Luzerne county 911 upgrades

[WB3DYE]

Luzerne County 911 is upgrading its radio system. It will improve communications with the center and first responders- especially those responders in remote areas of the county. The I-Team’s Andy Mehalshick has the story

"It really comes down to public safety,” said Luzerne County Manager Dave Pedri. *And that's the bottom-line. So say Luzerne County officials. The current radio dispatch system--which uses what's called an analog system is more than 20 years old and must be replaced with a digital system.
Hazleton Fire Chief Don Leshko says the analog system must go.



https://www.pahomepage.com/news/luzerne-county-looks-to-upgrade-9-1-1-system/1644675928

Here is the consults report.

https://www.luzernecounty.org/Docum...-County-911--Radio-System-Report-Final?bidId=

 

[gardner5236]

Good information. Thank you.

 

[Twister_2]

I read through the consultant's findings. They suggest a single band P25 Phase II system on VHF - multi zone simulcast. They want to consolidate some of the police / fire zones too.

Police TGs would be as follows:
WBPD Disp,
WBPD Ops,
County Wide PD Disp (this doesn't make sense to me),
County Wide PD Ops,
4 zoned PD Ops Channels,
and each agency would have access to 2 low powered encrypted private channels not monitored by 911. The report specifically calls for low powered, suggesting simplex, but I don't see that happening. I've only ever seen agencies with encrypted TGs on the system.

Fire TGs would be as follows:
WBFD Disp
WBFD Ops
County Wide FD Ops
A County Wide Analog Dispatch Channel/Frequency
5 zoned FD Ops Channels
They mentioned FD will have the same access to 2 low powered encrypted channels.

EMS TGs would be as follows:
County Wide VHF analog Disp Channel/Freq
County Wide EMS ops
2 low powered encrypted channels.

I find it intriguing that the report suggests keeping a VHF analog dispatch system when the first half of the report lays down the coverage and interference problems that exist. I will be very surprised if there isn't a dispatch talkgroup on the TRS. No mentions of alpha numeric paging that I remember.

Grand total is $19M and a completion date of December 2020 is suggested. It also says the county should have awarded a contract by the end of this month, too. We shall see if any of this happens on time.

 

[Septa3371CSX1]

Are they looking at building out their own system or piggybacking onto the new State system?

 

[Twister_2]

There was no mention of piggy backing onto the state system. This report is 3 years old now so things can always have changed but it specifically talked about building their very own system.

 

[One13Truck]

I'm dreading this. This county can't do anything right. The only thing wrong with the current analog system is the people running it. Fortunately I think it will be quite a while before this is off the ground. As far as I know of course they aren't piggybacking on the state system because that would be the wise thing to do.

 

[One13Truck]

I'll have to ask around about those TGs being accurate. It's been a while since I ran any calls so I'm not up to date on the latest but you are 100% correct in saying there would be no way they could make that work with the TGs listed as they are. They will need at least a few more police and fire/ems TGs to prevent chaos of 20 people trying to use the same TG at the same time.

As for the County-wide analog dispatch channel? I would assume they will keep the current one that is in place for voice paging for the entire county. I know the current analog ops channels are very limited to the regions they serve in the county but the dispatch channel booms. I've picked it up out by state college and also not far outside of Philly and Harrisburg so the dispatch channel works nicely. Maybe there are dead spots somewhere but I haven't been anywhere in the County that I have not been able to pick it up loud and clear. I can't say the same for the ops channels though.

I'm pretty sure alpha paging is a dead thing here in the county. Or at least I hope so!!!! Back in the 90's when everyone was being forced over to the county 911 system they were pushing for everyone to drop voice paging and go with alpha paging. A few places did. A few carried over existing alpha paging and moved it to the county dispatch. It was a nightmare. Garbled pages, missing pages, departments would get their pages minutes, hours, sometimes DAYS after the pages went out. Most places got frustrated pretty quickly and either used voice pager monitoring as a backup to hear mutual aid companies get dispatched or just dropped the alpha paging completely and switched back to voice paging full time. I'm sure in the years since the technology has improved greatly but it left such a bad taste in everyone's mouths I can't imagine anyone would be in much of a hurry to try it out again any time soon. Besides, voice paging is way better anyway. I can hit my button and replay the page while responding any time I want and not have to get distracted by reading the pager.

 

[KC3ECJ]

Would fire companies in neighboring counties, such as Lackawanna, get radios too?

How the heck does that work?

 

[Twister_2]

Would fire companies in neighboring counties, such as Lackawanna, get radios too?

How the heck does that work?

A few ways. Some counties (like Dauphin and Lancaster) are both on the same band so mutual aid companies have each other county's system in a separate zone. Becoming more popular is the apx8000 which will allow mutual aid companies to communicate on neighboring counties on a separate band all together. Finally, patches are still popular, especially if one county has a TRS and the other doesn't. If I had to guess, mutual aid will first be over patches THEN eventually all band radios like the apx8000.

 

[One13Truck]

Well that should be fun. Luzerne County can't handle normal transmissions now and it's all VHF. I can't wait to see the hot mess of patch attempts that start happening.