King George Migrating to 700 MHz P25
- Thread starter dtscho
- Start date
Wow, that is a step up for them. I talked to someone who works on radios for Stafford. They have been trying to get KG on board with their system. I wonder if it will be attached to the Stafford system as an independent site or a stand alone system.
It will improve interoperability. And they have coverage issues with the current VHF system. But they aren't buying a new system because they need more capacity. King George currently has frequencies they don't even use, largely because they just don't have that many fire and EMS units.
Off-topic, but is this person who works on radios for Stafford able/willing to provide us with fleetmaps for some of the area public safety systems?
Dave
I think it would be not good of me to ask.
a lot of them are restricted and not available for the public
They should achieve good coverage with this system design. They are not building any new towers, so perhaps there were some compromises, but site spacing seems reasonable for portable on-street coverage, at least in the central portion of the county. If they are joining a neighboring jurisdiction to share infrastructure, there could be further coverage benefits.
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Depends on the subscriber units that they spec and agreements they can make. The trend is to set up separate zones for "foreign" systems so the individual radios can switch onto those systems to communicate, rather than "patching." For example, if you wanted interoperability with MDTA Police at Nice Bridge, you would get an Interoperability User agreement with Maryland FIRST, a letter agreement with MDTA, and program the FIRST system and appropriate talk groups into the subscriber unit (radio). Since both systems are in the 7/800 band and both use P2 TDMA, you could use a single band subscriber. Interoperability with Westmoreland would require *patching* or dual band subscriber radios. Frederick County, MD uses dual band radios to interoperate with Washington County, MD, but since WashCo only has UHF single band subscribers, it's more difficult when they run into FredCo (WashCo is planning to obtain dual band radios as part of its radio refresh). Interoperability with Charles County, MD would be essentialy the same procedure as it would be with FIRST since they are also a 7/800 band system, and Charles will be P25 next year.
So I spoke with a ham tonight that swears that this system will be DMR. I can only hope that he is confused with digital Technolgy.
Yeah I wasn't going to argue with him. Still strange that it was not a bid process, unless they did a piggyback on another agencies bid package.
Here's a snippet from the BOS meeting of May 17, 2022:
"0:29:21.3 Sheriff Giles: Good evening, Chairman and members of the board. I wanted to come this morning... Oh, this morning, this afternoon, this evening, and give you a quick update on the progress of the radio upgrade project. Last month, Chief Basham and several more rural representatives toured the county in search of inappropriate existing towers. I'm happy to say that they found three existing tower sites that will work without purchasing additional property to build tower sites from scratch, so that'll add to the tower sites that we're already using, which will give us the appropriate coverage throughout the county. Motorola is still about 30 to 45 days before they can have an official proposal done and ready to present to the board. Motorola is crunching the numbers due to the inflation that we are all feeling in an attempt to maintain the original budgetary quote. After signing the contract, it will roughly be 18 to 24 months for the system to be fully operational. So I can take any questions at this time, if anybody has any."
So reading this, and assuming the existing towers don't need extensive remediation work to bring them up to current standards, it looks like initial deployment will be in 2024.
"0:29:21.3 Sheriff Giles: Good evening, Chairman and members of the board. I wanted to come this morning... Oh, this morning, this afternoon, this evening, and give you a quick update on the progress of the radio upgrade project. Last month, Chief Basham and several more rural representatives toured the county in search of inappropriate existing towers. I'm happy to say that they found three existing tower sites that will work without purchasing additional property to build tower sites from scratch, so that'll add to the tower sites that we're already using, which will give us the appropriate coverage throughout the county. Motorola is still about 30 to 45 days before they can have an official proposal done and ready to present to the board. Motorola is crunching the numbers due to the inflation that we are all feeling in an attempt to maintain the original budgetary quote. After signing the contract, it will roughly be 18 to 24 months for the system to be fully operational. So I can take any questions at this time, if anybody has any."
So reading this, and assuming the existing towers don't need extensive remediation work to bring them up to current standards, it looks like initial deployment will be in 2024.
Going through more testimony at BOS meetings, a gentleman gave an extensive presentation about "hams" and DMR. Perhaps this is why a "ham" was adamant (and erroneous) that the county was going to use DMR in their new radio system:
"0:35:07.9 Chairman: Okay, thank you. We'll get that on there for you. All right, county attorney. And we're through. So with that presentations and reports. So we have a presentation by Mr. Stello, HAM Radio Association. Gentleman, step right up.
