Article: Virginia FD Report: Digital Radios Extremely Vulnerable

[T. John 21]

A detailed report on the incident recently released by Prince William County Department of Fire and Rescue concluded that problems associated with the use of the county's Motorola digital trunked radio system contributed to the tragedy. Issues reported by other firefighters during that incident, which was further complicated by strong winds, ranged from signal distortion and transmission failure to radios displaying "out of range" signals.

http://cms.firehouse.com/content/article/a...mp;sectionId=46

As we start to move into a new generation of radio technology, this article shows how "newer" is not always better. For any agency beginning to switch to digital technology, fully testing a system before implementation is critical. I know there is a big push for digital technology, but it looks like there is still some way to come before it can be fully adopted as a trusted solution.

Edited March 31, 2008 by T. John

[T. John 21]

Just to followup, has anyone that is using a digital system tested their radios as recommended by the IAFC? Has anyone participated in their survey about the issue?

Here is a direct link to the IAFC page:

http://www.iafc.org/digitalproblem

[SteveOFD 176]

As stated in the Firehouse.com article listed above, the problem is that with all the noise on the fireground, the digital radio cannot differentiate between background noise and human speech. Hopefully, as the article points out, with the transition to full rate vocoders (as opposed to Motorola's current half rate vocoder) this problem will be corrected so that digital radios can be used more effectively in the Fire Service.

A discussion of this topic can be found at RadioReference.com.

Edited April 1, 2008 by SteveOFD