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NIFOG Tac Channel overlap interference

otobmark

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Your not understanding the point.

As for adding another PL that defeats the entire effort of the NIFOG and Interop requirements. As said this is a people problem and easily fixed if its indeed a true issue.
Oh please, please do explain how an additional PL input (input 156.7 always available and output always 156.7) defeats anything. It’s invisible. It takes away nothing and interferes with nothing…and I mean nothing. It will not completely fix the problem but rather could mitigate it, and maybe not enough to be worth the effort. At present many of us in overlap shield our antennas towards distant repeater when we can. God forbid anyone tries to improve what they have or even inquire about it (not engender waste). I’m trying to fix a loose horseshoe and being told I should get a new horse, or three.

My original question was how hard/expensive to run dual tone.
mmckenna answered that question early on. Speedways link to “Proper Use” was also constructive. Quite by accident (not my field at all) I ended up in a early on planning meeting about hardening cockpits. I asked what if the bad guy is on wrong side of the door? FAA rep answer: “That won’t happen”.
 

otobmark

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Does your traffic loading require 4 repeaters in your situation? If these situations have any kind of repeated (no pun intended but sounds good) use needs you should probably get licenses on non interop freqs.
No, only 2 repeaters are conflicting in my area and are light use. As far as I know the comm centers connect to them by radio and have no knock down abipity. As my original post stated I theorized that others probably had the same problem and would welcome improvement. In our mountain areas you can see with only 4 pairs how inevitable it is that unintended repeaters are hit. As to increased bandwidth of extra channels that is not the present problem—we need different channels (7Tac?). Present problem is interference due to limited pairs. Don’t know if present repeaters/duplexers can be reprogrammed onto 7Tacs which would be a good solution.
The NIFOG does NOT supersede any federal, state, tribal, territorial, local, or regional emergency communications plan. If you are dispatched to a disaster or incident scene and have no other information on how to make contact with other emergency responders, the NIFOG provides useful suggestions for which frequencies to use to attempt initial contact.
That, and post 911 things are less rigid.
I would welcome you on our team anytime…..
 

xmo

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Messages
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The issue of interference between mutual aid repeaters with overlapping coverage should never have come up in the first place.

These are not "NIFOG" tacs, they are NPSPAC TACs. The NPSPAC frequencies were established by the FCC and in each area of the country the allocation of the frequencies and the rules for their use are defined by a regional planning committee, for example the Region 7 (Colorado) 800 MHz Regional Planning Committee.

One simple document offering guidance on the use of these channels was published by the National Regional Planning Council. It is titled: "Use of 800 MHz Interoperability Frequencies"

In this document it clearly states:
Operations on interoperability channels
The appropriate use of an 800 MHz nationwide interoperability frequency is for “incident based” interagency communications.
Interoperability repeaters should be active only during the pendency of an incident. Repeater operations should be disabled (“knocked down”) when not supporting an incident.

Note that it says: "“incident based” interagency communications" that doesn't mean ad-hoc use by whoever happens to be looking for a handy off-system channel
 

TampaTyron

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You have received tens of thousands of dollars of consulting for free from industry pros with a combined experience measured in centuries........ There are laws, rules, and guidelines that exist for a reason (to protect people by making systems usable and reliable). Many of us setup and maintain these systems. These rules are written in blood from many poor implementations causing people life and limb. Please re-read and understand what folks are trying to share. TT
 

mmckenna

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are laws, rules, and guidelines that exist for a reason (to protect people by making systems usable and reliable). Many of us setup and maintain these systems. These rules are written in blood from many poor implementations causing people life and limb. Please re-read and understand what folks are trying to share. TT

Yeah, I gotta agree with this.
One of the rules that permeates through the FCC is that everyone needs to share resources and play nice. If two local agencies put in 8TAC repeaters on the same pair and within each others coverage area, and didn't bother to put in the ability to address that remotely, then there's two agencies that basically thumbed their noses at each other and the FCC and are letting this happen with full knowledge of the issue.

In other words, the issue is the agencies that set these up without any way to deal with the FCC requirements.
The onus is on them to address this, not tell everyone else to pack sand and deal with the interference. That's pure laziness, but it happens in some areas.

The ideal way to address this would be to have both agencies come to the table and work it out like adults. (Stop laughing, it happens, sometimes.)

Barring that, approach the SWIC and let them deal with it.
Barring that, go to the FCC and report the interference. The FCC will require them to sort it out in short order. I'm sure the FCC will remind them of the requirement to not cause interference and to have control over their radios (all things that are written in the FCC rules).

You have two chiefs at these agencies playing stupid @$$ games like this, all while probably claiming how they put the safety of the public and the safety of their officers as their #1 goal. It's this sort of childish bull $h!† that puts peoples lives at risk.

