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[ffexpCP]

Firefighters continue to have issues with emergency pagers

Firefighters continue to have issues with emergency pagers

News story video in the link.


GENESEE COUNTY (WJRT) - (09/04/2018) - Last year Genesee County 911 bought hundreds of new pagers for various fire departments around the county.


But a few local fire departments have reported their pagers are failing to work properly.

The new 800 MHz pagers replacing the old VHF system last year were supposed to make fire department's jobs in Genesee County a lot easier, but various problems have kept them from serving their purpose.

"The pagers are going out of range and they're not receiving calls when you could be sitting at a desk like I am right now," said Robert Burdette, Grand Blanc Fire Chief.

Burdette has had issues with the new pagers since they received them in 2017.

"We've had a lot of problems with them not charging properly,” said Burdette. “They don't last very long, compared to the other units we had."

Genesee County 911 spent $450,000 on hundreds of new pagers for various departments in the county in the fall of 2017. But around April 2018 they had to bring them back in for reprogramming.

Burdette said since the reprogramming it's been a little better but still problems remain.

"Now lately what we've had a page come off, we hear the alert tones come across for them but there will be no voice announcement,” said Burdette.

Grand Blanc Fire Department hasn't missed a call due to the new pagers but the problems are causing headaches.

“Because if an alert is not received, we have no idea who needs our help,” said Burdette.

Grand Blanc Fire Department may join others in having a backup plan.

"There are a lot of departments that use an alternative system called I am responding,” said Burdette. “It sends an alert to your cell phone. It's probably something we're going to be look at next year to work as a backup system to this."

ABC12 also spoke to Flushing Fire Chief James Michael who said his department has not had any issues with the pagers.

Currently if a pager has issues they will send it back to Central Dispatch and they will exchange them for new ones.

 

[troymail]

Some of the out of range is probably the major difference between legacy VHF paging that is typically blasted out over a large area compared to 800 trunk system sites that may cover smaller areas and in systems that are not intended for in-building coverage. I personally see this on a regular basis trying to monitor NC VIPER sites from inside my house. I suspect that for most 7/800 simulcast systems, out of range is less of a problem.

As far as the pager going off but not hearing the voice announcement of the page - assuming that isn't a dispatch center issue - it could be a configuration issue. The "default" configuration for alerting "closes" the pager/set if there is a small gap in signal (i.e. hit the tones, drop the carrier, then make the voice announcement). I've had to overcome that in my area using "Delay + N" settings which ensures that the pager stays "open" for a minimum amount of time before resetting.

Of course, these are only my opinion based on my experience with my Gx pager.

 

[ffexpCP]

Some of the out of range is probably the major difference between legacy VHF paging that is typically blasted out over a large area compared to 800 trunk system sites that may cover smaller areas and in systems that are not intended for in-building coverage. I personally see this on a regular basis trying to monitor NC VIPER sites from inside my house. I suspect that for most 7/800 simulcast systems, out of range is less of a problem.



As far as the pager going off but not hearing the voice announcement of the page - assuming that isn't a dispatch center issue - it could be a configuration issue. The "default" configuration for alerting "closes" the pager/set if there is a small gap in signal (i.e. hit the tones, drop the carrier, then make the voice announcement). I've had to overcome that in my area using "Delay + N" settings which ensures that the pager stays "open" for a minimum amount of time before resetting.



Of course, these are only my opinion based on my experience with my Gx pager.

They use a simulcast system in the county. Looks like 8 sites??

Mpscs paging does not use tones. They use dedicated talkgroups, they call pagegroups.

 

[troymail]

They use a simulcast system in the county. Looks like 8 sites??

Mpscs paging does not use tones. They use dedicated talkgroups, they call pagegroups.

Ah - yup - I did make an assumption of two-tone alerting -- live and learn (sometimes more than once!).

Even with the system being simulcast, I can see potential issues with reception. No two simulcast systems are the same and we regularly hear that some systems suffer from various problems including poor coverage and other reception issues.

 

[mdsxfire]

Some of the out of range is probably the major difference between legacy VHF paging that is typically blasted out over a large area compared to 800 trunk system sites that may cover smaller areas and in systems that are not intended for in-building coverage. I personally see this on a regular basis trying to monitor NC VIPER sites from inside my house. I suspect that for most 7/800 simulcast systems, out of range is less of a problem.



As far as the pager going off but not hearing the voice announcement of the page - assuming that isn't a dispatch center issue - it could be a configuration issue. The "default" configuration for alerting "closes" the pager/set if there is a small gap in signal (i.e. hit the tones, drop the carrier, then make the voice announcement). I've had to overcome that in my area using "Delay + N" settings which ensures that the pager stays "open" for a minimum amount of time before resetting.



Of course, these are only my opinion based on my experience with my Gx pager.

Where is the “ Delay +” option at I have been experimenting with the actual page over p25 and was having that issue due to the fact our dispatch always hits the tones then has a time lapse before the voice?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[troymail]

Tab D5 - Knob Function Setting - default in the pulldown list is "Auto Reset"

1. Auto Reset (Default) - With this setting any loss of carrier less than 500ms ensure the pager will stay active and store the received message. If the loss of carrier exceeds 500ms, then "Delay N Reset" or "Delay N Revert Reset" would be the preferred choice.

2. Delay N Reset - Works in concert with the "Delay Timer" setting to ensure Gx Pager stays active and records the incoming voice message. Once the voice message is recorded Gx Pager goes back to standby awaiting the next valid message.