Good god no! This is a mutual aid/interop nightmare. They should have learned their lessons from the "Premos's" in Lake County. As a life long scanner owner/listener I've heard what a PITA it is to communicate. Everthing works now but municipalities likely had to spend monies that were not budgeted. Newton County is very rural, why would they need this? What's wrong with the state system? I belong to the local ham club there. Ham boss said the towers are for all first reponder agencies including our club repeater. Bad things happened here in my county when they switched. I pray for Newton County residients.
Ya its annoying even for me. Cause I might need to get another 600$ or more scanner to pick it up because of simulcast. I know schererville and Cedar Lake moved to the SAFE-T system in Lake County opting not to go on to their county wide system and it works for them just fine. So ya similar deal to lake county happening here, in like you said a very rural county.
I was told by the architect guy doing the tower that it will provide 50% more coverage and that the state didn't have the money to do anymore to help coverage on their system in Newton County. But who knows really, like why couldn't they just pay to have towers added at these exact 2 sites that the new system will be on that are connected to the SAFE-T system instead of spending that money on a completely different system, its so dumb imo.
They cud have got the same coverage and been on SAFE-T with extra towers like st Joseph county, Laporte County etc did. It don't make no sense. So now I hope I can just use another scanner I had to scan Newton County when it changes and just use the lil antenna that came with it to pick it up without simulcast distortion instead of having to buy another scanner.
So that's my hope now, since the tower that the picture is of is like 3.69 miles line of site away and the other tower is like 20 miles away. So hopefully just the lil antenna that comes with the scanner can just pick up the close one and not the farther site, that's what I'm praying for. Guess ill find out in a month, or 2 or so, whenever it comes online. As of now there's no FCC listings for it so like I said wait and see. I'm just disappointed better options where available to do for sure 🤷
I'm gonna take my tablet with me to get a better picture of it again when I'm out and about instead that blurry one I posted. But ill put that in another part of the forum because now its not a SAFE-T thing but its own thing.