If I felt like being cranky, I'd want to know what two agencies it is so I could happily and joyfully call it in to the FCC and hope they make an example of these @$$hats.

Putting up a repeater with no way to control it is some serious amateur radio level stuff. Are the agencies also running Baofengs?
 

xmo

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mmckenna wrote: "Putting up a repeater with no way to control it is some serious amateur radio level stuff. Are the agencies also running Baofengs?"

Yes indeed. The use of the phrase "when all else fails" suggests that the design is ham level.

Let's address a few additional points:

"I do not "assume" that there will be a dispatcher or a running com center or even knockdown capability".

There should be. All public safety communications resources should be under the control of the dispatch center responsible for that service area.

"What if repeater that is usually off cannot be activated because of infrastructure issue?"

Competently designed systems include provisions to deal with loss of connectivity to the site. For example, a public safety grade repeater such as the Motorola Quantar had the available "Station Access Module"

Combined with station TRC and wildcard programming, the repeaters can be configured for dispatch console setup / knockdown with real time on-scree activation status display, inactivity timed automatic knockdown, mullti-PL access, and over-the-air setup/knockdown capability from control stations at the main or backup dispatch centers or from authorized field units such as a COML. All of these capabilities are continued in the GTR

"8Tac's cover far more area (in my location) than 8CALL so you may well be out of range of CALL/dispatcher."

System design issue. No repeater should be "out of range" from the responsible dispatch center and thereby out of the licensee's control.

"Dispatchers have no idea where the 8/7Tacs physically are and neither will many of the potential users."

This is a training / documentation issue. Dispatch should be responsible for assigning assets to incidents and their SOP's and LEOP documentation should contain the necessary guidance.

"For us it is when all else fails in addition to the more routine and thus the repeaters are isolated from TRS as much as possible. They have their own hardline/antennas/towers (not on splitter combiners of TRS) and are not intra/inter net connected."

Co-locating the mutual aid assets at system sites offers many advantages such as clean, environmentally controlled state of the art shelters, R56 grounding, UPS and generator backup power, security alarming, surveillance, robust remote control connectivity, redundant receive antennas, separate transmit antennas, and more. Duplicating those advantages at a stand-alone mutual aid repeater site would be prohibitively expensive with the result that the separate 'when all else fails' asset is much more likely to be offline.

"For us this is not just additional bandwidth but failsafe."

As speedway navigator posted and I repeated for emphasis, these channels are strictly for interoperability between agencies at "incidents" Their use for "additional bandwidth" or "failsafe" is contrary to national and regional rules.
 

GTR8000

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I'm getting the sense that there is a fundamental lack of understanding of the purpose of these nationwide interoperability CALL/TAC frequencies on the part of the OP and/or the agencies in their neck of the woods. The fact that the TAC repeaters are left in repeat mode 24/7, all the references to "backup" and "additional bandwidth", the mention of various agencies hopping on these repeaters willy nilly outside of the scope of an incident requiring the usage of these defined resources for true interoperability under some sort of "net control". No bueno.
 

KG7PBS

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Best practice dictates that the repeaters should be turned off (or in repeat disabled mode) and only turned on when needed for a specific incident.

In my area there is coordination between all agencies who have UTAC/8TAC repeaters. When one us us activates a repeater, we let everyone else know that the channel is in use. Your SWIC might be able to help facilitate coordination.

There are also several people in my area that monitor these frequencies all the time and will track down and educate anyone who they find leaves a repeater enabled.
In Sacramento that’s how the I tactical is setup only when asked is it turned on
 

jeepsandradios

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Oh please, please do explain how an additional PL input (input 156.7 always available and output always 156.7) defeats anything. It’s invisible. It takes away nothing and interferes with nothing…and I mean nothing. It will not completely fix the problem but rather could mitigate it, and maybe not enough to be worth the effort. At present many of us in overlap shield our antennas towards distant repeater when we can. God forbid anyone tries to improve what they have or even inquire about it (not engender waste). I’m trying to fix a loose horseshoe and being told I should get a new horse, or three.

My original question was how hard/expensive to run dual tone.
mmckenna answered that question early on. Speedways link to “Proper Use” was also constructive. Quite by accident (not my field at all) I ended up in a early on planning meeting about hardening cockpits. I asked what if the bad guy is on wrong side of the door? FAA rep answer: “That won’t happen”.

So your idea is to reprogram all your radios with a new PL and use the channel anyway. That wont eliminate interference. It will make it worse. As many of us said you should be sitting down with the local folks and figure out how to resolve the issue. I can't understand the need to have these repeaters on all day every day and in use in multiple counties at the same time. You should be using your radio system for routine traffic. Backups are part of a designed radio system. It sounds like instead of fixing issues you want to use Inter-Op channels. Again I guess I'm missing the point.

What's different in NC than the other 49 states that seem to be able to do this without issues ? What's the States take on this issue ?
 
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