0:35:40.3 Sam Stello: This is like a high school show and tell. Well, good evening, everyone. This is an informational brief for you. I wanna tell you who we are, what we do and I want to thank the county for supporting us, because I think it's real important to us... Oh, okay. And it's important to the people of King George County. Okay. And I push the red button? I'm sorry. Oh, thank you. Amateur Radio is a hobby. We are licensed by the FCC, we have to take exams to get a license. We operate privately owned radio stations. We pay for all of our own equipment, we build some of it, we design it, we set it up, we maintain it. Strictly personal hobby. What's unique about it is it's totally wireless, so we don't require infrastructure, cell phones, telephones, anything else. It's a natural fit for emergency situations. We have the capability of talking around the world. HF radios like this one with 100 watts and a right antenna. I've talked to Mongolia, Australia, Japan, Europe. It's not hard. This is pictures of some QSL cards, which is a customary method of acknowledging a contact. And we often print our own colored QSL cards. Our organization provides funding or grants. We emphasize education, science education. We provide general scholarship funds. We also buy equipment, and we train teachers so that education in the classroom emphasizes science. Okay. We also support King George County in emergency situations specifically. The picture on the top is my front door with the snow pushing up against it. The tent there is our setup at a youth day. We provide communication support for races, Marine Corps marathons, Caledon family camping events. We're very active in STEM. And what else do I have here? Oh, we conduct radio classes if anybody's interested in getting a license. Again, this is not just a hobby, it's a community service. And the head of FEMA particularly pointed it out when we had a few emergencies down in Puerto Rico specifically. When the power went out, they immediately lost telephone service, internet service. Couldn't get any information in and out of there. So we put together teams of people that we sent to Puerto Rico. They packed everything in their suitcases and went down there for six weeks. We had two HAMs from Waldorf who camped out on the roof of a hospital for six weeks, provided all the communications in and out of that hospital. Oh, by the way, the Federal Government has discovered our capabilities and are trying to duplicate it now. This is just a short list of the disaster support that we've provided, the list could go on and on. In Puerto Rico it was really critical, and one of the primary functions that we provided was to notify people who were trying to find out the status of their family. There was no way to get in contact with them and we provided the link for them. And that was very, very important to them. We practice emergencies. Once during the summer we have this event where we will go to a remote site, we will take our radios, emergency power, put up temporary antennas, and for 24 hours we try to make lots and lots of contacts. So US-only contacts. Usually, we'd make a few contacts overseas, County Business 11/17/22 Page 12 of 29 but we concentrate on US. Typically, in 24 hours, we'll make 400 contacts. This gives you a better idea of the coverage of our antennas. The colored sections are states that we actually worked in that 24-hour period. We have a lot of assets here at King George, and one of the things I'm here to thank you for is the use of your towers. Now, a lot of people don't understand what the towers are all about. We put a repeater on the towers and what that facilitates is our ability to talk all around the county. For instance, a radio like this or like this, if you try to talk point to point, you're limited by the curvature of the Earth, maximum range is six miles. No matter how much power you put out, it's six miles. One way of making that range farther is to raise the antenna. If I were to take an antenna like this and put a remote antenna on it at a height of 30 feet, I can increase my range to 11 miles. It almost doubles. Well, not many people carry around 30-foot antennas. Another way of doing it is for me to change the frequency on my radio, talk to the Amateur Radio receiver that's on your tower behind the middle school. It's at 100 feet. We have it paired with a 50-watt transmitter. So it repeats anything that I say on the radio and amplifies it to 50 to 100 watts. The range, maximum range point to point for that arrangement is 38 miles. So I've taken a six-mile radio, and with your tower and our amplifiers, we can reach 38 miles. See, that's great. Well, there's also another little trick I pull, and that is I can actually make that amplifier or that radio talk to another tower down in Northern Neck. If it's within about 24 miles, we can link that, and now I'm talking down in Westmoreland. And then I can repeat that all the way down Northern Neck. So with my little six-mile radio, I'm talking down to Reedville. Pretty impressive. Okay. We also have antennas at the Company One, we have a lot of assets in our personal vehicles, and we have a lot of home stations. To give you a rough idea of what I'm talking about, there's 137 licensed HAMs in King George. We have 35 active members in the club. When we have vehicles, we have fixed stations, we have mobile stations. We have quite a bit of equipment. We also have some mobile units. The picture on the left is a 6 by 12 communications trailers capable of supporting four stations. It's