Monroe County Fire Departments Going To P25 Paging

[2001scoop]

County changing to new fire paging system to improve coverage

County changing to new fire paging system to improve coverage and alerts.

www.monroenews.com

Time to figure out the talkgroups.

 

[Forts]

Once they start testing I'm sure the groups will become obvious, especially for anyone running DSDPlus, Unitrunker etc. If they are just in the approval stages now then it'll be a little bit yet before you start seeing anything I'd think.

 

[Golay]

I know a couple radio savvy volunteer firefighters in Monroe County.
They have both voiced reluctance to their command officers about upgrading Monroe's paging system.
Reason being that in the past, every proposed new system would of had the volunteers go from carrying a pager, to carrying a full size handheld that will also receive pages.
Neither one wants to carry a "brick" with them every time they go to the store or out to eat.
They would both rather stick with a pager that can go in the pocket, and keep the radio in their vehicle if they get a call.

But the vendors want to sell their wares to a County Commission that can be dazzled and baffled by more hot air than the Albuquerque Balloon Festival. I'll reach out to one of them on the ham radio sometime this week and ask about this.

I've never heard either one of them complain about missed pages. Wonder how old the feedline and antenna is on the system they page from. Probably 80% of the radio systems around me were "upgraded" to the latest and greatest simply because the old coax was more leaky that a garden soaker hose. When they take the old stuff down, the feedline is snapped apart and stacked like twigs.
(I actually seen this when they took down Trenton DPW's old low band base antenna. The coax was actually snapping apart).

A whole lot of money would of been saved by doing the same thing amateurs do, swap out the coax and antenna every 10 years or so.

 

[Forts]

I've heard the same complaints from guys on our department. We mostly have Swissphone pagers (and a few Minitor 6's) which are quite small, but we had a lot of issues with missed pages. Guys also don't like the fact they don't have a volume knob that you can quickly access. For Monroe, no doubt they will be going to Unication G4 or G5 pagers which aren't a whole lot bigger than the Minitor, but they are definitely bulkier. So they aren't awful.... but definitely a lot of hardware to tie up just because you now have to monitor a trunked talkgroup for alerting.

 

[phillydjdan]

Unication G4 or G5 pagers solve that problem readily...

 

[krokus]

I was not a fan of the move to MPSCS PageGroup paging. Stay with analog VHF, it is much more reliable.

1) The mixed delays of audio, during the page, made the dispatch audio a jumbled mess. (Turning off the alert buffering on the G4 led to widely varied alert durations, often with no audio alerting.)
2) The pages are limited on which towers they are carried, so fringe coverage is nowhere near as reliable.

The only real benefits were being able to use the pager to monitor radio traffic without using up battery on the portables, and being able to scan more reliably than most scanners were able to, especially in LSM covered areas.

 

[nsrailfan6130]

I'll be keep an ear out since I'm picking up Monroe Co Fire.

 

[ffexpCP]

I was not a fan of the move to MPSCS PageGroup paging. Stay with analog VHF, it is much more reliable.

1) The mixed delays of audio, during the page, made the dispatch audio a jumbled mess. (Turning off the alert buffering on the G4 led to widely varied alert durations, often with no audio alerting.)
2) The pages are limited on which towers they are carried, so fringe coverage is nowhere near as reliable.

The only real benefits were being able to use the pager to monitor radio traffic without using up battery on the portables, and being able to scan more reliably than most scanners were able to, especially in LSM covered areas.

1) This is a problem. Once solution is to use a console tone prior to the voice announcement. A sound is required by nfpa anyway prior to announcing a call over a dispatch channel.

2) Depends. If you have a single conventional site, MPSCS paging should have much greater geographical coverage as they usually set the pageroups to several surrounding 'critical' sites. In-building coverage can be greatly reduced in comparison to legacy paging if not using simulcast system. Scan is also another issue- where traditionally paging and dispatch traffic usually occurred on the same channel, one could usually hear all the activity if in range. Thanks to 'critical sites' you may get the page fine but be listening to a neighboring site without the other talkgroups affiliated to it.

 

[nsrailfan6130]

On your first point with regards to the toneouts, We got the same thing here in Lenawee Co as well as other neighboring counties. No tones prior to announcements.

1) This is a problem. Once solution is to use a console tone prior to the voice announcement. A sound is required by nfpa anyway prior to announcing a call over a dispatch channel.

2) Depends. If you have a single conventional site, MPSCS paging should have much greater geographical coverage as they usually set the pageroups to several surrounding 'critical' sites. In-building coverage can be greatly reduced in comparison to legacy paging if not using simulcast system. Scan is also another issue- where traditionally paging and dispatch traffic usually occurred on the same channel, one could usually hear all the activity if in range. Thanks to 'critical sites' you may get the page fine but be listening to a neighboring site without the other talkgroups affiliated to it.

 

[krokus]

1) This is a problem. Once solution is to use a console tone prior to the voice announcement. A sound is required by nfpa anyway prior to announcing a call over a dispatch channel.

The problem I refer to is the non-delayed audio from the base station and portables,, mixed with audio delayed by the alert tone duration. In our case, I had the alert tone for three seconds, to replicate the B tone length, when we used Minitors on VHF. That results is a mishmash of audio, that was very difficult to pull anything useful from.

2) Depends. If you have a single conventional site, MPSCS paging should have much greater geographical coverage as they usually set the pageroups to several surrounding 'critical' sites. In-building coverage can be greatly reduced in comparison to legacy paging if not using simulcast system. Scan is also another issue- where traditionally paging and dispatch traffic usually occurred on the same channel, one could usually hear all the activity if in range. Thanks to 'critical sites' you may get the page fine but be listening to a neighboring site without the other talkgroups affiliated to it.

MPSCS minimizes the towers the pagegroups are carried on, so as to not have pages delayed by a busy site not having an available repeater. Obviously, they adjust the mandated sites, base on required coverage.

 

[Golay]

The problem I refer to is the non-delayed audio from the base station and portables,, mixed with audio delayed by the alert tone duration. In our case, I had the alert tone for three seconds, to replicate the B tone length, when we used Minitors on VHF. That results is a mishmash of audio, that was very difficult to pull anything useful from.



MPSCS minimizes the towers the pagegroups are carried on, so as to not have pages delayed by a busy site not having an available repeater. Obviously, they adjust the mandated sites, base on required coverage.

So the P25 paging is over MPSCS at 700 and 800 MHz? I so don't agree with doing that. Like you said, just stay at VHF.

 

[krokus]

So the P25 paging is over MPSCS at 700 and 800 MHz? I so don't agree with doing that. Like you said, just stay at VHF.

Yes. There are special talkgroups for paging, called pagegroups. They are treated a little differently than regular TG, as they will not normally have a site affiliation, and are mapped onto the desired sites by the NOC.

The number of sites is kept to a minimum, while providing coverage to the desired area, so as to not have a "site busy" delay a dispatch.

The above was setup prior to the availability of using two-tone over P25, which some areas are using.