lifestar53
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I had to replace my antenna, receiving now on the 4413
Jersey City Medical Center EMS - Hudcen
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radioman2001
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That report is a little later then when I was there. Paramedics in NJ were a targeted bunch back then being outlawed by lawsuits the Nurses unions kept filing on and off for a few years. I know some medics that travelled back and forth between NYC and NJ while it finally played out in the courts.
I did do my ER time for EMT there in April, May 1979, but stupidly I did turn down the Paramedic program that was offered to me in 1978 while we were installing the Memcom stuff.
Quote"
I don't remember a 5th floor ER
Due to the fact that the hospital was built on a hill, when you cam in the front door the ER was 5 floors up. If you came in the Ambulance ER entrance it was right there. Did a lot of riding with them, and after a night of drinking we all went and took the PAPD test one Saturday morning.
I did do my ER time for EMT there in April, May 1979, but stupidly I did turn down the Paramedic program that was offered to me in 1978 while we were installing the Memcom stuff.
Quote"
I don't remember a 5th floor ER
Due to the fact that the hospital was built on a hill, when you cam in the front door the ER was 5 floors up. If you came in the Ambulance ER entrance it was right there. Did a lot of riding with them, and after a night of drinking we all went and took the PAPD test one Saturday morning.
lifestar53
Member
235 is still being used for communications with Union City EMS.
902
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I think we all took the PAPD test at least once. My buddy and I went to the Passenger Ship Terminal together in 1984 and had one person from my job at NYCEMS sitting between us. Of us three, he got on, ranked up quickly and was murdered in 2001 when the WTC came down on him and his crew. Instead of coming home to hang out and buff jobs, I came home to deliver his eulogy in a church loaded with blue. I don't know how I made it through. I felt as if I lost it myself, I'd have brought everyone else with me.
As for not becoming a NJ paramedic, I think you dodged a bullet. Quite a few MICPs are getting up in age and health. They're finding they still have to work. Not being part of PFRS, they don't have a time served and out provision with a 401K rather than an actual pension. A lot of MICPs worked their way through college, became APNs, PAs, or became cops, firefighters, or had to take another full-time job and drop to per diem in EMS because of the wage and benefits disparity. Some MICU programs are operating in transporting units now. With my arthritis, it would be hell carrying someone down 5 flights in a stair chair in a tenement building, but I'm an engineer now. Some of my old partners are still doing it, and are getting spinal fusions, etc. The job takes its toll. The only thing is that unlike LMR, which seems to be withering in the face of the marketing this popular cellphone program has, and is also taking a hit from the big regional systems that only need one vendor and a handful of repair people rather than the many small shops we used to work for, EMS is never going to run out of work. My oldest is an EMT now for a county-run EMS system in another state. She's 5 years into an 8 year vesting. It's not her passion, but she goes to work most days and has a great medic partner (it's one EMT and one paramedic in a bus here, with a few all-BLS units). They make the best of it.
Even under the HHC rules, I'd still be on the bus in NYC had I not gone across the water and eventually burnt out. The time served and out only went through because of the transition to FDNY and the EMS personnel gaining Uniformed status. They still struggle for a number of policy and political reasons that aren't appropriate for this forum.
I wouldn't worry about it much, as it's too easy to gloss over.
As for this radioman, the writing is on the wall. The quiescent busywork of onesy-twosey conventional systems have gone way down (as is evidenced by the MC experimenting with deprecating VHF and moving to NJICS -- and also due to the artificial crisis that narrowbanding created [it didn't really fix anything on VHF, because the occupied bandwidth STILL spills over into the next adjacent frequency, and they can't be reused near-by; you even see it in the forum posts with discussion topics being more about the talkgroups on the big systems rather than what new frequency or CTCSS tones a community is using), and I'll probably be hitting the streets looking for "next" at some point in the near-term.
ShoreBullets
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EMS staff were told not to use the VHF radios yo talk to HUDCEN any more. So I expect significantly reduced radio traffic on that channel
It appears Jersey City EMS - RWJ Barnabas who now has the contract for Red Bull Arena in Harrison during events are using
RWJ - Medcentral Comm 5 Tactical for Arena EMS Operations, I would also throw in Comm 6 as well since that is labeled
a talk around channel.
