Farmington Hills, MI - New radio system helps in armed robbery arrest

[Thunderbolt]

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. -- It was the first true test of Oakland County's new inter-operable radio system — and it passed.

New radio system helps in armed robbery arrest | hometownlife.com | the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers and Hometown Weeklies

 

[mm]

Your telling me that after 19 years they finally figured it out ?

I mean come on now, it took close to 2 decades for the wiz bang system engineers of both cities to come up with the 800 MHz, 100 million dollar, equivalent to what we called in the good old days an adjacent agency/city channel.

The old VHF high band system that Farmington Hills had back in the 70' and thereafter the 420MHz system that they had recently was entirely capable of doing the same thing that the open sky system is capable of today but only if the bright system engineers had a lick of sense and the adjacent agencies weren't so protective of there infrastructure back in the good old days.

They make it sound like 800 MHz O S and for that matter any digital trunking system is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

10's of millions of dollars to do what a single 30 thousand dollar inter-agency repeater channel/channels could also do.

Sorry for the rant I was just venting my frustration for public safety agencies purchasing useless Multi-million dollar systems to replace perfectly capable VHF and UHF systems when money is drying up.

Mike

 

[EC-7]

MM, I agree completely.
The make it sound like something new, when it WAS capable for many years, until they tried to re-invent the wheel. The only thing they have been doing is throwing millions of $$ on something that was less capable of what they used to have. The only real gain was more talkgroups and mult-site tunking, but they lost the more important features, such as paging and inter agency channels or linking.

But then again, nobody listens to common since anymore, and since the big radio guys are just in bed with the Govt, they can do a little song and dance and sell a piece of poo to any sucker.

“For the first time in my 19 years, we were able to communicate directly with another department on a critical operation which afforded all involved the benefit of real-time information and contributed to a seamless operation.”
This is a VERY SCARY statement in todays law enforcement world.

 

[mm]

Yep you have it right on the money,

With the govt grants to purchase 700/800 systems and dealers pushing that every public safety agency needs P25, 700/800 MHz trunking it's a wonder that anyone has any money left to buy tires and gas for their patrol cars.

The dealers never told the agencies that after the subsidies helped them put the infrastructure in and after the installs were complete they would have to shell out their own taxpayer money to keep these systems running.

As a designer of P25 avionics radios I know first hand what a rip off 700/800 trunking systems are, not to mention how bad all of the DVSI codecs sound, they are all outright crap and they have convinced every newbee system Engineer and Public safety administrator that P25 has outstanding audio and that if you don't have a P25 trunking system then the crooks and terrorist will take over.

If it was so great then why are the FBI, National Guard and some of the other federal agencies refusing to jump on the P25 trunking bandwagon and sticking with a mix of analog encrypted along with a small mix of digital conventional wideband systems.

I have heard Motorola, MaCom, Kenwood, Icom and Thales dealers first hand tell little fire departments that they are required to purchase P25 equipment by the end of this year or they will have their frequencies shut down by the FCC.

Out here in Wacko Arizona I have seen first hand little 2 and 3 crew Volunteer fire departments purchasing $2000 P25 radios, on Govt. taxpayer funded grants, thinking that they needed to do this just so that they could keep their single channel station license.

No one out here except for Forest service, Border patrol (what a joke they are being 9 to 5 workers Monday thru Friday only, and an answering machine on weekends) and the Metro Phoenix PD agencies are the only ones dumb enough to use P25 700/800 trunking, fortunately most Fire departments told the trunking salesmen to Sc#$w off.

The dealers and the MFG's are right out lying just to make a sale and the losers are only us taxpayers.

One big selling point that some dealers out here were making on P25 trunking was text messaging but even this is so flaky in operation and set up that no one seems to be using it on their 100 million dollar systems.

Lets see, several keystrokes to get into the messaging menu then another 10 or so just to send the message on a Motorola XTS5000, well a dyslexic no handed CW operator can send code faster than P25 text messaging.

OK rant off for now, EX Detroit and Farmington native
WB8VLC/7 in Wacko Northern Arizona

 

[tencom]

Yep you have it right on the money,

With the govt grants to purchase 700/800 systems and dealers pushing that every public safety agency needs P25, 700/800 MHz trunking it's a wonder that anyone has any money left to buy tires and gas for their patrol cars.

The dealers never told the agencies that after the subsidies helped them put the infrastructure in and after the installs were complete they would have to shell out their own taxpayer money to keep these systems running.

