City-Wide Police Net Voter Failure

Renamon · Post by **Renamon** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 9:12 pm

Well, about 10 minutes ago, the ENTIRE Police net in my city just.....stopped working. The Fire net works fine, but the Police net failed - according to one of the dispatchers, "all the voters failed AT ONCE!" It is not a power failure.

Here is what is intresting - the Fire net and the Police net work off the SAME VOTER SYSTEMS, and the Fire net works fine, but the PD net is down COMPLETELY.

What could be done to fix this problem?

Post by **alex** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 5:33 am

You need to give us a TON more info than that...

Start talking about the infrastrcutre -

Centracom? What version? What radios are you using as transmitters? Who provides your tone remote lines (telco?) I'd get on the horn with them.

Your question is like trying to shoot a beercan off a fence 1000 miles away.

Need more info!

-Alex

MRFLASHPORT · Post by **MRFLASHPORT** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 6:09 am

Renamon,

What's wrong Jake, Did Someone turn off the CB base radio? You know you guys in Mayberry need to upgrade to a real radio system.

Tell Andy and Barney I said hello.

Renamon · Post by **Renamon** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 10:54 am

The problem seems to have been fixed...sort of...

Here is what I know:

Dispatch uses:
Centracom Gold Elite (Lan Based) Systems - thinking they use spectras for back transmitters.

Officers:
JT1000 for Handhelds (dua)
M1225 for Mobiles (dua...again)

The RTL is provided by Telco - if I am thinking correctly.

I belkeve there are 14 voters positioned over the city, but the number could be 1 or 2 off.

Like I said earlier, the system seems to have recovered to some degree. In some parts where coverage was 100 percent, the signal is weak or absent completely. Day Wireless is the major company who services the system, and they have been out all day working on it, and it is slowly recovering.

-Jake

RADIOMAN2002 · Post by **RADIOMAN2002** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 7:13 pm

This sounds very familiar. About 10 years ago I got a frantic call from the dispatcher of the Westchester County Police. It seems their entire radio system has failed, since there is no indication on the consoles for voting, I proceeeded to their H.Q. at a very unreasonable speed ( with their blessings and clearance with N.Y.S.P.) only to find all the fail lights lit on their Spectra-Tac voter, I imediatly put in a call to Bell Atlantic (The phone Company) that they must have a major line failure in the area of the Police H.Q. Next I go to their transmitter site and checking the out station, where I hear a carrier on the input to their repeater system. After a roll call is made to all the local Police Departments that have County transmitters , I find that the Department, that had requested assistance on the Couny Police channel earlier in the evening, cannot hear anything on the County channel. I have the desk Sergant go down to the basemnet and check the station, he calls back and says something smells like it's burning up, I had him pull the plug on the stationa and all of a suden the entire radio system comes back to life.
It appears that a quiet dead carrier will fool a Spectra-Tac into thinking that there is no phone line and go failed. Maybe you can check for the same problem.

nmfire10 · Post by **nmfire10** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 8:01 pm

RADIOMAN2002 wrote: It appears that a quiet dead carrier will fool a Spectra-Tac into thinking that there is no phone line and go failed. Maybe you can check for the same problem.

YES IT DOES! I have this happen frequently as a matter of fact. Whenever some jackass sits on their microphone and it is quite, give it about 30 seconds and the console goes ballistic. The two main sites will go into fail and the damn audible alarm for the fail indicators will make your ears bleed. As soon as something makes some noise on the air, it will come back but it is a annoying as all hell. I have one peticular officer who likes to transmit with the radio still behind him on his waist and he is VERY long winded. I've had a few occasions where you can barely hear him speaking (going on and on and on) and he actually fails the main site. (It's ok though because he usually never has anything important to say and after the first 10 seconds, we tend to tune him out and just say "yea, roger".)

bernie · Post by **bernie** » Tue Jun 08, 2004 11:05 am

My two bits worth:
I can not guess what your problem was unless I knew the details of your system.

Voting systems certainly increase the system performance, but they have their own ujnique problems.

For example you can hear distant a co-channel interfering signal
much better.

A sattellite receiver telephone line, or link which is noisy, or grounded can also lock up a voting system.

Another Spectra-Tac problem is that if there is pulse noise on the link
the status tone detector will momentairily detect, the AGC sample and hold will reset to the noise peak, the result is the audio level from the comparitor decreases.
In extreme cases when the AGC is pumped up the status tone detector can no longer detect the status tone, and status tone is on the comparitor output until it times out.
Tone over the air on repeater systems.