LindaFarrell
Member
Does anyone know what is wrong with Will Rogers? I haven't picked up any traffic from them in two days.
I was listening to Hefner recently, and noticed an interesting effect - occasionally the repeater would "hang" for a bit with dead air after someone stopped talking, then you wouldn't hear anything else for a while even though they were in mid-conversation. After a while, it would just start working again. Perhaps the interface to the ProVoice system is poorly configured? It did this several times the evening I was listening - would cut out for a few minutes to maybe 10 minutes then work again for a while.
At any rate, I quit listening again - can't understand most of what anyone says, that's some awful audio!
Funny thing while I was listening - Bethany had something happen that involved OCPD, and the officer asked dispatch to call their dispatcher and get some more info. Bethany dispatcher came back and said, "their extremely rude dispatcher said (whatever...)". I started paying more attention to the scanner with OCPD going, and sure enough that was one surly dispatcher, even to his own officers!
Guess I need to get on with programming my scanners better for the DPS system and actually get the OKC TGs identified in them...
I very much agree that the audio quality is poor.
They've chosen an odd way to configure the link, in my opinion. You can tell by tone-remote beeps that they still have the leased lines or microwave active between VHF sites. It seems to me that the audio from the Provoice system could be fed into the VHF repeaters via this method, rather than having an actual Provoice radio cross-banded to VHF, which appears to be what they've done. This is how Nashville, TN transitioned from their VHF system (very similar to OKC's) to their 800 MHz digital system. Similar to how the dispatch console is tied directly to the repeater, Nashville hooked the 800 MHz radios up via this method. It allowed for clean audio and a more reliable method than the one OKC chose.
My first thought when I noticed that the OKC VHF and Provoice systems were linked as they are was that it was a very temporary method and I didn't expect the links to remain up much longer than it took for them to completely transition to the new system. It seems to me that if OKC's goal was interoperability and these links were to remain up long-term for that reason, they would have chosen a more permanent and reliable linking method.
I'm not criticizing their decisions (I'm certainly no radio tech!). I'm wondering if perhaps the original idea was not to leave the links up for an extended period of time, but maybe that idea came later as the benefit of being able to communicate easily with those still on VHF system was realized. After all, quite a few surrounding agencies remain on VHF.