Dutchess wants new simulcast radio dispatch system for first responders and police

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From Midhudsonnews.com

Steinhaus wants new simulcast radio dispatch system for first responders and police

Poughkeepsie – Dutchess County Executive William Steinhaus Thursday proposed a $1.5 million bond resolution to purchase a Simulcast Radio Dispatch System for the county’s 911 center.

The new system would provide improved radio transmission coverage for the county’s emergency first responders and law enforcement.

Currently, there are areas in the county where fire and emergency first responders as well as police encounter weak radio reception, making it difficult for them to receive or hear complete dispatches from the county’s 9-1-1 Dispatch Center. That would be corrected with the installation of the Simulcast Radio Dispatch System, which was developed to extend radio coverage without requiring additional frequencies. The system would combine seven tower sites located throughout the county to create one unified system for paging, by broadcasting the same signal from all transmitter sites simultaneously.

As part of the system, each of the Department of Emergency Response’s tower sites will have its microwave system upgraded and new antennas and control equipment will be installed. The seven tower sites are as follows:

Clove Mountain in Union Vale

Hosner Mountain in East Fishkill

East Mountain in Dover

Depot Hill in Beekman

Brooklyn Heights in Milan

Silver Mountain in North East

Illinois Mountain in Highland

A number of local first responders have signed onto the project and lent their support to it.

The bond request will be considered by the Dutchess County Legislature in August.

[Medic137 6]

Maybe Putnam and Dutchess could get together on a system to cover both counties. Putnam's system is 20 years out of date and needs to be upgraded. Dutchess could use antennas on the AT&T tower, Ninham, and Tower Hill in Patterson to cover southern Dutchess and Putnam could piggy back onto the system.

After they get done paying for ALS, of course.

[firebuff08 29]

While a simulcast system has high start-up costs and higher maintenance costs it is a very good way to go to cover a large geographic area. The key to a simulcast system is the microwave system linking dispatch with all of the transmit sites. That is a lot more equipment to install and to maintain. The transmit signals at all of the sites MUST be synchronized to a finite degree to keep them from beating against each other and that can only be done with microwave or fiber optic. Phone lines are not stable enough. If the sites get out of syncronization, it would sound the same as when two units transmit on the same channel at the same time as one would cancel the other out. The CT State Police Trunked system is simulcast. Each Zone of that system has as many as a half-dozen tower sites or more, all transmitting simultaneously on the same frequency.

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Pawling tower (not mentioned) is on Tower Hill in Paterson.

[Medic137 6]

Radio system upgrade OK likely By John Davis

Poughkeepsie Journal

August 7, 2007

Dutchess County's police, firefighters and paramedics could be getting a boost soon in their emergency radio reception.

There is strong support in the county Legislature to borrow $1.5 million to purchase and install the Simulcast Radio System for the county's 911 dispatch center.

County Executive William Steinhaus recently proposed upgrading the signal transmission from the Department of Emergency Response to police, fire and ambulance agencies throughout the county.

There are pockets of the county where the 911 radio signal is weak. The new system would eliminate that problem.

"There's a lot of areas you go to the north and east that aren't covered," said Legislator David Kelly, R-Pawling.

Kelly and the other 12 Republican county lawmakers appear poised to vote in favor of borrowing the money Monday.

Most Democrats will likely support the new radio system, said Minority Leader Roger Higgins, D-Poughkeepsie.

"It seems like it's something we need to do upgrade," Higgins said. "I would be surprised if there was any real opposition from the Democrats."

Interest hikes loan

To borrow the $1,513,000 for the system, the county will pay 4.75 percent in interest to pay the loan back in 10 years - a total cost of $1,908,271.

Because the vote Monday is to borrow money, at least 17 of the 25 lawmakers would need to approve it.

Legislator Robert Rolison, R-Poughkeepsie, a Town of Poughkeepsie police officer, said the upgrade would allow signals to be broadcast simultaneously from the seven radio towers throughout the county.

Reach John Davis at jpdavis@poughkeepsiejournal.com or 845-437-4807.

[Remember585 815]

I wish Westchester would do something like this with 46.26 / 33.96 for paging. It's nuts to have as many different towers as we have. It would save time and valuable airtime for those departments paged TWICE on different towers if we could make it happen all at once.

For more on this, please see "Pipe Dream" in Webster's dictionary.

[JBE 328]

I have to agree with the hope Putnam upgrades as well. It's kind of disheartening when you're standing outside of Brewsters main house and you can't even hear the Sunday morning test on the scanner in the car.