Earlier today I had the chance to socialize briefly with a Fairfield PD officer, who also happens to be their radio system expert. When he realized I was the ham with the big antenna array he passes daily he was quite happy to discuss their system at some length. At the moment the've removed all the 800 MHz radios from their cruisers and they've been replaced with compact Motorola 700 MHz radios on NJPSIC (which I referred to by name), and they have a separate VHF Hi-band radio for SPEN.
Not all radios have the second talkgroup installed, but they hope to have this completed shortly. They will be using encryption on the second talkgroup but he wasn't sure if it was planned to be full-time or part-time. I recall talking to a different Fairfield official two years ago, after one of their officers was shot in the line of duty and badly wounded, and he indicated that the brass were livid that the media had gotten certain details off the radio, so they wanted the ability to keep private matters private.
The general consensus amongst his fellow officers, from what I gathered, is that the PSIC radios are orders of magnitude better than their old repeatered 800 MHz conventional system, which apparently was having transmitter link problems that Verizon was unable to fix to the department's satisfaction.
One other tidbit he mentioned is that the PD has donated the old 800 MHz radios to the township for works and roads crews, which will replace their existing 45 MHz VHF-Low system later this year.
One final note, he stated that they're hoping to equip their cruisers with BC536 mobile scanners to receive neighbouring departments on incompatible systems. It's interesting monitoring things in this part of the county: West Caldwell, Caldwell, North Caldwell and Roseland are on conventional systems (VHF-Hi and UHF), Verona is on 470 MHz EDACS-Narrow, Fairfield is on NJPSIC, Wayne is on a 500 MHz P25 conventional system, the state PD is on both 800 analog and 700 digital, and the Morris County is a mix of conventional and trunked, analog and Phase-I P-25 systems. All this within about a 10 mile radius! They've given up any remote attempt at true Interop on anything other than the VHF SPEN channels.
My thanks to this good gent from Fairfield.
Not all radios have the second talkgroup installed, but they hope to have this completed shortly. They will be using encryption on the second talkgroup but he wasn't sure if it was planned to be full-time or part-time. I recall talking to a different Fairfield official two years ago, after one of their officers was shot in the line of duty and badly wounded, and he indicated that the brass were livid that the media had gotten certain details off the radio, so they wanted the ability to keep private matters private.
The general consensus amongst his fellow officers, from what I gathered, is that the PSIC radios are orders of magnitude better than their old repeatered 800 MHz conventional system, which apparently was having transmitter link problems that Verizon was unable to fix to the department's satisfaction.
One other tidbit he mentioned is that the PD has donated the old 800 MHz radios to the township for works and roads crews, which will replace their existing 45 MHz VHF-Low system later this year.
One final note, he stated that they're hoping to equip their cruisers with BC536 mobile scanners to receive neighbouring departments on incompatible systems. It's interesting monitoring things in this part of the county: West Caldwell, Caldwell, North Caldwell and Roseland are on conventional systems (VHF-Hi and UHF), Verona is on 470 MHz EDACS-Narrow, Fairfield is on NJPSIC, Wayne is on a 500 MHz P25 conventional system, the state PD is on both 800 analog and 700 digital, and the Morris County is a mix of conventional and trunked, analog and Phase-I P-25 systems. All this within about a 10 mile radius! They've given up any remote attempt at true Interop on anything other than the VHF SPEN channels.
My thanks to this good gent from Fairfield.
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