Firstnet in Benton county and SARA usage / problems

[chris451rr]

I talked to a volunteer firefighter about radios and dispatching for fire in Benton county.
I said I don't hear them on there much at all even when I know something is going on..
He said they mostly use their personal phones (if compatible) to communicate, text or voice.
They enabled a special band in his personal phone probably Firstnet band 14(AT&T), its activated in the area.
He can hear the fire/ems dispatches on his phone and stream as needed through an app the county is using.
They usually don't have a $5000 portable Harris radio because of loss or damage they don't get sent home with them. When they are on a scene he says there is a problem they always seem to have, portable radios don't work in proximity to other units, so the tower hears them but they don't hear each other. What do you think, De-sense and not enough RF filtering? Go to dual band? Mobile repeaters? Different tachnology?
They have pagers and the pages also come out on this app.
No problem with the 5g phones, they only transmit pulses at the lowest possible power in a time slot, two phones a few feet apart is not a problem.
This app appears to be patched through to their talkgroup.
He says the phone works better but they still keep the SARA radios in case phones go down.
They keep buying a different system and set of radios and still have this unsolved radios don't work problem.
Maybe its meant to be unsolved so they have to buy the next radio.

 

[mmckenna]

I talked to a volunteer firefighter about radios and dispatching for fire in Benton county.
I said I don't hear them on there much at all even when I know something is going on..
He said they mostly use their personal phones (if compatible) to communicate, text or voice.
They enabled a special band in his personal phone probably Firstnet band 14(AT&T), its activated in the area.
He can hear the fire/ems dispatches on his phone and stream as needed through an app the county is using.
They usually don't have a $5000 portable Harris radio because of loss or damage they don't get sent home with them. When they are on a scene he says there is a problem they always seem to have, portable radios don't work in proximity to other units, so the tower hears them but they don't hear each other. What do you think, De-sense and not enough RF filtering? Go to dual band? Mobile repeaters? Different tachnology?

Hard to diagnose without having the radios in front of us and looking at the programming.

If the channel is simplex, then it can be desense.
If the channel is repeated, it may be that the TX and RX frequencies are too close together and it's desensing.
Might be a programming error.

Buying new equipment should be the absolute last step. This is the sort of issue where they need an experienced radio tech to look at the setup. Way too easy for someone who has no clue to start throwing money at an issue without knowing what they are trying to solve. A trained/experience tech (a -real- tech, not a ham, not a hobbyist, not advice off a hobby website) would be well worth the investment to look at the entire setup from end to end. It may be a simple fix.

They keep buying a different system and set of radios and still have this unsolved radios don't work problem.
Maybe its meant to be unsolved so they have to buy the next radio.

This is a red flag.
Peoples lives are on the line, and randomly buying equipment rather than hiring a professional is going to get someone killed.