As a designer of P25 avionics radios I know first hand what a rip off 700/800 trunking systems are, not to mention how bad all of the DVSI codecs sound, they are all outright crap and they have convinced every newbee system Engineer and Public safety administrator that P25 has outstanding audio and that if you don't have a P25 trunking system then the crooks and terrorist will take over.

If it was so great then why are the FBI, National Guard and some of the other federal agencies refusing to jump on the P25 trunking bandwagon and sticking with a mix of analog encrypted along with a small mix of digital conventional wideband systems.

I have heard Motorola, MaCom, Kenwood, Icom and Thales dealers first hand tell little fire departments that they are required to purchase P25 equipment by the end of this year or they will have their frequencies shut down by the FCC.

Out here in Wacko Arizona I have seen first hand little 2 and 3 crew Volunteer fire departments purchasing $2000 P25 radios, on Govt. taxpayer funded grants, thinking that they needed to do this just so that they could keep their single channel station license.

No one out here except for Forest service, Border patrol (what a joke they are being 9 to 5 workers Monday thru Friday only, and an answering machine on weekends) and the Metro Phoenix PD agencies are the only ones dumb enough to use P25 700/800 trunking, fortunately most Fire departments told the trunking salesmen to Sc#$w off.

The dealers and the MFG's are right out lying just to make a sale and the losers are only us taxpayers.

One big selling point that some dealers out here were making on P25 trunking was text messaging but even this is so flaky in operation and set up that no one seems to be using it on their 100 million dollar systems.

Lets see, several keystrokes to get into the messaging menu then another 10 or so just to send the message on a Motorola XTS5000, well a dyslexic no handed CW operator can send code faster than P25 text messaging.

OK rant off for now, EX Detroit and Farmington native
WB8VLC/7 in Wacko Northern Arizona

Can you then explain if P25 Digital is so bad then why is the cellular telephone Industry, sticking with digital? I myself don't hear many complaints, coming from Cellular users, and cellular switched years ago from analog to digital.

 

[rdale]

Can you then explain if P25 Digital is so bad then why is the cellular telephone Industry, sticking with digital? I myself don't hear many complaints, coming from Cellular users, and cellular switched years ago from analog to digital.

Before asking that question - you should realize that 1) cell towers don't use P25 and 2) THERE ARE HUNDREDS MORE CELL TOWERS THAN FIRE RADIO TOWERS.

As a reminder to how your comparison is totally invalid - read point #2 again

 

[radioman2001]

It's Tuesday, but feels like Monday, and I just had to jump in on this one, since I don't feel much like working. I had one of our supervisors come in to pick up his portable, he is responsible to ensure that the train cars we use for a commuter rail system are in spec (he is the FRA inspector as well). When we asked him does he see a lot of radio problems with the car's his answer is NO. Years ago he said it was a problem, but not now. SO here is the answer to every body's question as to why narrow band and digital. Radio's manufactured in the last 2 -3 decades don't break, no more tubes, dyna motors and vibrators that wear out.
The radio manufacturers say to them selves and the FCC how do we get rid of all those perfectly good radios (the manufacturers now have the FCC in their pocket, courtesy of George W. who I regret now having voted for) and force the consumers whether they be public safety or not buy new radios and keep them in business? Make them go narrow band!! This whole exercise is nothing but a scam to keep the radio manufacturers in fat city. With narrow band in the VHF 150-170 mhz band there will be NO, NONE, ZIPPO additional channels created, UHF 450-512 went 12.5 kc spacing 15 years ago, so again no additional channels. Now that the FCC has gotten everybody in the replacement mode for radio equipment every 10 years or so, now lets now make them go ultra narrow which requires digital.
Any manufacturer that states you must go digital by 2013 should be barred from doing business with that agency for 10 years, then maybe they will change their tune. Oh you say lets go ultra narrow 10 years early so we don't have to in 2020, would you buy a computer today for a mandate in 2020? The radios of today are basically a computer. Think about that one.
When you try to compare cell phones and public safety radios you can't. Cell phones are market driven, meaning the provider wants to get the most out of his spectrum. Replacing phones every 2-3 years mean they can introduce new technologies at will and migrate the users in it. (BTW you pay for it every month in your bill) With public safety you have to use technology that's proven and is backward compatable and will work with other systems. There is no 2-3 year turnover of equipment, most departments are happy when they get new equipment every 20 years. Mainly since that's when it needs to be replaced due to age and lack of parts.