and Mount Warren will cover that for them, and this is just a Rumer but there are special use permits being asked about for that mountain the forest has a site there presently the picture of me next to the helicopter 525 is the top of MT Warren
Inyo County Moving to Mobile Relay Associates NEXEDGE System?
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Interop is not void and things will not be the same. How about interop with the USFS, BLM, NPS, the two PD's (or will they be on the UHF system as well), public works for both counties and the two cities, DFW, the state park rangers (Bodie, Mono Lake Tufa) who have a VHF High radio in their rigs, the bordering Nevada counties (Douglas, Lyon, Mineral, Esmeralda, Nye), U.S. Geological Survey, CA DOJ and others I may have forgotten about? If Mono SO goes encrypted then it will be tough to follow the progress of wildland fire evacuations, of snowstorm conditions and all the other things that help in rural counties given there are no live news stations/reporting.
As a taxpayer I know all the agencies will be paying more over the long run, similar to paying rent instead of buying your own house. Even worse and to continue the metaphor, as those agencies own their own homes at present. They paid to go narrowband and now they are going to pay a commercial outfit and are subject to their profit making whims.
Rural counties, nearly nationwide, have had interoperability for 30-40 years and never needed all the new technology of trunking and higher frequencies. The hotline is no different than a phone, you still have to relay through dispatchers and that can resemble the old game of "phone" around a circular table.
This is not good news!
I don't see the USFS issuing special use permits for Warren as it is in the Hoover Wilderness. It is one thing to get permission for a helo to land in the wilderness to maintain a USFS repeater that supports administration of that wilderness, but a special use permit for a commercial, profit making enterprise? I think there is a donut hole in the wilderness boundary there to accommodate the one repeater, but its diameter is measured in few feet, not any larger. There are other environmental issues as well and public interest groups that would raise those issues. Tioga Peak was a possibility, until the Hoover Wilderness was expanded to cover it sometime in the last 10-15 years. I think a small building on the southeast shore of Ellery Lake, tied in with the Whoa Nellie Deli/Mobil Gas Mart electronic site is more likely. Elsewhere in the USFS many repeaters in designated wilderness areas have been removed and replaced by those outside wilderness.
I'm going to keep my eyes out for any frequency coordination and/or FCC license application for Mt. Warren. I think some folks I know will be interested in that.
What you have just explained has and will continue to be a problem, not just here but everywhere, until they all come together onto a ONE system plan, however with the politics behind everyone's funding to do such, and the difference of opinion with all agency's not to mention the money lost to the various big company's Kenwood, Motorola etc, I don't foresee a ONE system plan ever coming to light as per interagency interoperability, Inyo And Mono counties have gone through great lengths to cover such, The hotline has been in service for more than thirty years that i know of, i have seen it go from twisted pair to radio microwave to where its currently at Voice over IP also OES as well as the Forest service and DOJ have Cashes of radios to distribute during emergency situations which include crossband cross system portable repeaters they can have in operation in a matter of time. i guess what im trying to say is this system no matter what the general public thinks or roomers it to be is quite an improvement over the old run down out of date system that's currently in use, having worked in the field for more than 35 years this is just merely my opinion
THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!
Just a reminder - there are multiple agencies all over CA (both Fire and LE) that operate on digital systems like these and have done so for MANY years.
Guess what?? They have had no issues with interoperability, or they wouldn’t still be using the systems.
How about waiting for the system to be built and the bugs worked out before pushing the panic button about interoperability. There is quite a bit of infrastructure and testing to be done before flipping the switch.
Relax.
Just a reminder - there are multiple agencies all over CA (both Fire and LE) that operate on digital systems like these and have done so for MANY years.
Guess what?? They have had no issues with interoperability, or they wouldn’t still be using the systems.
How about waiting for the system to be built and the bugs worked out before pushing the panic button about interoperability. There is quite a bit of infrastructure and testing to be done before flipping the switch.
Relax.
on another note,, all the FCC licensed frequency's that MRA was issued for all the sites in both Inyo and Mono Counties are under 90.35a - PROVIDES COMMUNICATIONS TO PART 90 ELIGIBLES. i think that will play a big role on how permits and such are issued
listen this may or may not be the system for them, the only thing i know is, its a step in the right direction to modernize a radio system without too many strings attached, have you ever considered Inyo and Mono counties dishing out all the money themselves to build up all these sites only to find out in the end it doesn't work,,
i couldnt have said it better myself
listen this may or may not be the system for them, the only thing i know is, its a step in the right direction to modernize a radio system without too many strings attached, have you ever considered Inyo and Mono counties dishing out all the money themselves to build up all these sites only to find out in the end it doesn't work,,
That’s what I’ve been saying. Worst case scenario, they keep the old radios in the vehicles as well and use them as needed and just have a plan for when to use them.
i think in the long run this system will work very well and provide reliable communications in areas where cell and the current radio system dont, MRA is doing a top notch job from what i have seen and read so far.
Wait….you mean agencies can actually have multiple radios in a vehicle to ensure real interoperability?? 🤔😂 What a modern concept!!
