ad5kl
Member
That's one site that's being considered. The other being the Mountain View Heights apartment building.
Garland County/Hot Springs
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zenomorf
Member
tears of joy! i get to listen to them longer!
ad5kl
Member
Still no word about an alternate site to replace the HS Simulcast "rehab" site downtown. I haven't heard any test signals from the other 2 sites either.
ad5kl
Member
New game plan for the Hot Springs Simulcast system in today's Sentinel Record. Due to the ACTI (locals call it the Rehab building) closing in December, it is off the table as the site serving downtown & 70 East. That site will be replaced with 2 sites. The first new site is downtown, atop the Springs Hotel. It will have a fiber backhaul directly to the Hot Springs Police Dept. The second new site is the newly built tower near Magic Springs at Kelton & Grand. The original sites on Fox Pass & south of Oaklawn remain unchanged. So the Hot Springs Simulcast will now be a 4 site system instead of 3. Could be a year before it's operational.
4 sites... Better and worse
Magnetsteve
Member
Those two new site locations should greatly benefit the North and Eastern VFD's and ASP/SO in that area as well. Seems to be up Park toward 5/7 junction is quite a dead area.
No this is city system not county. County is already done and is AWIN. City of Hot Springs may go AWIN at a future date but not to begin with. They will have MOU etc and county will have use of it and vice versa. But this 4 tower simulcast is the new Hot Springs system. Garland County is already full time AWIN on its 3 tower simulcast.
Magnetsteve
Member
Actually, it is all AWIN. That came directly from someone associated with AWIN. Of course, it will require reprogramming on the county and state radios end to have it work with the new towers.
Magnetsteve
Member
Also, the FD's I spoke of were reassured that the new towers would help with their comms issues in the dead areas in the northeastern and eastern areas of the county. The dead areas are even addressed in the article below.
ACTI closure increases radio system cost, delays rollout - Hot Springs Sentinel Record , 11/3/2019
digital.olivesoftware.com
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As has been talked about all through this thread, there are two systems - the Hot Springs system (their own) and then the AWIN simulcast sites that went in that same area. Your "someone" was probably talking about the AWIN simulcast sites and not the separate HS system. @milf can correct me if I'm wrong but this is what has been said for awhile now.
Magnetsteve
Member
I understand! I have been following along the whole time and have seen it talked about. Just throwing my two cents in. Not trying to be argumentative at all.
That's fine, I was just pointing out that the Hot Springs System is not the same as the AWIN system. At least not according to anything I've seen. Sounds like your source was speaking about the actual AWIN sites going in, not the Hot Springs system. That was my point, not to say you are wrong just to not confuse one with the other.
ad5kl
Member
This was mentioned in the Sentinel Record article:
County Judge Darryl Mahoney told justices of the peace last month that the delayed rollout of the city’s communications system is affecting radio coverage north of the city.
A dead spot in the Fountain Lake area will persist until the city’s system goes live, Mahoney said. Sheriff’s deputies who recently worked the Fox Pass area under the grant the department received as part of its inclusion in the Selective Traffic Enforcement Program, which pays overtime deputies incur enforcing traffic laws, had no coverage on their handheld radios.
“The other morning they wrote 39 tickets in two hours,” Mahoney told JPs at last month’s budget hearing. “Once an officer gets out of the car, he has nothing. We’re going to get that corrected this year. When it comes to public safety, I want those portables to have 95% coverage.”
A communications tower on the ridgeline north of Fox Pass Cutoff hosts the northernmost node in the city’s microwave ring. Mahoney said he’s reached an agreement with the city that will allow the county to use equipment the city has on the tower, expanding radio coverage north until the city’s system comes online. In return, the county will pay the city’s lease on the tower, he said.
“We’ve secured an agreement with them to bring that one tower up,” he told JPs. “As long as we pay the lease, we can use their equipment.”
The county became a fulltime AWIN member last year after committing almost $6 million to its communications project, which included augmenting AWIN’s network by building communications towers on Ouachita Pinnacle Mountain north of Lake Ouachita and Pearcy Mountain in west Garland County.
County Judge Darryl Mahoney told justices of the peace last month that the delayed rollout of the city’s communications system is affecting radio coverage north of the city.
A dead spot in the Fountain Lake area will persist until the city’s system goes live, Mahoney said. Sheriff’s deputies who recently worked the Fox Pass area under the grant the department received as part of its inclusion in the Selective Traffic Enforcement Program, which pays overtime deputies incur enforcing traffic laws, had no coverage on their handheld radios.
“The other morning they wrote 39 tickets in two hours,” Mahoney told JPs at last month’s budget hearing. “Once an officer gets out of the car, he has nothing. We’re going to get that corrected this year. When it comes to public safety, I want those portables to have 95% coverage.”
A communications tower on the ridgeline north of Fox Pass Cutoff hosts the northernmost node in the city’s microwave ring. Mahoney said he’s reached an agreement with the city that will allow the county to use equipment the city has on the tower, expanding radio coverage north until the city’s system comes online. In return, the county will pay the city’s lease on the tower, he said.
“We’ve secured an agreement with them to bring that one tower up,” he told JPs. “As long as we pay the lease, we can use their equipment.”
The county became a fulltime AWIN member last year after committing almost $6 million to its communications project, which included augmenting AWIN’s network by building communications towers on Ouachita Pinnacle Mountain north of Lake Ouachita and Pearcy Mountain in west Garland County.
ad5kl
Member
Apparently the county is going to temporarily lease the city's Fox Pass tower & frequencies until the city simulcast goes live. It will be interesting to see how they handle this, since they are two totally different systems. They will either set it up similar to how they setup an AWIN SOW or just set it up as the new city system - but with only one site. Fountain Lake is in a valley & the county's Blowout site is shadowed by the Fox Pass ridge line. This should fill the void nicely.
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The CC's are already in codeplug so all that's left is for it to go live. Then we will see what the data says. SysID will tell the tale. They put it in the codeplug when they programmed the radios for the county switch. They must have changed plans around then as AWIN committee folks said Hot Springs was not going AWIN but would get interior tg's for use with ASP and GCSO.
Both system are in the radios for city and county just like how we do it with the 4 IDPS systems and SAFE-T and vice versa
Hope that makes sense . I can show you how an IFEMS radio is set up so you understand the way you can do proper zone arangement.
ad5kl
Member
That makes more sense. The city can go live as a one site system temporarily & light up all their talkgroups, including interop with Garland County & ASP. Hopefully an interop talkgroup for Fire is also in there.
ad5kl
Member
ad5kl
Member
Heard some control channel data chatter today on the Fox Pass site. It was full scale as I passed the tower. I didn't hear any voice comms. Hope the other sites light up soon if they haven't already. Frequency heard was 772.99375 which is one of the seven listed on the license.
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