I never thought I would see it (or hear it as the case may be)

[wyomingmedic]

But the Carbon County Sheriff was using WyoLink today as I drove through.

Tg#811 (already submitted it to the database). They were running their normal traffic, and it was not patched to the old analog.

They were vehemently against WyoLink for so long, I wonder what changed.

 

[PJH]

County fire should be going over shortly as well...

Supposedly the conventional repeaters in the county are setup for mixed mode, but at this point I doubt you'd see any action on that.

Coverage in Carbon county (in general) is pretty good - but the cost of the radios was one of the factors. No one over there really likes the WyoLink policies and the real or perceived strong arm to be on the system (according to a person I trust out that way who was involved).

I think in the end, its still a good thing that most agencies are transition over to WyoLink, but the state needs to properly fund site expansion for capacity and "low level sites" for coverage gaps.

The bigger issue is - some counties are strong arming local departments onto WyoLink (more than the state is - which they really are not) and there are many parts of counties that do not have adequate coverage at this time. The counties are telling the locals to just "deal with it" and we are not going to monitor or properly maintain the legacy systems (Laramie County is doing this to the rural fire districts).

On the financial side, it makes perfect sense. The state covers all costs associated to the infrastructure which frees up some funds for the counties. The issue is that rural counties and districts cannot afford the 2-5k per radio cost it takes to purchase mobiles and portables. When it comes down to paying for fire truck or ambulance upkeep or buying a radio, 5k will go further to put water on the fire than a radio may.

One fire chief I talked to stated: Why should I spend $40,000 on mobiles (5 fire trucks, 3 support vehicles) for APX7500 dual band radios (operate in 800/VHF areas) and then another 10 or so portables at $3500 each (figure another $35,000) for a total of $75,000 - when my $500 HT1250's (etc) work just as well for our needs?

That's a pretty compelling $$$$ argument.

 

[wyomingmedic]

Yup, that is pretty much the feeling I got. I worked closely with most of the counties around here on a WyoLink migration plan.

I obviously can't get into details, but a lot of rumors swirled regarding the "control" the state would have. These rumors STILL permeate some areas and I believe will be difficult to break.

 

[PJH]

I will say from the outsideish looking in, even though they have the PSCC - which they want to try to have function like Colorado's CCNC - there is still much (appearance) of no coordination or direction in streamlining the outreach of WyoLink.

They have a person working for WHS that touts "lets all be on WyoLink" (including school busses) but doesn't check or know that most sites are limited capacity. This becomes apparent during snow storms, weather or high use times creating busy's for public safety.

IIRC, the sites were initially designed with capacity in mind for the state agencies. If you only have 4 voice channels in County A which is not in WyoLink - and then add in SO/PD/FIRE/EMS/Etc and not increase the capacity - all you may get are system busy's and aggravation.

This is what is failed to seen in the "Big Picture".

Their application and approval process for non-public safety entities is something to be desired as well, but that's another subject.

 

[wyomingmedic]

I couldn't agree more.

When we upgraded the Casper Mountain VHF site to a seven channel, it was due to a lot of busying out. Natrona county has several thousand radios and a 12 channel (11 voice) 800mhz site.

With the prevalence of new dualband APX radios, it doesn't take too long to see the capacity shortcomings. Coupled with scanning issues across used/unused TGs on different frequency bands (800/150), I believe we are crossing into territory unlike any other state who generally stick with one band only.

Many years ago I helped with the integration of South Dakota's Smartnet system. At the time, Rapid City was using 460mhz stuff while the state was going VHF. Rapid City had wanted to setup a UHF trunked system tied into the state's VHF. At the time there was limited capability for dualband radios, but design engineers felt the difficulties would be too much to overcome.

I love WyoLink to death and believe it is a robust system, but it will need upgrading to handle all of the allowed users. And subscriber unit programmers need to understand the nuances of dual band operation and the risk of dragging TGs across sites. Especially with heavy users like Casper, Cheyenne, and Gillette.

 

[PJH]

Correct - you would take up a total of two voice channels (one V one 8) but the theory (usually works) is that at least if say - VHF is getting busy out, the 800 is a good choice or vice versa depending on loading.

This also depends if the preferred site option is used for those areas where multiband radios can be used.

VHF was a good choice for the open areas of Wyoming - without a doubt. Coordnation must be a nightmare. In a previous life it was interesting - but not impossible for the NSPAC coordination for the Smartzone system we had that had to play nice with two other states - but with the amount of available channels that could be used/reused allowed for some nice high capacity sites in metro areas.

But in the end - I worked for a county that utilized 5 main fire channels - which were also simulcasts for coverage/battalion areas (one countywide "Dispatch" channel and 4 regional channels) - serving a population and call volume greater than the entire state of Wyoming...

All conventional, never had coverage or capacity issues

Then again, we were also not trying to place 15 agencies with high use on one site either

Its interesting to watch Nebraska grow - three voice channels per site (typical) but very low loading. They too are trying to get counties on the system but have capacity and funding issues - essentially going down the same path that Wyoming started with. Should be fun to watch.

 

[wyomingmedic]

Ya, Nebraska has been fun to watch, but I'm continually shocked at how "behind" they are on implementing such a system. Every time I drive I-80 across there it seems to be just a hodgepodge of various systems and frequencies all interspersed on top of everything.

For a time I was a paramedic (hence the name here) in Rock Springs Wyoming. This was pre WyoLink, and going on an ambulance call meant contacting two or three agencies on their respective frequencies for all actions, Enroute, on scene, transporting, etc. would require just oodles of channel changing to keep people in the know. Nebraska kinda reminds me of that.

When we were building up South Dakota, they were at the forefront of this technology. It ended up being a fiasco with Motorola/EFJ equipment not playing nice together. Last I heard (this has been a few years), their system statewide was at end user capacity for individual trunking IDs. Driving through a couple of months ago along I-90, the system sounded fractured and unused. Audio was awful, and many agencies were back on their old analog frequencies for day to day operations. Bummed to see what happened up there.

I remember the first WyoLink meetings where they were kind of using the Casper 800 site as a demo type system. There were studies done to make Wyoming 800mhz just like Colorado. They determined that it would take something like 3X the number of sites to provide the same coverage as VHF.

As much as I like the Smartzone systems, I do have an affinity for the EDACS analog stuff like Denver city uses. That system handles a MASSIVE amount of traffic on a daily basis, and it does it on OLD tech. Hard to dispute something which has worked so well for so long.

 

[wyomingmedic]

Listening today from Laramie, it appears that Carbon County ambulance is still using the conventional system despite having WyoLink in their mobiles as well as their portables.

I also hear a few deputies (Sinclair units as well) sticking on analog.