Batboard

I am really behind the curve on what the FCC has been doing regarding timelines and it is hard to figure what information is current and what is old. I had heard they were going to be migrating everyone in steps, then I heard that they had changed that to all at once. Specifically I am talking about fire departments.

Our situation is, most of the fire departments (20+) in three counties are dispatched by CDF, and they all operate with each other, CDF, and the Forest Service on a regular basis. So any changes that occur have to happen all at once. Additionally, CDF is really backwards as far as operations go, always have been. So any changes take a long time to implement through them. Additionally the little local fire departments are mostly broke. There are a lot of Syn-Tech 1s still running around, as well as LPH hand helds. Our repeaters are old Midland or Kenwood. Our band is VHF-high.

It is going to take a lot of money to narrowband everything. Leading me to believe when the time comes some of the poorer departments will not be able to comply in any way shape or form. Is this the situation in other parts of the country as well?

Birken

Hello Birken,

As I understand it, the deadline for transition to 12.5 kHz for both Business/Industrial and Public Safety is currently January 1, 2013 - about 7 years from now. New equipment for 25 kHz systems may be hard to come by much sooner, however.

A good ref: http://www.apcointl.org/frequency/docum ... Order.html

Incidentally, the Feds (like the Forest Service) are mandated to narrowband as of January, 2008, so they may be harder to operate with (though they will still be able to talk on YOUR wideband channels with wideband if their equipment supports it).

DoD and some (but not all) Federal Agencies have required their radios to be P25 compliant for the purpose of interoperability, but this is not a regulation that I know of.

Given the (minimum) 8 year "lead time", I don't think you'll get much traction with the economic argument, as you should be replacing your equipment about that often anyway. Yes, I know some departments are using 15 year old stuff now, but they really shouldn't be (would you use 15 year old hose or lifepaks?)

73 DE Hartley

I am not making an argument. At my own FD we got a grant for all new TK-790s (told the government, "you are making us change, you should pay" and they did apparently) and most of our HTs (EPHs and a few GPHs) are already flex mode.

The federal fire agencies, at least in California, and all over the West at least if not the country, have already converted all ops above 162 to narrowband. In the vaults they have all new Daniels repeaters ($$$) and CDF also replaced most of their repeaters with Daniels, except the odd MSR2000. But CDF has not cut anything over to narrowband and I don't expect them to until it is absolutely mandatory due to all the little VFDs they operate with, and sometimes dispatch for, on CDF frequencies too.

I am glad we are ahead on this deal. But as far as I am concerned a Syn-Tech II or XTR or TK-730 is still a fine radio and it will be a darn shame to send them to the dumps. (But good for the hams, hi hi) But fire departments are facing such a number of unfunded mandates, this being one of them. And I think some of them just plain do not have the money. The end result will be less radios in the hands of the users, for a while anyway. That does nothing to improve communications.

Birken