mobile and we use it a lot. It has everything you could want for a long stay. We have air conditioning, we have heat, refrigerators, stoves. We could sleep in it. We have batteries, we have a generator. The picture on the right, one of our members bought a surplus ambulance, converted it to a mobile station. He pulls a trailer with a pneumatic 40-foot mast. Both are owned privately and are members of the club. Here's a picture of some of our members operating satellites. And I told you one of the ways to increase the range of a radio like this is to raise the antenna. Well, it doesn't have to be attached to the Earth. You can put a repeater in a satellite. We have funded, built, launched over 70 satellites of our own. We also can put an amplifier with this and a special antenna and we can bounce signals off the moon. So we don't need a repeater. We can bounce signals off of an airplane. All kinds of exotic communication that... And we have a lot of fun playing with this. Okay. Well, right now we are, let me, did I skip ahead? Yes. I wanted to introduce this concept that we are now working with adjacent counties to develop emergency network for the local counties to help each other out. And what we're talking about is developing a Windlink and DMR capability. And I'll explain what those are. Windlink is a software package that you put in your personal computer. You plug your personal computer into the radio and now you can emulate internet service. And if the remote site that you're talking to has an internet connection, you can go onto the internet. That's how you can reach out all around the world, any place that has an internet connection. And what that allows you to do is if your local communications is down, you can use the radio as a substitute. The other capability is DMR. And the sheriff was just talking about the Motorola radios. We have the same type of technology that we're starting to get into now called DMR, it's digital radio. And it gives you better quality audio and also lets you do digital communications, messaging, and in a mobile package. Very nice, very nice. Technology has come a long way. Okay, so in summary, we were founded in 2003 specifically to provide backup communications for the county. We are totally volunteers. We have assisted the county in a lot of emergency situations. We are helping the county in the school system and STEM and a lot of other areas and we appreciate the support that the county has been already providing us. Here are our officers and somewhere in the middle of that is me. Thank you for your time.
0:46:43.0 Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Stello. Any questions?
0:46:45.9 C. Binder: I don't have a question, just a quick comment. I want to thank you guys for coming. You talked about one of these cards. Here's my dad's card from the 1960s. And I couldn't tell you what this equipment was, but when I went with these gentlemen, they told me exactly what the equipment was, when it was purchased and everything more than I knew. I just remember his radios in my dad's office that he had. So I thank you and I appreciate all you do for the community.
0:47:08.9 S. Stello: Just remember, it's not a hobby, it's an addiction. 0:47:10.3 C. Binder: That is true. 0:47:12.7 Chairman: Anybody else with questions? Well, I do. Sam, before you run off, what does HAM mean?
0:47:19.5 S. Stello: Oh, my goodness. There are lots of arguments about what HAM actually means... Oh. And I don't know that it's been settled. One of the comments that I heard from one group of people was it was the initials of the three people who initially started the whole thing. The American Radio Relay League, which is the mother organization, was originally founded to provide relays, to provide electronic communications. Okay? And the three people who started all that, their last name started with H, A and M. So they called them HAMs. That's just one explanation. There are many others.
0:48:04.5 Chairman: All right. Power for those units, you know you said you had trailers and stuff. Are they 12, 24-volt, 110? You get to run them off Gennies or what?
0:48:16.8 S. Stello: Both... They run off of 12 volts. There are two deep cycle RV batteries in the trailer, and I also take a generator with me in case the batteries ever run out. But the batteries last a long, long time before they have to be recharged.
0:48:32.2 Chairman: And how does a HAM compare to like an SSB or something?
0:48:36.5 S. Stello: SSB, a Single Sideband? 0:48:37.0 Chairman: Yes.
0:48:38.3 S. Stello: Single Sideband is a mode where the modulation of the signal comes out of the radios. 0:48:46.2 Chairman: Okay. I had one of those years ago before the days of satellite phones and stuff. I wasn't sure how it worked, but I know it just did. And if it broke, we called somebody. But I was just wondering how those compared to one of those.
0:49:00.2 S. Stello: Well, the Small handhelds that I showed you are FM, just like the FM radio stations you listen to. The Single Sideband that you're talking about, the Single, SSB, is a AM radio that has been modified so that it doesn't need as much bandwidth as a standard radio station. So it's more efficient. Other than that, they're the same thing. 0:49:23.8 Chairman: Okay. Well, thank you. All right. Next up is Mr. Franklin."
"0:35:07.9 Chairman: Okay, thank you. We'll get that on there for you. All right, county attorney. And we're through. So with that presentations and reports. So we have a presentation by Mr. Stello, HAM Radio Association. Gentleman, step right up.
