Question about NY Open Sky problem

[jrm5265]

I am in Newton County Ga. end users are very dissapointed in sound/performance of our Open Sky and I am wondering if this is New Yorks issues also I saw the letter that NY sent to MaCom but I dont know if its actually what we have going on:

audio- audio sounds like its muffled and overmodulated, any additional background noise makes the audio even worse especially on fire scenes, our fire personell say they can hardly use the new radios on fires , just cant understand traffic

echoing- multiple radios on a scene create an unbearable echoing that is akin to a bad sci-fi movie

P7200 talkies have a design fault I guess you could call it, the radio will go very easily into MUTE mode and user will not realize it, its dangerous There needs to be more spread of the low volume area of the control and possibly a slight click when it drops into MUTE whats happened now is users turn radio down a little (because audio is easier to understand if radio isnt cranked up) if you dont really watch it radio drops on down to MUTE and your no rxing and dispatcher cant get you qnd assumes the worse and the confusion begins !!

worse problem and this actually happened to me- P7200s will apparently lose signal and they get out of sync with system and do not receive can restore by turning radio off and back on then it will start receiving thats the way I got back on line I apparently lost signal while inside a building came out and realized that my radio wasnt talking but others were so off on'd and it came back up but that is DANGEROUS and is going to get somebody hurt

Is this the kind of stuff that New York has goin on with theirs?

 

[jrm5265]

wow

wow I thought Id get a pretty quick response on this one since its been such a hot topic

 

[6m171]

There really isn't a quick answer to your question.

The system is only built out in a small area of the state. It is also still in the hands of M/A-COM, and has not yet been made available for use by first responders. It's still very early in the construction/test phases. I sincerely doubt that anyone on this board has any firsthand experience with the system. And if they have, they're keeping their mouths shut.

With that in mind, I doubt that anyone here can authoritatively answer your questions. Some of the things you describe sound similar in nature to some of the deficiencies that have been noted during testing. But to say that they are the same issues would be nothing short of speculation.

 

[jrm5265]

wow

wow OK
well if its like ours I wish them luck........I just hope ours doesnt end up getting somebody hurt.

 

[EnidPuceflange]

wow OK
well if its like ours I wish them luck........I just hope ours doesnt end up getting somebody hurt.

I'm sorry but this sort of thing annoys me. The radio (any radio) is a tool. It's made by men, not Gods and so it may fail. Most of the time it doesn't but some of the time it will. Bank on it. Soooo.....what to do. The cops train pretty hard to deal with situations where (for example) a gun jams and they have to clear a round in a firefight, despite the likelihood that they will never even fire it. Why?? Because it MIGHT GET THEM HURT OR KILLED if they don't know how to deal with this.

Now - radios. Used every day, all the time. The system might fail, the battery might be flat, you might be out of range, the software might crash, a giant lobster might have eaten the hard line up the tower, and so on. Do you know how to deal with this? If you are betting your life on a radio transmission getting to the folks that need to hear it then you are taking a risk, and if the end result of that transmission not getting through is you dying then you probably want to try some alternative approach.

 

[jrm5265]

post

well........your post annoyed me... so ...........I guess were even.

 

[studgeman]

your comment about the audio, welcome to M/A Com, it sounds like crap normally.

The Echo is a function of the singal processing in the radio. In P25 envionments I have been in there was an obvious delay from the person speaking till it came out of the other radios, but all the receiving radios were in sync.

the Muting might be a function of programming is suspect.

Oh and the sync problem, welcome to NY, according to M/A Com, you should just reboot your radio more often.

 

[N_Jay]

. . .The Echo is a function of the singal processing in the radio. In P25 envionments I have been in there was an obvious delay from the person speaking till it came out of the other radios, but all the receiving radios were in sync. . . . .

The P25 comment is not always true, especially across different model and different brand radios.

 

[jrm5265]

open sky

yea since that happened I turned my talk off an back on sometimes just being proactive....as for the Mute thing I asked a MaCom corporate tech about that and if there was something in the programming that could be changed to defeat that and he said hed have to check and get back with us, we never heard anything else about it as for the sounds like crap thing AMEN and you know what I think our system is seven sites and one fo the sites sounds worse than others you can tell if somebody is around the City and working off that site its more muffled/garbled than the others...........oh well I guess were stuck with it for several years

 

[brey1234]

Is This Spin Or The Truth

Tyco Electronics Wireless Systems, formerly known as M/A-COM, yesterday announced the completion of a 700/800 MHz OpenSky radio network for public-safety and utility personnel in Newton County, Ga.
Costing less than $5 million, the seven-site system is being used by the public-safety departments for Newton County, the city of Covington and the city of Porterdale. Eventually, the system also will be used by county and city utility organizations.
http://urgentcomm.com/networks_and_systems/news/newton-county-opensky-network-1028/

 

[jrm5265]

open sky

wow I read that article, system has been on for a few months now? That sounds like MaCom is through working on it.... that dissapoints me, I read quote from Sheriff Nichols...............what else could he say the system is installed now.
As for the people I work with ...............wed go back to the 800 analog trunked in a snap ! We could understand each other on it ............and the radios werent as heavy

Big Wheel keep on spinning.......................