, it gave Detroit the ability to tap into federal grant money under interoperability guidelines. More importantly, this gives their radios the ability to communicate throughout the Tri-County area, and the state of Michigan on select talkgroups.

One of the problems with testing the fallback system in Detroit, is that it uses the same frequencies as their regular site. To bring that system online to test it, would cause a lot of RFI, and block radio transmissions with the regular simulcast site, and vice versa. This would be a nightmare for subscriber radios in the field. The best thing the city of Detroit could do, is to use different frequencies in the 800 MHz spectrum for their fallback system, which isn't likely due to a shortage of frequency pairs in this band around Southeast Lower Michigan. However, there are plenty of frequency pairs available in the 700 MHz band they could use that would be fully compatible with their mobile and portable radios. This option sounds like the best plan in the long-run to me.

73's

Ron

 

[zz0468]

One of the problems with testing the fallback system in Detroit, is that it uses the same frequencies as their regular site. To bring that system online to test it, would cause a lot of RFI, and block radio transmissions with the regular simulcast site, and vice versa.

That's actually something that's easily managed under controlled test conditions. Shut down a few primary system channels, and turn up those frequencies on the backup system. Rotate through the next batch, lather, rinse, repeat, until the entire backup system has been tested.

 

[Gadgetmann]

The dispatch system went down around 5:30 a.m. Friday.

Sgt. Eren Stephens told Fox 2 that the sytem was back online and stable around 9 p.m. Friday.

A spokeswoman with Motorola Solutions says 9 of 10 antennae sites are up and running in stable condition. All 30 channels are also working fine.

But earlier in the day officers were forced to use their cell phones and land lines to communicate. Officers had to travel together to ensure safety, which led to delayed responses across the city.

"We lost total radio communications. We did not have radio communications for two hours," said Detroit Police Chief James Craig.

Huh? 5:30am to 9pm according to the Chief is 2 hours?

 

[kd8ati]

The dispatch system went down around 5:30 a.m. Friday.

Sgt. Eren Stephens told Fox 2 that the sytem was back online and stable around 9 p.m. Friday.

A spokeswoman with Motorola Solutions says 9 of 10 antennae sites are up and running in stable condition. All 30 channels are also working fine.

But earlier in the day officers were forced to use their cell phones and land lines to communicate. Officers had to travel together to ensure safety, which led to delayed responses across the city.

"We lost total radio communications. We did not have radio communications for two hours," said Detroit Police Chief James Craig.

Huh? 5:30am to 9pm according to the Chief is 2 hours?

I think that two hours was how long it took MPSCS to enable the Detroit radios on the surrounding non-detroit simulcast towers like Northville, Southfield, Flat Rock, and East Wayne, which they used for priority 1 calls.

 

[szron]

I seriously hope they didn't have to do OTA programming. Surrounding sites should have been in Detroit Radios from the get go. And two hours to enable that? I thought MPSCS command center is 24/7.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[mikey60]

The other sites are in the radios. They may have been trying to get the backup site up in that time, but when they couldn't do that, they enabled the other sites... Detroit will easily overload the other sites around the city if everything is allowed to operate there.

Mike

 

[drdispatch]

The city of Detroit is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of their radio system....

So, essentially they maintain their radio system with the same high standard of quality which they apply to the maintenance of their Fire Department fleet.

 

[Jimmy252]

So I'm currently hearing DPD dispatch talkgroups on the Northville tower. Is that because of the recent radio issue this past week, or is that something we should expect from now on?

 

[szron]

Wouldn't be surprised if they allowed affiliation on surrounding sites and just left it on so if a unit has better signal in Northville it's gonna happen.

I would think that left it on because they have no idea what happened with Detroit Simulcast and if it's gonna happen again.

I hope Detroit traffic won't overload surrounding sites too much.

//edit
see attached

ten bucks Detroit communications couldn't find the number to MPSCS and that's why it took so long

I'm mean