It looks like the USFS is getting their fingers in radio sites on their land again. Many years ago the USFS tried to become a silent partner, a hungry silent partner in mountain top repeater sites charging fees roughly equivalent to what the site owner charged for space. Many people couldn't afford these extra forestry fees and pulled out of USFS sites and went to private property sites.
For about 20yrs or more the USFS put a hold on use fees and just last week friends on USFS sites are getting forms to fill out wanting to know what you have on their land. I suspect the USFS is getting back in the repeater site business and has their eyes on making lots of $$. Maybe this is the special use permit being discussed for Mt Warren?
For about 20yrs or more the USFS put a hold on use fees and just last week friends on USFS sites are getting forms to fill out wanting to know what you have on their land. I suspect the USFS is getting back in the repeater site business and has their eyes on making lots of $$. Maybe this is the special use permit being discussed for Mt Warren?
You have to know the setting Mt. Warren is in. It is a highly visible and remote peak surrounded by the Hoover Wilderness as a small donut hole in that area's designation. It might not even be a donut hole, it may have been accepted as an existing use that is necessary to administer the wilderness that it is in or is surrounded by. The donut hole of non wilderness is very small and so is the USFS repeater. The "vault" it is in is about 3 feet high and about 4 feet by 3 feet in size. The antenna is quite small, a single vertical with small ground plane elements.
Additional users might be prohibited in the legislation that expanded the Hoover Wilderness about 10 years ago. The land west of the peak has been in this wilderness since it was established in the late 1930's, and later codified by the Wilderness Act of 1964. The land east of the peak, which is where the repeater is located, was non-wilderness until the area was expanded to include roadless lands that is bordered. I worked on the study of a portion of the expansion back in the 1980's when the Toiyabe National Forest was writing the first Land and Resource Management Plan for the forest. These plans, one for each National Forest, were and are Environmental Impact Studies, which has a rather impactful process for amending. Allowing other users on Mt. Warren would require such a process. I think there are better alternatives for the county, other than this mountain. An antenna structure located at the Tioga Pass Resort, tied in with the phone system is the best I can think of. Another would be the location of a small vault on the southeast shore of Ellery Lake, which could be tied in with microwave down to near the junction of U.S. 395 and CA Highway 120.
This goes beyond the digressionary decision making process of the U.S. Forest Service, it is a matter of legality.
Some background on special use fees for the U.S. Forest Service might be helpful for you. I administered special use permits from 1978 to 1999. The first increase of special use permit fees occurred in the Reagan administration. He wanted federal agencies to bring in money for fees to increase federal revenue to help balance the budget. There were some huge increases at the time. Many were appealed and were reduced from the initial proposal. We were given a set of permit fees for each type of use that were supposed to be similar to a private landowner's rent of lease for like uses. When George W. Bush (43) got into office he went back and revived the fees that were appealed. This time around many of those fee amounts were actually implemented. Ham radio repeater owners often could not afford these fees. I remember our local ham club struggling. Somehow those fees were reduced based on public service uses in disasters and the like.
When I was working for the USFS the fees were deposited in the general treasury. The fees did not come back to the forest, just like the amounts collected for timber sales, grazing permits and the list goes on. I don't think this has changed. The USFS gets no benefit from issuing permits so they are not in "the repeater business." If someone knows if this has changed please advise. This type of change would not be the decision of a presidential administration or change in policy by an agency, this would have to be a change in law, i.e. new legislation changing the U.S. Code. Legislation has passed to allow entrance fees, road use fees, campground fees and similar collected for recreation use to come back to the agency where the fee is collected, minus 20% that goes to parks, forests, refuges and BLM sites where the fees collected don't exceed the cost of collection.
Rural counties and agencies can't always afford to put more than one radio in their vehicles. This may work in the big city where the tax base is more valuable, but not in rural counties that contain most of the public land the nation spends their vacation on. In rural areas we have picnics, bake sales, destruction derbies at the county fair and other events to fund some fire and EMS expenses.
I had one radio in my USFS truck, a scanner that belonged to me personally and one handheld. The project funds I administered could not afford anything more. We had more needs and activities than we could afford to equip ourselves for. I could only afford the good Midland radio I had by going to fire assignments and having those fires pay my base salary while I was gone. I would take the offset funds (or "savings") to buy tools, future years supplies and radios. My absence was a source of stress for me as I had to get the work done I would have had I not left. Everything has its tradeoffs.
As I pointed out above, I would give it some time before I started planning on destroying cars and baking cookies to fund radios.
Most projects/upgrades like this work just fine and meet the needs of all those involved.
a little off on the size of the repeater vault on Mt Warren its actual dimensions are 6.5' X 4.5' X 4.5' and you didn't mention a thing about the solar panels located down the south slope about 150ft from the vault and there are two Antenna's both the size of a fat baseball bats
I guess you missed the point that they ALREADY have radios and they are switching over to something else that will require new radios so it’s entirely possible to have multiple radios since they already have them.
and this is whats inside cant seem to locate a good picture of the outside of the vault
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The likely scenario is just that they want an accurate accounting of who has what and where so if there’s a problem, they know who to contact.
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