0:35:40.3 Sam Stello: This is like a high school show and tell. Well, good evening, everyone. This is an informational brief for you. I wanna tell you who we are, what we do and I want to thank the county for supporting us, because I think it's real important to us... Oh, okay. And it's important to the people of King George County. Okay. And I push the red button? I'm sorry. Oh, thank you. Amateur Radio is a hobby. We are licensed by the FCC, we have to take exams to get a license. We operate privately owned radio stations. We pay for all of our own equipment, we build some of it, we design it, we set it up, we maintain it. Strictly personal hobby. What's unique about it is it's totally wireless, so we don't require infrastructure, cell phones, telephones, anything else. It's a natural fit for emergency situations. We have the capability of talking around the world. HF radios like this one with 100 watts and a right antenna. I've talked to Mongolia, Australia, Japan, Europe. It's not hard. This is pictures of some QSL cards, which is a customary method of acknowledging a contact. And we often print our own colored QSL cards. Our organization provides funding or grants. We emphasize education, science education. We provide general scholarship funds. We also buy equipment, and we train teachers so that education in the classroom emphasizes science. Okay. We also support King George County in emergency situations specifically. The picture on the top is my front door with the snow pushing up against it. The tent there is our setup at a youth day. We provide communication support for races, Marine Corps marathons, Caledon family camping events. We're very active in STEM. And what else do I have here? Oh, we conduct radio classes if anybody's interested in getting a license. Again, this is not just a hobby, it's a community service. And the head of FEMA particularly pointed it out when we had a few emergencies down in Puerto Rico specifically. When the power went out, they immediately lost telephone service, internet service. Couldn't get any information in and out of there. So we put together teams of people that we sent to Puerto Rico. They packed everything in their suitcases and went down there for six weeks. We had two HAMs from Waldorf who camped out on the roof of a hospital for six weeks, provided all the communications in and out of that hospital. Oh, by the way, the Federal Government has discovered our capabilities and are trying to duplicate it now. This is just a short list of the disaster support that we've provided, the list could go on and on. In Puerto Rico it was really critical, and one of the primary functions that we provided was to notify people who were trying to find out the status of their family. There was no way to get in contact with them and we provided the link for them. And that was very, very important to them. We practice emergencies. Once during the summer we have this event where we will go to a remote site, we will take our radios, emergency power, put up temporary antennas, and for 24 hours we try to make lots and lots of contacts. So US-only contacts. Usually, we'd make a few contacts overseas, County Business 11/17/22 Page 12 of 29 but we concentrate on US. Typically, in 24 hours, we'll make 400 contacts. This gives you a better idea of the coverage of our antennas. The colored sections are states that we actually worked in that 24-hour period. We have a lot of assets here at King George, and one of the things I'm here to thank you for is the use of your towers. Now, a lot of people don't understand what the towers are all about. We put a repeater on the towers and what that facilitates is our ability to talk all around the county. For instance, a radio like this or like this, if you try to talk point to point, you're limited by the curvature of the Earth, maximum range is six miles. No matter how much power you put out, it's six miles. One way of making that range farther is to raise the antenna. If I were to take an antenna like this and put a remote antenna on it at a height of 30 feet, I can increase my range to 11 miles. It almost doubles. Well, not many people carry around 30-foot antennas. Another way of doing it is for me to change the frequency on my radio, talk to the Amateur Radio receiver that's on your tower behind the middle school. It's at 100 feet. We have it paired with a 50-watt transmitter. So it repeats anything that I say on the radio and amplifies it to 50 to 100 watts. The range, maximum range point to point for that arrangement is 38 miles. So I've taken a six-mile radio, and with your tower and our amplifiers, we can reach 38 miles. See, that's great. Well, there's also another little trick I pull, and that is I can actually make that amplifier or that radio talk to another tower down in Northern Neck. If it's within about 24 miles, we can link that, and now I'm talking down in Westmoreland. And then I can repeat that all the way down Northern Neck. So with my little six-mile radio, I'm talking down to Reedville. Pretty impressive. Okay. We also have antennas at the Company One, we have a lot of assets in our personal vehicles, and we have a lot of home stations. To give you a rough idea of what I'm talking about, there's 137 licensed HAMs in King George. We have 35 active members in the club. When we have vehicles, we have fixed stations, we have mobile stations. We have quite a bit of equipment. We also have some mobile units. The picture on the left is a 6 by 12 communications trailers capable of supporting four stations. It's mobile and we use it a lot. It has everything you could want for a long stay. We have air conditioning, we have heat, refrigerators, stoves. We could sleep in it. We