just thinking out loud Operational use of trunked radio systems by fire departments
1. Typically, radio users have to switch channels all day long. If they go a small fire, maybe they need to use Ch 2. If they go to a big fire, maybe they need to use Ch 12. if they go to a EMS call, maybe they need to use Ch 5. If they do pre fire planning or training, maybe they need to use Ch 7. If they go to a mutula aid call, maybe they need Ch 13. 2. I think that Memphis TN FD tried to get around that problem by having the dispatchers control the channels used by the field radios. I have no idea if that worked well or not. 3. Maybe it would be a good idea to give each fire company and each ambulance their own talkgroup. Some of the rural countys do have a seperate channel for each FD. Barnstable County Mass has a different talkgroup for every FD, plus some common channels. If each fire company and ambulance was assigned its own talkgroup, the dispatchers could patch the talkgroups as needed. When the unit was clear and available for the next call, they could be unpatched - or they could be patched to the main dipatch channel. If the company is assinged to a EMS call, the fire company TG could be patched to the responding ambulances's talkgroup. If several units were going to a building fire, multi talkgroups could be patched together. Using this scheme, radio users would not need to fumble around with their channel selector knobs all day long. Question - how many talkgroups can be patched at once? It should be a large number if I understand how control channels work. The system controller would recognize a request to talk from a unit, and then send out a data signal for all of the patched talk groups to switch to voice pathway XYZ. Seems very doable. I suppose the million dollar question is "how fast can a control channel send out data packets to 100 different talkgroups". (Maybe OSW is the magic word - outbound signalling word - is that a real thing?) Maybe this would put too much of a load on the control channel? maybe you could dedicate one control channel for FD use? Maybe a TRS would end up having 3 control channels - 1 for police - 1 for fire - 1 for everyone else. ???????? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "massfire" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/massfire. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
