I attended the RCB meeting today - it's nice to be able to set your own work schedule
Notes in roughly meeting order.
New applications:
1. Chesapeake College is requesting to become a Primary User (has TGs on the system.) They have four TDMA radios; two at the main campus, and two at the Cambridge campus. They requested 1 TG.
Approved.
2. Anne Arundel County is requesting 12 TGs to use for emergency backup for critical users / First Responders - like when their system went down last month. St. Mary's County already has a similar request to have backup for their troublesome system. Talk about Erlangs - an Erlang is a telecom term to quantify load. One Erlang equates to a fully utilized voice channel. The AA site's normal loading is 1.5 Erlangs; max observed load is 3 Erlangs, so there appears to be plenty of channel capacity to support AACo if their site goes down again. Discussion about creating a special Zone for counties to use if they experience a system failure on their home system - looks like this idea will move forward after construction of Zone 5 is complete.
Approved.
Discussion about bonks in Kent County during a rash of brush fires and the Ironman Run in Dorchester. Probably due multiple keyups during the incidents, and possible FDMA channel hogging by Delaware mutual aid responders. There were 7 total; way below spec of 2,000+ allowed per the contract with Motorola. Avg wait to rekey was 1.5 seconds, aka NBD. Sussex County has reportedly reflashed all their radios to TDMA with the assistance of Motorola (by providing discounts to make it happen.) The rest of Delaware plans to accelerate its timeframe to convert to its new system by a year, in part to address the TDMA issue when in Maryland. It looks like DSP will probably be ENC, based on some comments - totally unofficial.
Table Rock ASR (Garrett County) site is still awaiting funding by SHA. Should start construction beginning next year.
Phase 5 News:
Ethernet layer 3 backhaul ring that links all the Zone 5 counties to be complete July 2020. Intra-county network rings a bit farther along. Completion of the layer 3 ring is driving the schedule. Coverage testing to begin in August 2020. Unsure of the order of the counties coming online. Target date for Zone 5 activation December 2020.
Nice Bridge ASR physical tower construction completed 12/2/2019. Equipment installation December 2019, antenna install January 2020.
Persimmon Tree shelter install should be happening now (I didn't know there was even a tower.)
ICC tower should be under / finished construction in April 2020.
T1 to Ethernet conversion. Plan to go before the Board of Public Works next week. $20M. 33 new M/W sites.
Coverage enhancement sites:
The state plans to fund several new sites per fiscal year to fill in areas where coverage is marginal.
Cherrytown Chicken ASR (Carroll County) (Motorola doesn't like this name): Should be online by Summer 2020.
Tower Road ASR (Frederick County) Construction of this site has been prioritized because of the G7 Summit next summer. It will be installed on an existing tower that already carries FIRST backhaul, and the Frederick County system. [I still think they need a site in eastern Frederick County]
Crisfield ASR (Somerset County) This site is nearing completion - like very soon (as far as being on the air.) The guts are installed temporarily in the adjacent VFD building, and a new elevated shelter will start construction shortly. The area floods as one should expect; the highest recorded water level was five feet, and the shelter will be elevated four feet (ummmm?) That point was mentioned, and the project manager said the interior racks will be two feet off the floor, so.... Anyway, each foot you elevate, the construction cost square (or something expensive factor like that.) Fiber is nearby.
Cecilton ASR (Cecil County) The antenna system will be changed to omni, and will improve coverage in northern Kent County.
Ocean City ASR (Worcester County) The antenna remapping was predicated on load studies, and the removal of old DNR antennas. However, even when removing the old antennas, the tower would still need $150K in structural upgrades to move FIRST antennas, and the performance improvement would be minimal. Thus the project is on hold. They are looking for a new enhancement site in West Ocean City site, so the decision atm is to invest the $150K into the future site.
The (boring) CEN upgrade is still in progress.
System software 7.18 is due to start installation in March 2020, complete in May-June. System partners need to freeze (suspend upgrades) during this timeframe so a valid snapshot can be obtained. Literally hundreds of consoles will need new software.
A coverage reporting tool will be released to system managers next week. This will help to format user reports of system and coverage complaints / issues. [Hopefully it will be easy / concise enough so that users will actually use it.]
Garrett County migration. New consoles are ordered for their EOC. Working with Network Maryland to provide fiber to the EOC. The EOC won't go live on FIRST until after the 7.18 upgrade. The fire departments got a FEMA grant for a mobile and one portable for per unit, with a few more portables. The Sheriff's department received a similar grant for equipment. There is already some operations on FIRST; one VFD is using their FIRST radios because their local legacy repeater failed.
The Ops groups teased new technology that can be incorporated into FIRST. Will brief at the March RCB meeting.
