Union County EMA - LOOK OUT!

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kcscan6

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I'm not an expert in radio communications by any means, but I don't see how removing cell towers is going to help their problems. Sure, adding radio towers, repeaters, etc would help alleviate the issues, however, cell towers have nothing to do with improving radio coverage (especially in a predominatly UHF/VHF county). Maybe they should hire a radio consultant (Tusa, CTA) before going any further?
 

bamx2

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Did you all even read the article?

Dopp spoke to the Planning and Zoning Commission this week, showing his support to replace the several dozen 360-foot telecommunication towers around the county with 10 500-foot towers.

They are going into a partnership with the cell phone companies to build taller towers, to increase the coverage in the county and reduce the number of sites. No where in the article did they say cell phones were interfering with their coverage...
 

bamx2

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Oh and its obvious you didn't read the article. The first two words are FRANKLIN COUNTY.


*sigh*
 

kcscan6

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Did you all even read the article?

Bamx, you're absolutely right :wink:. Guess being on the road for 26 hours straight and trying to comprehend a news article don't mix very well. Yep, now that I've had some sleep, I went back and re-read it. All makes sense now.
 

iamhere300

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It actually makes no sense, none at all.

They want the "Tower Companies" to take down all their towers, and rely on 10
tall towers, 500 foot each, to provide communications throughout the county, for
all radio services.

To the uninformed, it sounds like a wonderful idea. Gosh, those 500 foot towers would
talk forever.

To the knowledgable, this won't work for so many reasons.

1. Coverage. The top part of the tower will be reserved for those public safety
systems. Pretty good coverage for 5 watt portables and 50 watt mobiles. But for
a .6th of a watt Cell or PCS phone, it still will be iffy if at all. Propagation at at PCS frequencies
means your signal drops at about 2-3 miles. (Useable) Remember, all the other
towers are coming down, and these towers are going to be in the rural areas. Any idea
how those town or suburban dwellers are going to get coverage? What about the very short
range from Wireless Internet Providers?

2. Microwave. No, not the ones to heat up your chicken nuggets, but the microwave point to
point systems already in place, and those that are going up all the time. Line of sight rules, and
even though we can try to bend the laws of physics, we just can't seem to break them.

3. Back to Cellular. Most of the new builds for Cellular are not really related to coverage anymore,
but related to CAPACITY. A cell site can only handle so much - so a Cell company will pick another
site that may enhance coverage, but will enhance capacity. 10 sites will only handle so much
capacity, and only 10 will be a step back for most carriers.

4. Financial. 26.5 to build these 10 towers? HUH? If the county wants em, I can arrange construction of these towers for a fraction of that, 10 to 20 percent of that figure. 800K to maintain them yearly? And while a cell company may be willing to agree to financial terms (if somehow the practical and technical issues could be fixed) no tower company would be able to compete. Why should the county be locking them out of business in the county?

The county has already set themselfs up for a lawsuit with their zoning ordinance approved in September, the one where they mandate that anyone building a new tower be REQUIRED to give free space to "public service" groups and agencies. Before we even debate what exactly a "public service" group is (Taxis provide a public service) and what a public SAFETY agency is, lets consider how the county can legally take away my property without just compensation? According to federal law, they can't, and if I have a tower in the area every inch of that is my leaseable property.

I can guess what happened here though. RCC wanted to raise up their tower, so they pumped the local EMA up with these fictictious figures. They primed him on what to say, and what to do, so they could slide by the zoning. It remains to be seen if they are held to the mandate requiring them to provide free space!
 

kcscan6

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As far as terrain goes, what's that like in Franklin County (I'm not familiar with the area)? In KC, we have some relatively flat spots, and various agencies around here have attached antennas to cell towers and the results have been positive from what I've gathered.

If you have a lot of hills and what not, yeah, that could be a problem. That, combined with the other factors you mentioned-the most prudent thing that EMA director should do is hire a RF Comm Consultant to evaluate the area and go from there.
 

iamhere300

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Attaching to cell towers (What exactly is a cell tower? What makes it different from say... A paging tower? Or perhaps a FM Broadcast tower? What do you call a tower that has FM Broadcast, a paging provider, a cellular company, a PCS provider, a Community Repeater, Public Safety, a microwave link, and perhaps a HAM antenna on it? A Cell CR PCS Public safety Microwave Ham Broadcast paging tower?) is by no stretch a new thing.

What is new is a zoning authority telling me that I have to take down my other towers so I can build another tower!

Franklin County has rolling hills.
 

wb0wao

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Qulin, MO
This "idea" will die a quick, sudden and ugly death when the cell providers come in to the meeting with their lawyers and engineers. Besides, if they wait just a couple of years they can piggy-back with the new MO statewide system that will be going up.

Dennis
 

RADIOUSER5

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Anyone do due diligence by producing the computer generated propagation charts for each frequency band? A developer would be required to bring in engineering plans sealed by a professional engineer.
 

stevelton

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Also, Going from 360ft to 500 ft wont make that much of a difference anyways.
I would much rather have 20 100ft sites around my county than 10 500 ft sites.
Also, in the center of the county, on my map it looks like the furthest one can get form the center is about 27 miles.
You mean to tell me that 1 conventional repeater on a 360 foot tower in the center of the county, and a vehicle repeater in the cars and that wouldnt give them county wide HT coverage???!!!!
Sounds like they need a more honest radio shop.
Im for hire!
Steven
 
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