Charlottesville-Albemarle Update

[BlueMoon2]

Hello Everyone,

I thought that I would give everyone an update on the status of things as I know in Charlottesville-Albemarle. One of the battalion chiefs for Charlottesville Fire Department was complaining that the scanner in the office, was 'scratchy' all the time, so I offered to fix it for him.

I did fix it for him and gained some information while I was there. As I have said in the past, CECC and other departments are in the process of upgrading their CAD system. I found out that hopefully sometime around April 19, 2015, all frontline apparatus will be outfitted with the new world mobile cad system.

What this will mean, is that in the scanner world, you will only hear Fire/Rescue Dispatch dispatching the call, and the on scene report from the first arriving unit. All other traffic (enroute, other units on scene, inservice, in quarters) will be by way of the Mobile MDTs.

Also, the new APX portable radios have been programmed and placed inservice on all frontline apparatus.

You should see the new Engine 5 and Engine 7 inservice by the end of the month. They are still outfitting them with equipment. The new fire engines are designed to make it a lot easier on the firefighters to offload hose, tools, etc. They are very nice, I took an up close look at them!

All I know for now. It's kind of sad to reminisce that a lot of the guys that were around when I grew up in the fire house, are retiring or about to retire. Many of the new guys, I have no clue who they are. The times they are a changing in more ways than one!

 

[BlueMoon2]

Update: RFP procured!

According to the Albemarle.org/ procurements site, Albemarle county has procured a contract with AECOM Technology Solutions for examining the current Motorola 800 Mhz Smartzone 4.1 system they have.

From looking at the RFP, it appears they want AECOM to examine the current system, see how well it's working, if there's a need to add any additional towers and upgrade equipment. I believe that I had heard that Albemarle County wants to take down the Bucks Elbow tower and put up a new one. This could be very good news for the local amateur radio community! Put up a new repeater up there!

Attached, you will see one of the addendums for this RFP.

Here is the website for AECOM
http://www.aecom.com/solutions/

Looks promising! More as I know it!

 

[BoxAlarm187]

What this will mean, is that in the scanner world, you will only hear Fire/Rescue Dispatch dispatching the call, and the on scene report from the first arriving unit. All other traffic (enroute, other units on scene, inservice, in quarters) will be by way of the Mobile MDTs.

When my fire agency went to MDT's several years ago, we implemented a similar policy. We significantly reduced our radio traffic (which was well needed) for both fire and EMS calls. We quickly found that for significant incidents, the radio traffic was still our lifeline to reduce confusion and have a seamless incident.

What it boiled down to was a win-win for scanner listeners: don't have to listen to the random patient updates for the EMS calls, which means a better chance of catching the radio traffic for that working fire.