Decisions, and why radio shops make them difficult

[Drachen_Fire]

I am currently in a place I'd rather not be in.....

I own an active paratransit company that is beginning to see expansion, uptick in business, and the need for a dispatcher. Likewise, our ambulance side has been grinding along, not finding much luck in medical direction, but that luck may soon change. Bottom line is that our old system was only being used for day-to-day chatter between company officers, and now, we will be handling service communications.

In our early days, we have been using a UHF community repeater leased from a small radio shop. After the shop owner narrowbanded our channel, in June or so, the signal went to pot. We can't access the repeater from our dispatch base. The terrain is western PA, with many mountains and valleys. The repeater is about 18 miles away over rough terrain. Whereas before, it was difficult to use the system with a portable, now not even our base works, and mobiles are spotty at best.

This situation is really irking the crap out of me.

Enter.....other radio shops. We cannot afford to place our own system on the air. There are no more community repeaters, and no more conventional anything. My business is being courted by two radio shops to replace our provider.

Right off the bat, I'm ruling out push-to-talk phones. I feel that PTT phones in a business like this one are lazy, a distraction, and are more expensive in the long run.

Staley Communications is offering the TriConnex system. Right off the bat, the first salesman they sent me knew nothing about the system at all. He couldn't answer any questions, dropped off the most ghettotastic beat-up MotoTRBO demo set I've ever seen, and left. Over a week later, I took the demo set back, to an office that had no idea it was gone. They had fired my salesman. The new salesman is much better, much more technically literate, and far easier to deal with. He also went over the ins and outs of the system with me. I would be locked into specific lines of TRBO gear, the XPR6550, XPR7550, XPR4350, XPR4550, and XPR5550, all with Connect Plus option boards (which are insanely expensive). Needless to say, the TriConnex system is superb, but I'd be stuck with Motorola, and I'd be stuck buying NEW Motorola.

Next up, Mobile Radio Service is offering two different systems. I've normal business with them, but they have been very slow on the uptake. I contacted both shops on the same day. While my demo on TriConnex has been over with for two weeks, I have yet to receive the demo set for either of MRS' systems. MRS is offering a narrowbanded UHF LTR analog system, and a UHF LTR NXDN digital system. According to the salesman himself, coverage for where I need to go is going to be "spotty" and won't play well with portables on the analog system, with stated coverage being better for the NXDN system, which is currently being built-out.

Why do radio shops make these decisions insanely difficult, and why is everyone so lazy about taking my money? I've never seen demos come in so slow, I've never seen people so unconcerned with making a sale, and I've never seen coverage for so many systems suck so badly.

 

[W8RMH]

I worked for an ambulance company that ran several dozen units at a time over 5 cities in Ohio and everything was done with cellphones. It worked very well and they were able to record all communications.

 

[rapidcharger]

Why do radio shops make these decisions insanely difficult,

It doesn't really sound like they're making the decision difficult. It sounds like either they don't have anything to offer you that will perform well where you want to use it or they do but you don't want to pay the price for the equipment.

The PTT cellular option is going to be a smaller upfront investment but obviously there needs to be a salesperson to take you out to lunch and show you how you'll have a relatively short ROI buying new TRBO equipment compared to the recurring cell phones bills. Why isn't there one? I can only speculate but can understand your frustration. That's the fun of being the boss.

You might look into a mobile gateway or something like MOTOTRBO anywhere.

 

[SCPD]

I wonder what the issue is with the community repeater?
I'm assuming all your radios are narrowband of course.
Shouldn't of really attenuated the signal.
Wonder if your vendor missed something when he narrowbanded his machine.

 

[DisasterGuy]

How large of an area do you need to cover? Will the ambulance side of the business be emergency scene response or just routine transport (ie do you really need portable coverage)? Depending on all of this, if you can cover your service area with a single site your best option may be to roll your own. Either simplex low band or your own DMR could be options depending on your particulars.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[DaveNF2G]

You talk about narrowbanding like it was something done to someone else's radios and not yours. When the radio shop "narrowbanded [y]our channel" did they reprogram or replace all of your mobiles and portables and whatever you were using as a base station? If they did not, then the radios you are using are out of compliance with FCC regulations and should be taken off the air. (You might also want to have a serious conversation with whoever owns the radio shop in question about restitution.)

