Many of the radio repeaters used by public safety agencies are very badly set up. All repeaters should:
1. Allow the dispatcher to talk over the field units
2. Not allow anyone to talk over pager tones
3. Allow the dispatcher to transmit and receive at the same time
4. Have no keyup delay and no unkey delay (or "tail")
5. Reach all parts of the service area - including basements, elevators, gullies, canyons, etc
If the repeaters that your agency uses cannot meet these basic requirements, then you are severely reducing your capability to provide efficient and effective service to the public.
July 15, 1998 by Peter Szerlag - please feel free to pass this info on to anyone who can use it.
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August 6, 1998 "A Little More Info"
Perhaps I am being to vague about all of this. Let me try to tell you in concrete terms why this stuff is important.
If you do not understand how a repeater system operates, nor how a well designed repeater system operates, then you will run into troubles such as this - you will be in a basement or elevator and be unable to talk to the person standing next to you - you will have no clue what the problem is and neither will the dispatchers (if they can even hear you) - you will end up repeating messages over and over because you will make the same key-up and key-down mistakes that everyone makes and no one seems to realize how to fix the problem - you will hear the tape of an extreme incident that you were involved in and you will know that 50% of your radio messages were never heard by anyone and you will be too embarrassed to bring it up to anyone - public safety staff will die needlessly and civilians will die needlessly because no one has a clue about the workings of radio systems - everyone knows every last word of their union contract or they know every minor detail about the flashing lights and sirens on the rig but they cannot EVER find time to practice "push then talk" or "talk after the other guy unkeys".
The communications procedures used in the Boston area nowadays has degraded so seriously that even routine messages on routine incidents are now being covered up by doubling - when a serious incident occurs it is quite possible that 90% of all radio messages will be lost. Someone has to start paying attention to these problems!
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