railtrailbiker
Member
Paramus EMS on 155.295 DCS 445 is now patched to Paramus FD Channel 2, 453.375 CTCSS 136.5. Not sure if this is permanent or just until the COVID crisis ends.
Paramus EMS VHF now patched to Paramus FD UHF Channel 2
- Thread starter railtrailbiker
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onsceno
Member
That is a permanent "fix" and .375 is their Fire-3 to avoid any confusion.
What was wrong that requires the fix ?
railtrailbiker
Member
What is the plan in the event of multiple working fires? Previously, FD would move the 2nd fire to Channel 3.
KC2zZe
Member
My notes show J1 / 155.2950 (D445) linked to 39.6000 (136.5). Does this new link to 453.3750 (136.5) replace that or is it in addition to it?
railtrailbiker
Member
I believe tone & voice pagers were on 39.60 and dispatcher/mobiles/portables were on 155.295 (with T&V paging simulcast on 155.295). The UHF repeater was tied in because they were having trouble receiving portable radios on 155.295 due to an increased volume of co-channel interference. I believe the T&V pagers are still on 39.60. Portables appear to be on 458.375, repeated on 453.375. Not sure where frequency the mobiles are using, but everything is repeated on 155.295 and 453.375 (maybe even simulcast on 39.60).
onsceno
Member
Unfortunately, there has not been an increase in "co-user" interference. If anything, there has been a decrease with one of the larger "offenders" being REMCS transitioning to PSIC. That VHF channel has been an issue for over 20 years... poor infrastructure & planning and with the ever increasing large-scale construction throughout town, it's not helping. I tried getting them off VHF/low-band and onto a UHF repeater years ago... and here we are putting band-aids on bullet holes.
railtrailbiker
Member
1. When I listen in CSQ mode from the Glen Rock area, I receive quite a few co-channel users in NYC.
2. Was P25 ever tested?
902
Member
I don't know how VHF high band can even be usable in Bergen County anymore, particularly in Paramus. Absent any spectrum in UHF, it might have been better to set up a few low band transmitters in simulcast with voting receivers and just build a split-site repeater system on 39 MHz.
railtrailbiker
Member
902
Member
The saddest part of that is that all those receivers are probably in place just to be able to use the frequency with any degree of reliability. Once upon a time, before Fort Lee went to their T-Band trunked system, 154.445 and 155.670 had a number of voting receivers, some not that far from each other. I also put 3 voting receivers in Cliffside for the police and fire repeaters... north, central, and south... and Cliffside is 0.96 square miles. About 15 years ago they added another receiver in Ridgefield, under the hill, although I understand the system topology is completely different today. But in Bergen County, those receivers offset interference. 155.55 has a number of receivers on it, as well, but take a look at the license. Check out the ERP and the antenna parameters just to get co-channel with Westchester.
Maybe going up on the county trunked system or NJICS isn't such a bad idea, all things considered.
902
Member
That's the problem with Bergen County in general. 70 mostly little municipalities each trying to duplicate resources a half mile away.
Also a PITA to listen to. Going down 208 you'd need multiple different scanners to hear everything reliably. I like to monitor Oakland, Wyckoff(MP is shared), Franklin Lakes, and NWB(Glen Rock/Ridgewood). That's Bergen County P25 TRS, NJICS, conventional UHF and VHF of towns all within 10 minutes of each other end to end... Never made sense to me.
902
Member
It wasn't always like that, Nick. When I started monitoring in the 70s, much of the county was organized into pockets of activity based on region. Southeast Bergen, where I grew up, was mainly on 33.86 for fire, 155.610 for police, and 155.205 for ambulance. The DPWs were all catch-as-catch can. 33.86 was used throughout most of the county, actually, and up into the late 80s, was still live from Cliffside Park and Mahwah. County Police was on 37.38, and much of the public works elsewhere in the county was on 37.10. It was a thriving environment for local radio shop businesses like B&C and Henry Bros.
Paramus, itself, was on 33.44 MHz and its police department had several channels on 39 MHz (one remaining for EMS operation).
Call volumes are different now, and one shared channel gets very crowded. It probably could be mitigated by having a resource coordinator, like a central dispatch, coordinating who uses what channel for what incident.
Noise levels are also different. LED lights, computers, and LANs affect how much signal it takes to be heard, and building construction changed. My hometown had to go from 33.86 to 154.445 mainly because of high rise materials attenuating the 33.86 MHz signal so much that firefighters had trouble talking out of the building to the truck outside. And then about 20 years later, I moved them to 500 MHz because 154.445 was sounding like the junkpile of radio with dozens of fire departments being heaped on top of each other. 155.61 had not only a few of the original cluster of towns, but also strong repeaters from across the Hudson River which blocked even mobile transmissions from a mile away.
Going back to when I worked for Motorola, we would outfit a paramedic unit with two VHF radios (one on MICCOM, one on multiple VHF channels), a 450/460 radio, a 470 radio. a low band radio with a special antenna rigging to allow for wide operation from 30 to 40-something MHz, and on, and on, and on. Now, the technology is out there to consolidate things (even though it makes monitoring less adventurous and it's a killer for the little local radio shops who aren't affiliated with the successful system bidder).
I'm not necessarily complaining, but just saying the environment changes and radiomen have responded to the change with even more change.
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