Interoperability in Jacksonville, St. Augustine and St. Johns County, FL area
Has anyone in the St. Augustine, Jacksonville and St. Johns County, FL area thought about purchasing several mobile cross band repeaters and installing these in key fire apparatus in the area to promote and allow for interoperability? If each agency is satisfied with the coverage their different systems provide on a daily basis then it would be much more economical to utilize cross band repeaters to provide interoperability during the times it is needed. A good example of a very reliable cross band repeater is the Motorola GR300 Repeater Interface Kit, known as a RIK, (Motorola Part Number HLN3333) that costs less than $300 to purchase. The RIK will interface with multiple models of radios so an agency can have a VHF radio linked to an 800 MHz trunked radio and all the fire officer on the engine has to do is select the channel on the VHF radio he wants to link to a talkgroup on the 800 MHz radio then press the patch button and the audio on both systems are linked together. We have five cross band repeaters available for use in our City one of which is installed in the City pickup truck that I'm assigned to drive. The cross band repeater in this pickup truck is equipped with a Motorola PM400 VHF mobile and a Motorola XTL1500 800 MHz mobile. This solution works extremely well because it allows the firefighters to take interoperability with them where ever they go in their vehicle regardless of whether they are within the coverage of their home radio system or not. If they get outside the coverage area of one or more of the radio systems programmed into either of the radios they can simply select a VTAC and cross patch to an 8TAC and they can talk to other firefighters using radios in the other band. Again, it is a great solution and it sure beats spending $3,000 to $7,000 per radio to replace three or four portable radios assigned to an engine, ladder truck, rescue or squad. I'm truly disappointed this type of solution hasn't really taken off throughout our nation instead of agencies being talked into purchasing multi-million dollar radio systems. I'm sure there are many other interoperabilty solutions similar to the GR300 out there, but this is one that I have personally had a lot of success with.