My interoperabilty setup

[MDFR_TCOMM]

Eventhough this picture is about a month old, all the hardware is still in place. The only difference is that the wires behind all the radios have been tye-wrapped and loomed. All this equipment resides in a rescue truck that was assigned for this specific task. Our interop box (ACU1000) is at lower right which is connected to a permanent mounted PC (not seen on this angle) with the sole function of controlling the ACU and programming the radios you see. On the top you will see three 800 EDACS Orions that cover our county's PD, FD and LG. The rest are Motorola, mostly XTL's with a variant of VHF/UHF/800 with P25 and encryption capapbilites. On the lower right you see the top of handheld antennas, this facilitates non-neighboring agencies that loan-out their handhelds for mutual aid.

On a rescue truck there is an abundant real state to install roof antennas but we had to keep them far enough so they don't kill the front-end of the radios. And yes there are THIRTEEN (13) antennas on the roof!! All of them are 1/4 wave and the two leading unto the handhelds, are reachable to change to respective bands.

In this truck we also have a portable repeater with a 40' Wilbur telescoping mast and 40 handhelds (VHF/UHF/800/Aircraft) each to cover any public safety spectrum.

I will try to obtain more pictures to post, enjoy for now..

A

 

[brent30]

Nice, would like to see it now with the wires wrapped up.

 

[swstow]

please tell me you have a VERY large altenator for that

very nice, did you do the install ???????????

 

[fog]

Middle row, far right. What rig is that? is that one of the new O-series XTL heads?

And for the more ignorant (me!), can you explain what the ACU-1000 does? I Googled it, but the description makes it sound like it's little more than an analog mixer that all the audio feeds go into. I did find a manual with schematic diagrams for it, but that's not helping me understand.

 

[KC9LDB]

I can't get over how cool Orions look, I just dont know why...
Nice set-up

 

[RESCUE4NFD]

Would like to see the antennas you have on your mobile setup...

 

[hoser147]

Looks great, although More pics would be great..............Hoser

 

[masonb]

I can't get over how cool Orions look, I just dont know why...
Nice set-up

Second on that statement

 

[SAR923]

While all those radios look really cool, how do you expect them to be used in a real emergency? All those radio need someone to talk on them and having four people right next to each other won't work very well.

 

[qball]

Middle row, far right. What rig is that? is that one of the new O-series XTL heads?

And for the more ignorant (me!), can you explain what the ACU-1000 does? I Googled it, but the description makes it sound like it's little more than an analog mixer that all the audio feeds go into. I did find a manual with schematic diagrams for it, but that's not helping me understand.

All of the Motorola radios appear to be ASTRO Spectras with the exception of the XTL2500 on the far right.

And yes, the ACU1000 is just a big audio switch that allows linking of different radios completely independently of frequency, platform, or otherwise. For that matter, it doesn't have to be a radio...it could be a telephone line linking the ACU to a command post across the country.