Rx Emergency

[JackofAllSpades]

Hello, all.
I'm with a municipal fire department that uses Harris radios. We are in the process of transitioning from XG-75 to XL-200 radios. So far we have had very good luck with the 200's. I was one of the first ones to test/have one and I really like it compared to the XG-75. In doing a lot of our testing we have noticed that two (2) of our channels on different groups/zones will put the radio into Rx Emergency mode. Both channels that do this are P25 trunked channels. This is not just on the XL-200s but also the XG-75s and all of our mobile radios. The weirder part is that one of the channels is used for encoding to a hospital and when the hospital Tx on the channel it will clear the Rx Emergency until you or anyone else Tx on one of our radios. We are not sure if this would be the case on the other channel that does it because it's a training channel that is not monitored.

We did recently have another training channel that had somewhat similar issues but that one would go into full on emergency mode as soon as you keyed up on it. Apparently, that was some issue in the server and not in the programming itself.

Just curious as to if anyone has had anything similar. We don't really have a "radio guru" anymore but our guy that's in charge of programming and encryption keys and all that is looking into it. Next step is getting with Harris.

 

[cavmedic]

Who ever programmed it needs to unfu*k it or take it to a shop that knows what the programming should be for the system.

 

[JackofAllSpades]

Who ever programmed it needs to unfu*k it or take it to a shop that knows what the programming should be for the system.

Any idea what we should look at to, as you say, "unfu*k it"?

 

[K2NEC]

Any idea what we should look at to, as you say, "unfu*k it"?

Your vendor should fix it. And if they dont know how, you need a new vendor.

 

[smackdaddy]

Most L3H systems will put the whole talkgroup into emergency mode indefinitely when someone declares an emergency. You can come back days/weeks/months later, PTT your radio on that talkgroup and it will still indicate emergency mode when someone makes a transmission.

You simply need to clear the emergency on this talkgroup. This can be done using the dispatch console. If you don't have this talkgroup on your console, then you can program subscriber with supervisory mode to clear the emergency with a button sequence.

This is an important consideration when designing your personalities. If users have access to talkgroups that are not monitored on the console, you may want to consider steering their emergencies somewhere that a dispatcher can receive them and properly clear them.

 

[rescue161]

Depending on how the radio was programmed to send an emergency, it may or may not annunciation on a console. It could also show up on an SMT, again depends on programming. If set for Emergency Alarm, it should show on a console. if it is set to Emergency Call, it will only show on an SMT. Set for both, it will show on both.

 

[rjschilder]

Have the radio system admin look at RNM. Specifically realtime group calls. There’s an emergency section at the bottom of the page. See if those talkgroups have an emergency declared. Tear it down if it’s safe to do so. This is assuming it’s an L3 system.

 

[rescue161]

The system admin may or may not have the ability to do that, depending on how the radio is programmed. Like I mentioned above, if the radio is only programmed for Emergency Alarm, it will only annunciate at the consoles, not on the RNM; at least that is how the system that I manage works. Also, if a console has "owned" the emergency, only that console will be able to clear it. We have a nightmare of a time trying to keep dispatchers from owning emergencies that don't belong to them, i.e., a console in South Carolina owning an emergency that was declared in Virginia. In their defense, they THINK they are just silencing the alert, but in fact, they are taking ownership of the emergency and they then must clear it once they work the emergency. This also depends heavily on if this system is multi-region (has multiple system ID's). Ours does, so what I'm saying may not hold true for systems with only one system ID or Region.

 

[rjschilder]

The system admin may or may not have the ability to do that, depending on how the radio is programmed. Like I mentioned above, if the radio is only programmed for Emergency Alarm, it will only annunciate at the consoles, not on the RNM; at least that is how the system that I manage works. Also, if a console has "owned" the emergency, only that console will be able to clear it. We have a nightmare of a time trying to keep dispatchers from owning emergencies that don't belong to them, i.e., a console in South Carolina owning an emergency that was declared in Virginia. In their defense, they THINK they are just silencing the alert, but in fact, they are taking ownership of the emergency and they then must clear it once they work the emergency. This also depends heavily on if this system is multi-region (has multiple system ID's). Ours does, so what I'm saying may not hold true for systems with only one system ID or Region.

Yep, gotcha. On mine all emergencies and user alerts (xRTT incidents) are in the RNM. We can see which console last acted (owned) on the group emergency or user alert and tear it down right from RNM without having to track down that console. We’re on SR10A.7.

 

[rescue161]

Same. We are on 10A.7 as well.