Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Roger on March 16, 2008 at 12:38pm

we are getting ready to go 800 waiting on radios to be delivered. hope we have better luck

Permalink Reply by Jason Quimby on March 23, 2008 at 8:36am

It is not just the state system. We went to a new 400mhz system last year from a 800mhz system. Since then the stations have had over 30 or more missed calls. Kenwood engineers have been in and they have no clue. We have taken a Firefighter/Paramedic off the truck just to be at dispatch, so this can be straightened out. We are looking on how the stations get the call now. We split dispatch with our police department.

A couple of suggestions for you and it might be to late. A recast of dispatch of a call on VHF channel works well. Also a fire ground channel with no repeater, we call them direct channels, radio to radio.

Also a problem in our county we have 5 dispatch centers that include VHF, UHF, and 800mhz systems. We have to relay links through jps systems just to talk or multiple radios in vehicles.

Permalink Reply by jeremy mankin on April 25, 2008 at 7:49pm

the only way the system works in a house or buildilng is u halft to have what is called talk arpound channels this takes the radio of the tower . or u can uses nip packs channel we where the very first county in the state to us these the arent that bad if u have a hell of alot of repeaters . know for ythe missing dispatch if your body is bloking the tower's signal this is the truth your body can blok the signal if u got any ? just get a hold of any f.f in vermillion, parke or fountain countys and we'll tell u all the tricks to the radios.

Permalink Reply by Kerry Passwater on April 26, 2008 at 4:21pm

Ahh...The 'ole debate of digital vs. analog radio systems. My opinion is as follows. First of all, Allen County, (the county where I volunteer,) spent the money several years ago and built their own system. By money, I'm referring to somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 million not including mobile or portable radios. Now, Allen County Sheriff's Dept., Fort Wayne City Fire and Fort Wayne City PD and AMR (Fort Wayne EMS) are all on the same radio system. I must also mention that Allen County along with Fort Wayne city and TRAA spent the money and purchased Motorola XTS radios. Motorola makes an expensive radio, but as with many other items across the industry, you get what you pay for. To sum it all up, after 8-10 months of grid testing and somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 million, Allen County/Fort Wayne city has a near flawless system.
On the other hand, in Huntington County where I work full-time, county and city fire EMS and PD are still all on an analog VHF system. This is after Parkview Huntington EMS did a trial several years ago on the state's digital 800mhz system which proved to be a failure. I must mention that this trial was with the budget friendly EF Johnson copy of the Motorola XTS radio. Huntington also recently considered the possibility of a 4.2 GHZ system which posed the same potential for failure as the 800 MHZ system.
In conclusion, I think the 800MHZ band can be a useful and reliable system with the proper initial initial investment as well as some education on proper use.
Also for Dusty, where is it you are from?

Permalink Reply by James Fanning on August 4, 2008 at 12:24pm

We have had similar problems. we only use the 800 for initial radio traffic with dispatch. We use our low band radio's for fire ground opps. Comand and officers have both, 800 and low band on fire grounds. It's still a mess and it would be great if we could get the 800 system to work properly.

Permalink Reply by Ed on October 16, 2008 at 2:32pm

I maybe shouldn't be chiming in on this since I am a believer and a preacher for the state's 800HMZ radio system.. But I can tell you that MOST departments do not experience these issues. There are enough pissed off people out there, that it appears to be extremely widespread. Thats not necessiarly the case. I can tell you an easy fix though.. Do what a lot of departments do and use your existing VHF radios for your fireground use and the 800 for your command style communications. I mean, I know that its far less cool to be using a VHF radio when your officers carry the nice new ones, but I can tell you that you want your interior folks to have a dedicated channel anyway.. What better way to preserve that? Go to a frequency that no one else uses. If you intend on using your 800 radios, contact your dispatch center and inquire if they can enact a "patch" on their consoles that will patch the 800 and VHF frequencies and when you key on one technology, you transmit on both..

Good Luck and Be Safe!

Permalink Reply by Cory on October 31, 2008 at 3:32pm

Hey everybody 800's the greatest thing since... yea ok, whatever, here is the thing, ever radio system has its problems to a point, the people that are trying to put this into service Normally don't think to take the time to make sure it works correctly and to our advantage they want to hurry up and get it into service (sometimes it’s that they don’t know that they need to test and in that case we need to inform them) but if they do know and they don't want to grid test and get the bugs out they want to say hey we have the 800 system and that’s all that matters to some people, and then we are stuck having to work out the issues. And the money we are spending on these systems is ridiculous is it really the time to spend this amount of money on a radio system? Is this really where we want to spend our money? $5000 a radio is ridiculous. This technology is not going to make anything any safer, unless they do their job and make sure this works everywhere, at Elkhart City we have had some major problems with the system, example, station not getting calls or tones multiple times, trying to get out and can't. We had a cop that had a car pulled over LESS THAN A QUARTER MILE FROM DISPATCH and couldn't communicate with dispatch, he had a car full of people with warrants!!! Nice. I guess if your department or county is thinking of going to it, they need to look into what the true cost is of it, my that I mean, the expenses of how much the system alone is, including the proper amount of towers, portable and base mounted radio's, mic extensions etc. We as firefighters that are hearing from other fire depts. having problems with these systems need to make sure we pass out information to other brothers that are at departments looking into these types of systems so they know what they are getting into before they get themselves into deep and have to pump more money than they thought into a system like this.
Be safe and take care
Cory

Permalink Reply by Brad on November 2, 2008 at 3:28pm

The 800 system has its flaws here in Muncie. We are on the 800 system and all the volunteers were on the VHF system. I would rather be on the VHF system along with them, we run county wide and some times it is difficult to comunicate with differnt frequencies. It has gotten better now. because a lot of the volunteers are going to 800s. The biggest problems we have is we all (in the MFD) have E F Johnson radios. I am here to tell you they are the biggest piece of junk made. You key up in one spot and you are out of range, move 2 feet and you are fine.

Permalink Reply by xxxxxxx on March 13, 2009 at 1:14am

Amen Brother I showed up to A call for someone with A injured leg. Turned out I missed the part about it being A gun fight.

Permalink Reply by Tom Sellmer, Sr on May 29, 2009 at 9:37am

THE HAND HELDS A LIKE CARRYING A BRICK BAT AROUND.

Permalink Reply by Matt on July 12, 2009 at 9:50pm

there are three problems with the 800 system in dearborn county..... 1. Motorola - not fixing the dead spots where the "low band" systems still work! 2. county - rushing the system into place! 3. anyone who operates the radio always cutting thereself off! only catching half of the issue!