open sky
we have been on it for about a month now, ......my first complaint is its hard to understand it seems like almost everybody sounds muffled. BUT it doesnt seem to happen all the time, BUT it is harder to understand traffic, to me its sounds like the sepaker in my talkie is cracked. We have frequent incidents where people are just flat out unintelligible. The talkies we use are P7200 and when you turn vol down it goes to MUTE mode prior to the off click, well in the last phase of low volume it seems like theres no adjustment between too loud and Mute......Road guys say that when their on a call talking to somebody and turn the vol down a little its almost impossible to turn the radio down a little it jumps to eaisly to MUTE.
Fire Depts:and let me say this Fire doesnt use their radio much for everyday Traffic its like no traffic or shouting at a fire scene, well if your hollering on this it makes the muffling/obermodulated sound alot worse so what you get is unintelligible. Unless something recently has happened the MaCom mobiles havnt been able to be hooked up to the headsets in the Fire Trucks so thats another problem.
MaCom is here and their still working on it but Ive read so much on line about NewYork and other Open Sky situations Im afraid that the articles Ive read are right that Open Sky isnt good for Public Safety and is better left for apps like Federal Express which is what I heard it was originally designed for. The P7200 talkies are very heavy, I work in a unit that is plain clothes and with a standard pants belt it will pull it way down, its heavy it does seem very durable but its heavy.
I feel kinda sick that we spent millions of dollars and it sounds like it does SURE the PD and SO can talk to each other now on same radio (which we couldnt before) but we could have solved that issue alot cheaper than this. I think also the Board became fixated on "Open Sky cant be monitored" but really the only trafic that we probably needed really to keep off scanners was the Narcotics Unit.
Plus I think Motorola came in and assumed they had the deal and their arrogance pushed many of the decision makers away from them and poor Kenwood didnt have a chance since the Chiefs wanted fancy stuff/
Our onkly issue was City and County services being able to talk to each other, mainly SO and PD and if we had gone with some kinda simpler all on same Band system we could have resolved that The City had a small 800 Moto system on line but they said it wouldnt handle the increased loading and it wasn't "digital"
I am afraid were stuck with what we have and its not good. I wish we had gone with something simpler which hopefully would have given us better voice quality I know Henry County is on EDACS