Suggested Metrofire Boston Radio Improvements
SUGGESTED METROFIRE BOSTON RADIO IMPROVEMENTS
1. Fix patch from 483.3125 to 154.22 (all stations transmitting on 486.3125 are being repeated very, very weakly onto 483.3125 and 154.22)[April 2000 - system is still broken - has not been fixed in ?3 years - 1Sept00 - still broken]
2. Add more receiver sites to 483.3125/154.22 system.
3. Take 154.355 from Cambridge FD and give to Dedham FD.
4. Give 151.28 to Everett FD.
5. Take 153.77 from Belmont FD and use as additional mutual aid channel. (or give to dedham or Everett based on radio engineering studies of interference issues)
6. Convert 483.2875 from a dispatcher-to-dispatcher channel to a secondary mutual aid fireground channel.
7. Create a dispatcher-to-dispatcher channel that has data transmission capability and real time unit location capability.
8. Upgrade all suburban dispatchers from simplex radio consoles to duplex radio consoles. (A duplex radio console will allow a dispatcher to transmit and receive at the same time - presently, only the Boston dispatchers have this capability - and the suburban police dispatchers.)
9. Implement a fireground SOP requiring 1 radio monitor at the front and 1 radio monitor at the rear of each fire building. Said radio monitors shall monitor all radio channels possessed by all units operating at the emergency scene. They shall also monitor all radio channels used by all in-house security and maintenance workers.
The present radio system is just about totally broken at this point - any time that a unit goes out of their hometown, their portable radios just about become totally useless - especially if they attempt to talk to a unit from a different FD.
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11 April 2000 - a thought occurred to me last night. Perhaps a steered regional radio system would be very helpful.
1. Put status boxes or MDTs in all rigs - send data via 800Mhz channels. Put GPS in all rigs so that all dispatchers can see where all rigs are located in the Metro area. there are 2 primary benefits here - a great reduction of verbal radio traffic and much greater info availability for fire dispatchers.
2. Create regionwide fireground radio channels. Each town will be reponsible for putting / operating / maintaining / installing at least one repeater in their jurisdiction. The backbone linking system will be a shared expense. This will be a steered transmitter system with frequency agile transmitters. If each transmitter had 5 common frequencies, then the odds of all channels being busy at any one time are practically zero.
The system will work like this. Lets say that there is a fire at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington. Immediately, the Burlington repeater and the Woburn repeater will begin to transmit all traffic on the FG1 channel. Depending on what side of the building that a radio is operating on, this will determine which repeater is "steered" into operation. If a 2nd firegound channel is needed (in addition to FG1 and the Burlington Primary channel), then the Woburn repeater could be forced to carry traffic on FG2 channel. Or a repeater on a Comms Van could be set up to operate on FG2 channel.
If there is a "in-house" repeater in the Lahey Clinic, then it can be slaved to the Burlington Primary channel or to the FG1 channel. All it takes is a phone line from the "in-house repeater" to the backbone infrastructure.
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30 August 2000 - Wednesday - 483.3125R radio test - only Lynn and Newton do radio tests - Newton field units are very weak (this problem has been going on for ?3 years now)
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Typed by Peter Szerlag - 6/22/99
Update - 11 April 2000 - 1Sept00