Charlotte, NC - Radio system used by police, fire crashed with overload from CMS

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karldotcom

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Are they saying that all the buses turned their radios on at once, and the affiliations overran the data channel causing some fire calls to get bonks? is this the Motorola or P25 system listed in the database?
 

Jay911

Silent Key (April 15th, 2023)
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Have you ever listened to school bus drivers? Probably there were 35 drivers trying to talk on 8 voice channels about dozens of inane, irrelevant topics.
 

radioman2001

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I am trying to figure out the comment that" unusual for system to have this kind of problems since it's so well maintained" What's maintianence got to do with it. The system was overloaded, and yes on the first day of school all the bus drivers are looking for lost kids, or kids looking for their bus. Seems like a little redesign of the system is in order. Like keeping the other than P.S. agencies to only half of the voice channels. This shows now what happens when whoever sold the system didn't understand the usage and channel loading. That's why in most towns villages etc have separate radio systems.
 

monitor142

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Sounds to me like the managers of this system need to take a very heavy look at the Shared User Group settings on the back end. PD and FD need priority no matter what. The buses are critical infrastructure and they need to have less physical RF channels available at any given time and they need to be a 6-8 on the Priority User Queue. Somebody probably left too many settings in default leaving the guns and hoses competing at the same level as the buses.

My 3 cents.

-M142
 

SCPD

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Let this be a lesson to any agency considering putting their Board of Education on the same P25 trunked radio system as their public safety agencies, DON'T DO IT ! Most use interoperability as justification for putting their school system on same trunk radio system as their EMA, EMS, Fire, Police, Sheriff, etc., but one must take a hard look at how often they really need to communicate with personnel within the school system. Most public safety agencies won't even need to talk to school system employees via radio more than once or twice a year, so why spend mega dollars spending $3,000 to $4,000 per school bus to put a P25 trunked radio in them when there are much more economical and sensible ways to make interoperability happen when needed.
 

Jay911

Silent Key (April 15th, 2023)
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I would suspect when a county is told "If you buy system XYZ and put all your people from the fire trucks all the way down to the museum janitors on it, you won't have to have separate infrastructure for all your agencies, and you're saving $", they believe it.

I wholeheartedly agree that public safety should not be on the same system as anything else. There have been so many examples of how this is a bad idea - including one I recall from somewhere in the USA about 10 years ago. The fire department chief officers used iDEN phones (Nextels) for their "chat channel" i.e. command and control establishment and operation. During a major incident, the public jammed up the cellular "lines", rendering their command channel completely inoperative.

Another example from quite near me - a local town used to have a 3 frequency MPT1327 system (1 CC, 2 voice channels) on which they had their fire department, ambulance service, bylaw, public works, and etc. There was no priority configuration (at least, that I am aware of) for the fire/EMS users. It was not uncommon for an incident where both agencies were involved (say, a car crash) for at least one agency to constantly get "bonked" when trying to use the system, because public works was nattering constantly, or worse yet, a phone patch was on so somebody could contact their wife and chat from their work truck.
 

procopper7005

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Motorola has one hell of a sales force. They talked this county into shelling out millions more so school buses could have 4 thousand dollars radios.
A VHF radio system would have worked perfectly and did work perfectly. Want interop? Just patch it to the TRS.
More tax dollars wasted and it still doesnt even work.
 

yardbird

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What needs to happen to fix this problem is:

1. Put the school system one a seperate system. (Maybe Uhf like fire & police were years ago)

2. Leave the schools and the transit buses and other non-public safety uses on the old analog 800 Mhz system.

3. Switch all fire and police to the new P25 Digital 800 Mhz system.

But there is going to be the same problem with the new P25 digital system as well. Cabarrus Co. is fixing to become a part of the Mecklenburg P25 system just like Union County has. That means more radios both mobiles & portables.

I mean 800 Mhz is great, but eventually it is going to go into system overload if more and more radios are added.

I see the same thing happening with Viper very soon.

Look at the Database for Char/Meck on the 800 Mhz analog system. Heck every agency in Char/Meck has at least one talkgroup on the sytem. Some of them are not really considered public safety. (ie. the transit system, schools etc).

Just my thoughts.

David
 

lucas2121

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Back when I lived in Charlotte the system seemed to work and sound great, even outside of the county.
I don't know how it is now but if its anything like it was its great...When I lived there though the school bus drivers had HORRIBLE radio eddicate so I can only imagine what its like now.
 
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