Notes from Wednesday's RCB meeting:
Key Bridge Response - The radio system performed flawlessly. Four MD Tac channels were dedicated to the response, plus the normal operational tgs used by the various agencies. 70 cache radios were loaned to the USCG for their operations and interoperability purposes.
New Users:
PSP - The Pennsylvania State Police requests to become an Interoperability Partner and enter a tg sharing agreement with the Maryland State Police. This will give the PSP access to the various TAC tgs (MD, LAW, EVENT, etc) and relevant MSP Barrack tgs. The PSP has 11 bordering stations and approx. 1,000 TDMA subscribers. Approved.
ESVA - The Eastern Shore of Virginia Consortium is building a new 700 MHz system and requests access to FIRST as an Interoperability Partner to access the various TAC tgs mentioned above, plus enter a tg sharing agreement with MSP and NRP. They anticipate cutover to their new system in February 2025. Approved.
Metro Aviation (MEDSTAR Transport) - Metro Avaition is the private helicopter contractor hired by MEDSTAR to provide regional interhospital patient transfers currently numbering about 2,100 per year. They are requesting to become a Limited Primary Partner with two tgs (one dispatch and ops, and one medical control) for their four helicopters based at Fort Meade, St. Marys, and Indian Head. Their dispatch center based in Lanham provides flight following and hospital coordination. They are also requesting access to the various TACs and the MIEMSS tgs. The application was not recommended by the System Managers committee for technical reasons.
Discussion: The FIRST system manager explained the technical reasons why the application was not recommended. A helicopter at 1,500' can transmit much farther than ground based subscribers. FIRST heavily reuses their 700 MHZ State Channels at geographically seperated sites throughout the state and relies partly on terrain to reduce co-channel interference to acceptable levels. Some interfence risk is accepted for MSP helicopters as they are not frequent users of the TRS and can also utilize the 700 MHz conventional system built for this purpose (that replaced the 44.74 and 47.66). The committee suggested that Metro could use the conventional channels to coordinate with SYSCOM.
A VP from Metro Aviation spoke to the board at length about the application, begining with his personal background, explaining their needs empasizing safety, and that 30 other states allow private HEMS operators access to government radio systems.
The board is concerned about both technical issues and setting a precedent that would allow NGOs or commercial for-profit operators (MEDSTAR is non-profit, but Metro is for-profit) access to the FIRST system - the FIRST charter specifically states the system is for use by governmental entities. The state currently licenses three private helicopter operators to provide interhospital transfers and rarely scene response. The other two - STAT and PHI (both for-profit) would probably also request access to FIRST, further increasing the risk of interference. Currently the private companies build and maintain their own communications systems using both ground based and satcomm infrastructure. The board decided to form a workgroup to study the broader issues for all HEMS operators and how to meet their needs for communications without negatively impacting the FIRST system or violating the charter, emphasizing that access to FIRST may or may not be the solution. It was suggested that MDEM take the lead as the SWIC position was recently moved from MSP to MDEM.
About 1/3 of the MPLS networking equipment has been installed.
All simulcast sites will eventually have a geo-redundant prime sites. Roughly 1-2 are budgeted per year.
Howard, Harford and Anne Arundel are scheduled for 2-channel expansions. Frequencies for most sites/cells throughout the state have already been coordinated, shaving a year off each installation in the future.
New Sites:
The Swallow Falls site is operational and played a role in a recent rescue incident.
FY24
Oakland - 10/25/24
DC ASR - 11/14/24
Patapsco - geotechnical drilling has been started
Cumberland - legal eagle delays
Queenstown - SHA real estate process moving forward
FY25
Barton - Allegany owned site
Bretton Woods - Montgomery owned site
New Germany - (existing tower?)
St. Michaels (Talbot already built a monopole site in the area for initial coverage; perhaps a taller tower?)
A future site map was displayed, notably a number of new sites in Montgomery County along the Potomac River. (I would love a copy, lol)
All the GCP 8000 Site Controllers will be virtualized as this will be required for system software version A2026. Vitualized means that the harware device will be replaced by software running in a container on a server somewhere, either locally and/or at the mothership.
The Trax GPS that failed at the Baltimore cell has been upgraded with new firmware that is being field tested in several systems across the country - fingers crossed.
