My point is 19 million dollars is incredibly wasteful. It has become clear to Motorola and Harris that there is no limit to what cities will pay, even when the cities small, rural, or don't have the money.
I hear what you are saying, and I don't like the price tag. However, are you aware that the county has no choice but to retire the current system in a few years?
I am in support of replacing radio systems that are aging that aren't getting the job done. 19 million dollars, however, is absurd. You can buy a whole lot of radio system for a rural county like that for a lot less money. Most counties have done exactly that.
He's a troll. Has said the same kind of thing about several similar stories for systems in various locations around the country.
This is a scanner site and if discussing the mass migration to radio systems that are unmonitorable and came at an extremely high price tag is trolling, then I guess that makes me a troll. It would also make one of our local commissioners a troll when he stood up at a meeting and said " $xx million is a lot of money and we have to look at this more carefully." I beg to differ. It's precisely this kind of corruption that's ruining our hobby and bankrupting our cities. It must be nice to live in a place where you can still hear something on your scanner. You clearly don't know the feeling to turn on the scanner and hear nothing. (And pay through the nose to do it)
I agree the price tag is a little out there, but we are talking about a new system that will most likely reach a lot better in the valleys, wooded areas and low points in the county with those nice new towers. I hear all the time the dispatchers checking on units and not getting a hold of them, calling out a unit awareness and a few minutes later they clear it saying they have them by 21 (phone). Just not acceptable to me or them.)))
For 19 million, it had better reach into the valleys! The county is very rural, mostly agricultural, only a very small part of it is on the outskirts of a city, and it's a small city at that.
I live in one of the most hilly and RF unfriendly large cities in the world and yesterday I drove 45 miles out from a downtown DMR repeater, talking the whole way on nothing but a 4 watt portable and had rock solid coverage the whole while driving in a car. I don't know what the repeater owner paid for that system but I'm sure it was a lot less than $19million.
Once again, I have nothing against getting new radio systems, even digital ones but there is a radio system that can be had for less than $19 million that is more than adequate.
(((What shocks me is this company beat out Motorola and I am willing to bet they are doing it with Moto gear! Love how crap thrown in the air works out. )))
Yeah, evidently they didn't ask for references. :lol:
Now we need to find out about the encryption part. This is key for this area. With other western Counties just switching to the Craptrbo and not having interoperability, Stafford being fully encrypted, Fredericksburg is on voice inversion, will Spotsy do like the rest and buy a over priced system then go silent, or let us keep on enjoying their daily hard work?
Dafe.
That's just it. Digital is a pandora's box for the scanner hobby. Set aside encryption for a minute, have you read some of the posts where people are having a great deal of trouble monitoring these new systems?
A big shame they feel like they need to encrypt. I hope someone convinces them to change their mind.
That's why I posted the details about the meeting. The meeting is today.
You probably wont have much luck persuading the lay person that encryption is a bad thing but you most certainly can point out that that is the most expensive radio system per capita in the entire continent, possibly the entire world and they will probably be pretty upset. And tell them that additional first responders were promised but not yet hired.
Often times when counties want to spend wastefully on radio systems they end up having to raise sales tax. If the residents of the county knew that the communications needs of the county could be met for a lot less money I'm sure they'd much rather do that instead of pay more in taxes. That said, I doubt anyone from that county are even reading this. There's not that many people living there, the county seat only has a population of 4,000 people.
