vehicle repeaters

[speedway_navigator]

A dealer submitting a bid to a county we're working with listed repeaters. I've seen them in a very few rural areas, I think the CHP still uses them.

Are they still common in rural areas? Most of our counties in Indiana are about 20 miles square so we don't see a need for them with a well designed system.
thanks

 

[mrsvensven]

Vehicle repeaters aren't only used in rural areas. Many urban areas also use them to enhance in-building coverage. They are a viable option in places where the terrain and/or building density make it infeasible to build enough sites to provide the desired on-street portable and/or in-building coverage.

If it is feasible to build a system that provides the desired coverage, I would still prefer that to repeaters.

 

[kf8yk]

One issue that crops up with urban or dense suburban jurisdictions is unintentional repeater shutdowns.

Typical scenario is vehicle A responds to a call and activates the vehicle repeater (VR). Vehicle B responds a short while later to a second call within a mile or two of the first and activates its VR. Since the VRs are parked in the street & have external antennas they have no problem hearing each other and trigger the priority scheme causing the VR in vehicle A to shut down.

From inside the building the crew of vehicle A is unable to hear the active VR in vehicle B & loses communications.

In rural areas where incidents are spread out and call volume is low this is rarely a problem. For denser/busier areas some careful engineering and multi-channel VRs may be required.

 

[MiCon]

A dealer submitting a bid to a county we're working with listed repeaters. I've seen them in a very few rural areas, I think the CHP still uses them.

Are they still common in rural areas? Most of our counties in Indiana are about 20 miles square so we don't see a need for them with a well designed system.
thanks

I wouldn't call them common, but they are definitely still in use. I monitor one on a daily basis.

 

[tlemke940]

We have them in out area a lot. 2 county's for shure are heavy users and they are used in fire agency's a lot around here for in-building coverage. so if they are set up well and have units trained on how and when to use them they work GREAT. but there can be problems when more than 1 is in the same area and on the air so that can be a problem. ran in to one not long ago that had 2 apparatus that had svr's on and one was on dispatch and the other was on another channel and it patched the two channels together that was intesting when that happend.

 

[kayn1n32008]

A dealer submitting a bid to a county we're working with listed repeaters. I've seen them in a very few rural areas, I think the CHP still uses them.

Are they still common in rural areas? Most of our counties in Indiana are about 20 miles square so we don't see a need for them with a well designed system.
thanks

It entirely depends how the coverage was designed.

If it's 95/95/95 for a 30w mobile, then it's probably not going to work so well with a portable on belt. If it's 95/95/95 for indoor, portable on belt, it's probably going to be just fine. Just because

...our counties in Indiana are about 20 miles square...

Really doesn't mean a thing, when it comes to designing a radio systems coverage.

The only way you will know if you need mobile repeaters is to do ACTUAL coverage testing and determine if the coverage is adequate for your use case.

 

[kayn1n32008]

ran in to one not long ago that had 2 apparatus that had svr's on and one was on dispatch and the other was on another channel and it patched the two channels together that was intesting when that happend.

Something doesn't add up. When the second SVR came on scene and was activated, it should have exerted priority and the first SVR should have gone into stand-by, not 'patched the two channels together'.

 

[jeepsandradios]

Yup still do alot of them

 

[I_Am_Infinite]

ran in to one not long ago that had 2 apparatus that had svr's on and one was on dispatch and the other was on another channel and it patched the two channels together that was intesting when that happend.

Just curious what happened when they patched it?

 

[tlemke940]

Something doesn't add up. When the second SVR came on scene and was activated, it should have exerted priority and the first SVR should have gone into stand-by, not 'patched the two channels together'.

The sampling was not enabled on those. normally they only have one on and they found it fast it just confused the dispatchers for a moment as they had working traffic coming through on a dispatch channel too so it was just one of those oops problems. normally around here each fire agency will have between 1-4 svrs depending on how large they are and the radio coverage in there area and the first unit on scene will use the svr only. but sometimes stuff like this happens when a duty officer forgets to turn it back off after a call. the customers tend to not like the sampleing on the svr it drives them nuts thats why most of them put the policy into place so thay did not need it turnd on. so ya the VR's work well but do have there probloms that need to be adressed before thay get implamented. the 250s yes do have better sampleing than the 200s do but it adds to the cost and it is larger and cant be tucked away as easy so there are thousands of 200s out there in our area.

 

[n7maq-1]

Something doesn't add up. When the second SVR came on scene and was activated, it should have exerted priority and the first SVR should have gone into stand-by, not 'patched the two channels together'.

The sampling may have been disabled, the SVR200's with sampling enabled do punch a good hole in the audio, I forget (been a few years since I had the factory training) the time, but the SVR250's are much better at around 40ms IIRC.

 

[wsp44]

We have used the Pramid SVR's to enhance unbuilding coverage. They work great.

 

[hill]

Virginia State Police use vehicle repeaters.all the time on 700 MHz to access the Statewide Trunked Radio System STARS which operates on VHF High Band. With STARS not really built out to accessed via handheld radios. STARS is fully encrypted now.

Virginia Statewide Agencies Radio System (STARS) Trunking System, Statewide, Virginia

Virginia Statewide Agencies Radio System (STARS) Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

Virginia State Police DVRS (Virginia) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference for Virginia State Police DVRS (Virginia)

www.radioreference.com

 

[cavmedic]

PA State Police have a DVRS in just about every vehicle and in the Barracks. System wasn't designed for portable coverage.