Politics at its finest in Pa as always.
Washington County Public Safety - new trunked (YW) licenses
- Thread starter mtindor
- Start date
Seems like it is going to be linked to the ICCORS system in 700/800I’m not too familiar with how site management works does anyone have any insight on if 14 sites will be enough for Washington Co?
Overview of GenWatch site management: GenWatch – Performance Management Software for ASTRO 25 - The Genesis Group
So did the commissioners vote to move forward with the Motorola system?
So did the commissioners vote to move forward with the Motorola system?
Yes
Commissioners approve $24.445 million contract with Motorola for public safety radio system
In a split vote Monday morning during a special meeting with little fanfare and no public comment, the Washington County commissioners approved a $24.445 million contract with Motorola to build the county’s public safety radio system. The public safety radio system contract was the only item on...
www.observer-reporter.com
djkmeissner
Member
The Observer Reporter did a public record request and the county originally denied the request per Motorola request. Motorola claimed giving out the bid documents would give out proprietary information and trade secrets.
The paper appealed to the state and the county released the 516 page bid document. But they redacted 405 pages of the documents which included the price summary and timeline. The county solicitor said "the redactions are needed to “protect the interest of Motorola” since releasing information about equipment, designs and costs would “subject Motorola with an undue burden” by possibly releasing proprietary information to competitors." I am not sure how that would release undue burden to give out equipment information as every company has different types of equipment. Seems a little suspicious to me.
www.observer-reporter.com
The paper appealed to the state and the county released the 516 page bid document. But they redacted 405 pages of the documents which included the price summary and timeline. The county solicitor said "the redactions are needed to “protect the interest of Motorola” since releasing information about equipment, designs and costs would “subject Motorola with an undue burden” by possibly releasing proprietary information to competitors." I am not sure how that would release undue burden to give out equipment information as every company has different types of equipment. Seems a little suspicious to me.
Washington Co. releases heavily redacted copy of Motorola radio contract
Washington County has released a heavily redacted copy of its public safety radio contract with Motorola Solutions Inc. that offers few details about the scope of the multimillion-dollar project. Assistant county solicitor Sarah Scott released the redacted version of the 516-page contract...
www.observer-reporter.com
As an end user in Washington County (Fire & PD) this has been an absolute disaster... I don't see how 14 tower sites ate going to provide enough coverage, especially with the county topography. We've had countless issues with VHF until they added a few more tower sites about 6-7 years ago. Now we are working fine. Would I like the big new system? Yes... but at what cost?
Some Western Md counties have fewer 700 MHz subsites covering their jurisdictions and its mountainous terrain, so it’s possible. However it depends on site placement. I do know that a few additional subsites are planned in the state’s coverage improvement program, and Allegany County utilizes VRS to enhance portable coverage.
If I remember correctly my county in the northeast part of the state with lots of mountains and valleys has 16 tower sites.
The departments in our Suburban Mutual Aid area (South Fire area) still complain about dead spots occasionally but not nearly as much as when they had the old VHF repeater Suburban Fire channel. The only other areas I’ve heard mention dead spots has been when traveling out of county on mutual aid. And even then the majority of the time they’ve been able to hit the system with no issues. So if designed, built, and tested properly it should hopefully work for you.
The departments in our Suburban Mutual Aid area (South Fire area) still complain about dead spots occasionally but not nearly as much as when they had the old VHF repeater Suburban Fire channel. The only other areas I’ve heard mention dead spots has been when traveling out of county on mutual aid. And even then the majority of the time they’ve been able to hit the system with no issues. So if designed, built, and tested properly it should hopefully work for you.
This same argument has come up COUNTLESS times for Fayette, Westmoreland, Somerset and all the counties that have switched to ICORRS. Will there be dead spots? Yes. Are there dead spots now? Yes. Is the system going to work? Yes. Are the firemen going to loose their minds because they can't use CCR on the system? Also, Yes.
talviar
Member
To summarize Surge's thoughts- and Dictator17's.....
Every radio system: low band, VHF, UHF, 700, 800, 900 has dead spots.
In the low band days if folks couldn't reach back to their base or the county dispatch, they would relay to another unit, etc until the message arrived where it should.
VHF- while VHF is popular and many believe it is a godsend and works better than anything else..... go to a good mountain top/hill top, throw an antenna (gain style) 200 feet in the air, hook a good receiver to it and listen to everything you hear. There are times with minor band openings for skip/etc on VHF where my 155.295 base stations here at Fayette will pick up radio traffic and basically never have "dead air" for more than a few seconds at a time thruout 12-24 hr periods. On top of that, getting slammed with portables and mobiles 300/400 miles out during these openings (or further) or 200+ miles during normal conditions make me glad we only use it for paging.
UHF- same as above on VHF.
700, 800 have the luxury of not being affected (most of the time) by skip activity and such. Though my repeaters here at Fayette have no issues picking up portables and mobiles 100+ miles out from the tower sites, there are times where we see in the transaction logs for the control channel, that traffic from distant users of distant systems are hitting us.
When you find me a cell phone (which most folks have now) that has no dead spots, then you can complain and moan about all the other freqs and systems and their coverage issues.
Do we have dead spots in Fayette? Yes. Those same dead spots are there on Cell phone, UHF, VHF, and yes even low band when trying to get back to the county dispatch center.
The balance is to find coverage across the areas with the higher populations and higher call volumes. A dead spot in the middle of the woods with no one living within 3 miles doesn't concern me. A dead spot in the middle of the woods along the bike trail in Ohiopyle where 2+ million people pass each year concerns me. And has a tower to cover it.
Will the 12 sites work perfect and have no issues? probably not. But the VHF system after years of "tweaks, additions, changes, etc" still has issues and doesn't work perfect. Our system was operational on P25 for 6 years before we started the planning to add 2 more sites to cover bad coverage areas in some more populated areas.
Have a great one!
Living in a river valley surrounded by hills and mountains I’m jealous of everyone that can get all the skip and far off traffic. But ai am one of those that wants to hear anything and everything.
Agreed. I was critical of the switch to P25 here but it definitely has more positives than negatives (not counting in the capital E). Our old VHF system my area was repeated so I had no issues hearing what was happening at home or on my way to calls. But surrounding towns and areas we go into wasn’t repeated so I could barely pick up mobiles much less portables. It’s nice to actually know what’s going on now. System testing was also surprisingly done fairly well here for the P25 system so there are the occasional dead spots but it’s nowhere near as widespread as it was with the old VHF patchwork system.
Agreed. I was critical of the switch to P25 here but it definitely has more positives than negatives (not counting in the capital E). Our old VHF system my area was repeated so I had no issues hearing what was happening at home or on my way to calls. But surrounding towns and areas we go into wasn’t repeated so I could barely pick up mobiles much less portables. It’s nice to actually know what’s going on now. System testing was also surprisingly done fairly well here for the P25 system so there are the occasional dead spots but it’s nowhere near as widespread as it was with the old VHF patchwork system.
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