 

[Drachen_Fire]

I personally reprogrammed our radios to be 12.5KHz. All of our gear was wide/narrow compliant. The owner of the FB6 repeater narrowbanded his repeater, and after that, dead air. It will still work if I use it from a mobile, on a mountaintop, within 10 miles of the repeater. I'm thinking either his feedline got some water in it, or he threw a much less powerful repeater up, or he didn't tune the duplexer in the new repeater (he told me point-blank that the old repeater would have to be replaced for narrowbanding). The fact that he wound up doing this 6 months after the deadline is also kind of a red flag.

Also (and no, I'm not proud of it) after the repeater's utter failure, I stopped paying for the service, and we stopped using it a while ago. I'm not going to pay for something that doesn't work.

 

[rapidcharger]

A lot of folks have reported drastically reduced coverage after narrowbanding. This is not an isolated case.

DiasasterGuy asked some great questions.

 

[ElroyJetson]

Ideally, narrowbanding should NOT cause a loss of coverage. In fact you should get slightly MORE range after narrowbanding.

But we do not live in an ideal world.

Many of the radios in use today use ceramic filters that have a known corrosion issue resulting in anything from a moderate to a total loss of RX sensitivity.

Many radios also use a circuit topology that switches the narrowband filter into the circuit in addition to the filter used for wideband operation. This means you get more insertion loss, from two filters rather than just one. This equates to a reduction in sensitivity.


Some radios have been affected by the bad ceramic filter issue to such a point that entire production
runs are affected and every radio made in those lots may be expected to have the filters fail.

A perfect example is the low-end Motorola/Mag One BPR40, which is my absolute least favorite radio on the planet, hands down. (I would never recommend one to anyone for any reason.) I've repaired literally hundreds if not more than a thousand of them, all with the filter issue.

It's easy to see what happens. Pop the cover off the filter and the elements are covered with green corrosion. The filters have poor hermetic sealing (actually the term is not merited) and were stored in a humid environment after manufacture. This is a well known problem.

Usually it's the narroband filter that's affected, but I've seen bad wideband filters, too.

 

[Drachen_Fire]

I've checked internals. The radio fleet beforehand was one Kenwood TK8180, one Kenwood TK880, two Motorola CDM1250s, a Motorola CM300, a Motorola PM400, and five Motorola HT1250s. None of them had any filter issues, and all were properly aligned. The TK880 lost it's internal battery a few months ago, so I pulled it from service, but everything else is fine.

 

[Drachen_Fire]

How large of an area do you need to cover?

Both the current WCV and the future ambulance will cover about a 30 mile radius around our station. The wheelchair van routinely goes out to Erie, Indiana County, and New Castle. I'm aware of only one system that will cover that, and it's the TriConnex system.

Will the ambulance side of the business be emergency scene response or just routine transport (ie do you really need portable coverage)?

It will be a transport service primarily, with emergency contracts at nursing and other medical facilities. In future years, we may assume EMS contracts with local boroughs, and for that, we would be on the county's system. The idea that transport services don't need portables just doesn't jive with me. While on down-time, my crews will be at the station, or getting something to eat...as long as the crews are in the local area, I really don't care where they are. Having a portable would allow freedom from the truck. I've worked for services that park helpless crews in a truck on a street corner for 16 hours. I won't be one of them. Also, the three chiefs would need portables to ensure smooth operations when not on a truck.

Depending on all of this, if you can cover your service area with a single site your best option may be to roll your own. Either simplex low band or your own DMR could be options depending on your particulars.

I've thought about it, but I don't think I can. Tower space is insanely expensive. I have no problem dropping $1500 on an IDAS UHF repeater, and I was going to put up a low band base at the station for tone-paging, but paying some greasy TV guy $3k a month to have a repeater on his tower doesn't sit well with me.