Currently, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office leases airtime on the 700/800 MHz RACOM network, while the Polk County Fire Department (made of rural departments that are dispatched by PCSO) resides on conventional VHF frequencies that are then patched to the RACOM network.

The “Assistance to Firefighters” FEMA grant would allow the county to purchase roughly 116 mobile radios, along with 217 handhelds. A decision on the grant is expected by late May. Polk County would have one year to formalize the purchase and that would allow the county to select a new radio system.

Without the text of the grant application, it is unclear whether Polk County Fire would directly join the RACOM network or create a new standalone interoperable system, although reports surfaced earlier this year of a request for proposals (RFP) for a new, leased countywide P25 fire radio system. Westcom and Des Moines will have the option to join the project.

Ankeny Fire was selected to file the proposal, as Polk County was not allowed to apply for the FEMA grant. If the grant is approved, Ankeny, Polk City, Elkhart, Saylor and Delaware townships, Altoona, Bondurant, Granger, Grimes, Johnston, Mitchellville, Pleasant Hill, Runnells and Windsor Heights would benefit from the grant.

I’m becoming increasingly interested in learning about the MotoTRBO platform, particularly its use in the amateur radio band (although the nearest amateur MotoTRBO system for me is located about two hours away in Mount Pleasant, Iowa). While searching for YouTube videos demonstrating its capabilities versus other digital platforms, I came across a video about Racing Radios, a company that specializes in supplying radios to track personnel, media, vendors, security, track fire/rescue, and several race teams.

Certainly, I’m no NASCAR fan — but it was pretty neat to hear about MotoTRBO’s success in such an RF-intense environment at a large-scale event like the Talladega 500. Seeing that bank of MotoTRBO radios in the trailer is enough to make my eyes water!

Already there’s a thread over at RadioReference with a pretty decent chunk of talkgroups figured out. If you’ve been listening to the system, collaborate and share your notes with others. Talkgroups can be figured out by running Unitrunker or by just listening.

If you’re interested, Johnson County EMA will be holding an open house of the JECC on June 19th from 1 to 3 p.m. The JECC is located at 4529 Melrose Avenue in Iowa City. More information can be found on this PDF flier.

KAIT-TV 8 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, filed a rudimentary report about the proliferation of applications to listen to online police scanners via cell phone. One officer in the video said in a sound bite that it was “alarming” and a “high concern” that such scanner apps exist.

Indeed, these apps do make the radio waves more accessible for everyone — not just criminals. The low cost of these apps — sometimes free — makes police radio broadcasts more accessible than in the days of walking into your local Radio Shack and picking up a handheld scanner for a hundred bucks and get help from the store clerks on how to program it.

What KAIT-TV failed to mention is that most, if not all, of the radio streams for cell phone apps are provided through agreements with RadioReference, who had established strict policies for feed providers when RadioReference acquired ScanAmerica to somewhat limit aid for criminals in the commission of a crime. The policies state that the following is not allowed to be broadcast: “SWAT type operations if on dedicated channels or talkgroups” and “Narcotics / CID / Investigations or other tactical operations”

Seems to me that if you don’t want to be heard on the scanner apps, then switch over to the tactical frequency. Moreover, the same police officer that expressed concerns in the video’s opening also expressed concern over, for example, a criminal listening to the scanner app would be able to know when to get out of the area and if the police were setting up a perimeter. But really, wouldn’t sirens and flashy lights give it away? It doesn’t take a genius to be observant. And it seems simple enough that you could look out the window and be able to see if the police are setting up a perimeter. If you’re setting up a perimeter, then you should already be moved off the dispatch channel and on to a tactical channel.

What KAIT-TV also failed to show are those departments that believe scanner listeners can be an asset to their crime prevention and neighborhood watch objectives. While criminals using scanners can create bad relationships between police departments and law-abiding scanner hobbyists, there are other departments who enjoy mutual relationships with scanner hobbyists.

In fact, RadioReference has actually partnered with some public safety agencies to provide “official feeds” — feeds that are supported and provided by the agencies themselves. Just ask a senior officer how many times they have found a scanner being used in the commission of a crime and you’ll find the whole truth about how rare it is.

The feeds could be broadcast on a time delay of maybe 30 minutes to an hour to avoid aiding in the commission of a crime. But I believe a widespread time delay like that wouldn’t be implemented unless a law is enacted to require it.

Only in very few instances would a feed otherwise be delayed, such as in 2008 when the FBI and Minnesota law enforcement requested RadioReference to delay the feeds by 30 minutes for the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis.

So, the Cliff’s notes: not all scanner listeners are criminals, not all police hate scanner listeners, and there are safeguards in place on online radio feeds to limit the abuse of the feeds by criminals.

I came across a piece by Jeff, KE9V, that really sums up my thoughts about the curmudgeons that argue Echolink/IRLP/WinLink/AOR/PSK31/D-STAR/P-25/insert_variable_here isn’t “real “radio”. As usual, Jeff puts it in a very eloquent way, in such a way that I just can’t make my own thoughts any more clearer than he does:

That I can be driving my car in Atlanta, Georgia and with a UHF mobile radio punch a few buttons on its keypad and be connected to my son’s handheld VHF radio in the middle of Illinois while we chat for fifteen minutes still amazes me. That the long-distance link is provided by an Internet connection is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever to me. We communicate via ham radio. Get over it.