have batteries, we have a generator. The picture on the right, one of our members bought a surplus ambulance, converted it to a mobile station. He pulls a trailer with a pneumatic 40-foot mast. Both are owned privately and are members of the club. Here's a picture of some of our members operating satellites. And I told you one of the ways to increase the range of a radio like this is to raise the antenna. Well, it doesn't have to be attached to the Earth. You can put a repeater in a satellite. We have funded, built, launched over 70 satellites of our own. We also can put an amplifier with this and a special antenna and we can bounce signals off the moon. So we don't need a repeater. We can bounce signals off of an airplane. All kinds of exotic communication that... And we have a lot of fun playing with this. Okay. Well, right now we are, let me, did I skip ahead? Yes. I wanted to introduce this concept that we are now working with adjacent counties to develop emergency network for the local counties to help each other out. And what we're talking about is developing a Windlink and DMR capability. And I'll explain what those are. Windlink is a software package that you put in your personal computer. You plug your personal computer into the radio and now you can emulate internet service. And if the remote site that you're talking to has an internet connection, you can go onto the internet. That's how you can reach out all around the world, any place that has an internet connection. And what that allows you to do is if your local communications is down, you can use the radio as a substitute. The other capability is DMR. And the sheriff was just talking about the Motorola radios. We have the same type of technology that we're starting to get into now called DMR, it's digital radio. And it gives you better quality audio and also lets you do digital communications, messaging, and in a mobile package. Very nice, very nice. Technology has come a long way. Okay, so in summary, we were founded in 2003 specifically to provide backup communications for the county. We are totally volunteers. We have assisted the county in a lot of emergency situations. We are helping the county in the school system and STEM and a lot of other areas and we appreciate the support that the county has been already providing us. Here are our officers and somewhere in the middle of that is me. Thank you for your time.
0:46:43.0 Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Stello. Any questions?
0:46:45.9 C. Binder: I don't have a question, just a quick comment. I want to thank you guys for coming. You talked about one of these cards. Here's my dad's card from the 1960s. And I couldn't tell you what this equipment was, but when I went with these gentlemen, they told me exactly what the equipment was, when it was purchased and everything more than I knew. I just remember his radios in my dad's office that he had. So I thank you and I appreciate all you do for the community.
0:47:08.9 S. Stello: Just remember, it's not a hobby, it's an addiction. 0:47:10.3 C. Binder: That is true. 0:47:12.7 Chairman: Anybody else with questions? Well, I do. Sam, before you run off, what does HAM mean?
0:47:19.5 S. Stello: Oh, my goodness. There are lots of arguments about what HAM actually means... Oh. And I don't know that it's been settled. One of the comments that I heard from one group of people was it was the initials of the three people who initially started the whole thing. The American Radio Relay League, which is the mother organization, was originally founded to provide relays, to provide electronic communications. Okay? And the three people who started all that, their last name started with H, A and M. So they called them HAMs. That's just one explanation. There are many others.
0:48:04.5 Chairman: All right. Power for those units, you know you said you had trailers and stuff. Are they 12, 24-volt, 110? You get to run them off Gennies or what?
0:48:16.8 S. Stello: Both... They run off of 12 volts. There are two deep cycle RV batteries in the trailer, and I also take a generator with me in case the batteries ever run out. But the batteries last a long, long time before they have to be recharged.
0:48:32.2 Chairman: And how does a HAM compare to like an SSB or something?
0:48:36.5 S. Stello: SSB, a Single Sideband? 0:48:37.0 Chairman: Yes.
0:48:38.3 S. Stello: Single Sideband is a mode where the modulation of the signal comes out of the radios. 0:48:46.2 Chairman: Okay. I had one of those years ago before the days of satellite phones and stuff. I wasn't sure how it worked, but I know it just did. And if it broke, we called somebody. But I was just wondering how those compared to one of those.
0:49:00.2 S. Stello: Well, the Small handhelds that I showed you are FM, just like the FM radio stations you listen to. The Single Sideband that you're talking about, the Single, SSB, is a AM radio that has been modified so that it doesn't need as much bandwidth as a standard radio station. So it's more efficient. Other than that, they're the same thing. 0:49:23.8 Chairman: Okay. Well, thank you. All right. Next up is Mr. Franklin."
Ok. Yes I know Sam. I did a presentation about amateur use of dmr for the King George Amateur radio club.
I checked all the licensed frequencies a few days ago for a control channel, and found nothing. So, still not on the air.
Dave
Dave
Any updates on KG system going live?
I haven't searched for a new control channel, but I can tell you they are still using their old system. I don't know the timeline, but don't be surprised if it takes 18 months to two years for the new system to be built and tested. Could be even longer.
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