Kind of strange they would use this statewide network when they can see each other line of site and get away with using a low watt simplex channel for there Arena EMS Operations.
RWJ - Medcentral Comm 5 Tactical for Arena EMS Operations, I would also throw in Comm 6 as well since that is labeled
a talk around channel.
Kind of strange they would use this statewide network when they can see each other line of site and get away with using a low watt simplex channel for there Arena EMS Operations.
902
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It builds system statistics and justifies additional coverage and network growth. And you're 100% right.
Or perhaps their radios are single band 700/800 with no available private simplex channels in them? It would be inappropriate for them to use any of the 7TAC/8TAC channels for routine operations, and if they are not licensed to use any other frequencies in that spectrum, what else do you propose they do? Purchase separate VHF/UHF radios just so they can operate off-network at one facility?
The Essex County Courthouse subsite of the West Orange simulcast cell is less than two miles from the arena, so there is no issue with coverage.
902
Member
Depending on memoranda of agreement with the state as a network user, it might actually be fine to use the TAC channels, and there are emergency medical channels built into the national plan. The key is whether there is a holistic plan for the event, should it need to expand as an MCI rather than considering it simply a "detail" that a crew takes a bus to and sits at. The devil is always in the details.
And you're probably right, too. I rarely see real simplex talkarounds programmed into UE anymore, and most system management entities aren't licensed for off-network. Traveling around, quite a few of the systems I see have talkgroups that are painted as being off-network to the users, but really are just un-monitored (by dispatch), but probably centrally recorded TGs. That seems to be one of the big arguments is keeping a log recording of activities.
Logging of the talkgroup activity is another factor, as well as supervisors/dispatchers being able to easily monitor the talkgroup from outside simplex range. Another factor is that should the "routine event" turn into a larger scale incident or MCI requiring additional resources, everyone is already operating on the wide-area trunked system.
Let's also consider that the state charges subscriber fees to operate on the NJICS. If I'm already paying to use the system, and I already have the subscriber radios and talkgroups allocated to my agency, I'm going to get my money's worth and use it as often as possible. Especially when there is infrastructure to support my operations so close to the venue, in this particular case.
radioman2001
Member
Except when the SHTF, for small operations like the arena there should be either a microcell or conventional repeater on site. Relying too much on large statewide systems looks great on paper, but when it comes down to a real bad emergency situation like a super storm or the like they sometimes incredibly fail by either users overload or backbone failures. I seen it in N.C. last fall, and if not for the conventional repeater and simplex freqs in the radio (no one knew how to access them and I had to show how) there would have been no comms. Even cell phones were intermittant for nearly a week.
I am sure NJ has some channels they can set up locally that might be being used somewhere else out of the area, or there are plenty of 700mhz ones specifically for that type of local operation.
I am sure NJ has some channels they can set up locally that might be being used somewhere else out of the area, or there are plenty of 700mhz ones specifically for that type of local operation.
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I am the comms officer where I work it makes no sense at all to go through a repeater (West Orange) no less when people are right next to each other, JCMC and RWJ do have VHF radios with simplex channels in them which would make a lot more sense - These PSIC radio's are certainly not the end all be all of public safety communications in my opinion.
902
Member
So, I'm looking through the database on NJICS and I see REMCS for Newark, and a bunch of municipal BLS, but must have missed the new names for JCMC EMS. What hospital system owns them this week, and what TGs are they using? Are they still on 4413, and is that it for them, or are there other TGs? I intend to come up in a few weeks and want to program up my 436 to hear "Hudcen" (if that's what they are still...). Or, did they revert back to VHF?
ShoreBullets
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They are not going back to VHF at JC. Everything is moving over to the various MedComm channels. We are staying on the trunked system for special events so MedCentral can monitor the units at those events and those units have a way of getting case numbers for patient contacts and other things, but its basically because MedCentral wants to know whats going on with any RWJBH unit. I have not even seen a working VHF portable at New Brunswick in over a year. There was a box going into the MCRU for MCI use but otherwise, the system is too big and covers too much ground from Lakewood to Jersey City
What happens if the state system goes down, any backup besides the cell phone ??
ShoreBullets
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What cell phone?
I guess they would do the same thing as when the vhf repeater went down.
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