902
Member
That kind of jack***ing has gone on for decades. It's boredom. SPEN1 turns on a dime whenever something "really happens." is it right? No. Does it help public perception? No. But it's an unaddressed issue.Huh? Newark only bothers to turn up the volume on SPEN-1 if THEY have initiated the broadcast. For as long as I can remember, the two most common phrases transmitted on SPEN:
- "Knock it off, North Bergen"
&
- XXXXXX to Newark on SPEN, - SILENCE - SILENCE -- XXXXXXX to Newark on SPEN, we have a chase in progress on 280e just about to enter your town. - SILENCE.
Last time this happened, "Goosetown" communications out of NY had a mobile vehicle out on the road that pinpointed it to mobile radio with a bad mic or some similar problem as FCC Enforcement was busy with Superbowl ops.
SPEN was about the only thing NJ did right in terms of communications over the years, but they failed miserably when they went with the ge & midland junk. Simplex VHF is a great b/u for true interoperability, but they should simply mandate ANI (won't stop idiots with baofunk junk, but would be good at identifying equipment problems)
It's all ok though. Everything will be just dandy when T-Band is auctioned off to one of O'Bummer's buddies and 700 D block is the spectrum of the land. It works everywhere, anywhere and will never, ever fail.
It will suit the needs of every agency, big & small and should propagate well in all terrain. Just like government healthcare
SPEN 1 and 2 were great when they were GE T2-2R stations with modified DC remotes that did not work with consoles unless modified. The original intent was to have a separate base station in the police department that stayed operational and was not tied to a single point of failure. So, the original remote for SPEN sat on top of the old Centracom console completely independent of it. Then the second generation stuff started to come out and users wanted it tied to their consoles. If they owned it, they could require it to be implemented however they chose.
As for the last item, the public safety broadband network stands to be a very robust mesh. All of the IT heads will tell you that. And, that's great. It only sucks if you're in the affected area and you are relying on the last mile of connectivity that is broken or the eNode-B that serves your area that happens to be flooded, has inadequate power, or has a blown-over tower. But they can truck out a COW (cellsite on wheels)... within 72 hours. As if that's helpful (it is, in the mind of an IT head). The other problem with how IT heads think is that one-to-many and even one-to-one communication occurs entirely through the network. Think of the network as blowing cans of Silly String through swaying tree branches. The resiliency of the network is because there's lots of Silly String, not because it's not getting broken. It only works if everything between user A and user B is completely functional. Any impairment and it's ??? Also, if I can pull you out of a building and you are out of air and disoriented, I have 4 bars into the network and you have none, what good is it? But I'm an old-school radioman, not an IT head. What could I possibly know about that stuff? We NEED more spectrum to stream YouTube and get social media out to happening events! Who the heck needs that nasty, old T-Band stuff when we can have modern, pay-to-play subscriber-based, revenue-producing communications?