He goes on to say:

First of all, the not real radio meme is a conflicting and destructive message for newcomers who might well have been attracted to the hobby because of these newer forms of communication. Perhaps they witnessed a demonstration of IRLP or D-STAR and because of it, decided to obtain a license. And after going through that process they attend their first club meeting only to hear someone make derogatory comments about what attracted them in the first place!

Which is entirely true!

When I went and took my test at Iowa State, there was another person there testing to get his tech license as well. He had been studying, listening to repeaters, and reading about amateur radio on the internet. Before testing started, he was making small talk with the VE’s about how things like D-STAR wasn’t “real radio.” The VE’s played it safe (understandably) and didn’t agree or disagree. While it wasn’t anything or any mode in particular that prompted me to take the test, I couldn’t help but to get a little worked up inside about those comments. But I bit my lip and stayed silent. Think about it: that guy’s comment about D-STAR — something that I am now heavily involved in — was my first exposure to amateur radio.

Their solution? Use 10 frequencies that are on the generally accepted band plan for analog simplex frequencies to coordinate new D-STAR repeaters. These new proposed repeater pairs would use a 1 MHz split with 10 KHz channel spacing, with a result of the following repeater pairs: 146.450/147.450, 146.460/147.460, 146.470/147.470, 146.480/147.480, and 146.490/147.490 MHz.

As much as I enjoy working with D-STAR and P-25, I would have to oppose this plan. It does nothing to fix the actual problem. The real problem is that there really are too many under-utilized repeaters on the air, or even “paper repeaters” — repeaters that are coordinated and listed in directories, but not actually on the air. Many repeaters have been on the air since the start of the 2m FM repeater craze, but have seen only a handful of keydowns in recent history.

It’s hard to define what repeaters are “active” and “inactive” repeaters, even though some repeater coordinating bodies (Texas being one of them) that have provisions for pulling the “coordinated” status of “inactive repeaters.” While coordination and band plans are strictly by gentlemen’s agreement, there is no real enforcement or motivation to rotate the repeater pairs of inactive repeaters.

I don’t necessarily think this is a bad system though. Repeater owners know when it’s time to let the pairs go (maybe even when politely asked?), and amateur radio really is a self-policing bunch. If I am told correctly, there wasn’t a problem getting a VHF repeater pair for the D-STAR system. We have inactive repeaters in our area, but we probably don’t have repeater coordination congestion like other areas.

Additionally, I don’t think it’s fair to take away analog simplex frequencies in favor of D-STAR. I am guessing they are making this exception for digital voice because it’s the new and awesome thing on 2m. It’s not fair to favor one operating mode over another by making exceptions such as this.

To be honest, I really don’t even use the VHF module for the local D-STAR system. Our UHF module performs just as well, if not better, than the VHF module, and VHF is more susceptible to intermod. Depending on the region, there is space in the UHF amateur band. One of the coordinators for the D-STAR system commented that if we had to do it all over again, we’d probably go without the VHF module and invest in the 1.2 GHz digital voice module (we currently have the VHF/UHF/1.2 digital data modules and a 1.2 GHz analog voice repeater). After all, D-STAR has unique digital abilities due to bandwidth allowances on 1.2 GHz.

Another reason to use the 1.2 GHz band is the motto “use it or lose it.” 1.2 GHz is definitely one of the under-utilized bands amateurs have at their disposal, and I’m sure that the FCC’s mouths water when looking at the 1.2 GHz band when a wireless company comes shopping for spectrum. The spectrum allocated to amateurs are worth millions, if not billions of dollars to the FCC through an auction process.

You think it won’t happen? It happened in 1988 when amateurs lost 2 MHz of spectrum in the 1.25-meter band to UPS, who was planning to use the spectrum to develop a narrowband voice and data network. However, by the time the FCC completed the reallocation, the UPS had moved on to the cellular bands and scrapped their ideas for 220 MHz, but still leaving amateurs without that spectrum.

D-STAR basically works the same on VHF as it would on UHF or 1.2 GHz. In my experience, there’s not many reasons to have all four modules installed other than for redundancy or experimentation. We all need to be working with each other to solve the problem, not making exceptions for one bunch and, in turn, stepping on toes and creating more problems.

Two years ago, that same laboratory found that digital radios fared far worse than their analog radios on the fireground. The likely problem? Ambient noise — most notably SCBA masks, SCBA alert bells, PASS communicators, water pumps, and other ambient noises associated with working fires. The ambient noise distorts the audio, because the IMBE vocoder is generally designed to capture human voice and cut the background noise out. But when you have dozens of other competing sounds that are as loud or even louder than the human voice, the vocoder can become confused and the audio is distorted.

These radios, which were designed to help firefighters, are often blamed as a contributing cause of some firefighter injuries and even deaths when mayday calls were not heard by others on the Cincinnati-area digital radio systems. Other complaints include dead spots, an inability to override ongoing radio traffic with more urgent radio traffic (getting a busy signal instead), and a one- to two-second delay for transmitting after squeezing the push-to-talk button.

Fire departments aren’t the only agencies grappling with issues. Police departments are also suffering from dead spots in coverage that cropped up only after the digital systems were deployed.

In Philadelphia, their new Motorola radio system suffered over a dozen complete radio system failures in three years, even putting the police commissioner’s safety in jeopardy once when breaking up a street disturbance.

Similar failures are being reported all across the United States, not only with Motorola P-25 systems but M/A-Com OpenSky systems as well. In some instances, departments are bailing on their multi-million dollar digital radio systems in favor of their older analog systems.