Boston MedFlight helos should be on the State TRS

Boston MedFlight helos should be on the State TRS

or - BMF helos need to get off 461.45 because thats just a disaster
waiting to happen

in North Carolina it seems that nearly all of the medevac helos
communicate on the state TRS

lets think about what is needed to supply radio comms for Boston medFlight

first question is - what does 'statewide' coverage really mean? does
it mean mobile to mobile from anywhere in the state to everywhere in
the state? does it mean dispatcher to mobile anywhere in the state?
does it mean mobile from anywhere in the state to one or multi
dispatchers?

note - there are dedicated 700 mhz a/g repeater pairs available for
licensing by the fcc iirc - using a voter driven transmitter steering
system - you could use one freq pair statewide and enable a dispatcher
to talk to any helo anywhere in the state

note - many helos now have AFF (automatic flight following) - the
location of any helo is known to the meter basically at all times -
therefore you could configure a radio system to ALWAYS use the best
transmitter site to reach any and all helos

for example - suppose that Helo 1 was on Cape Cod - and Helo 2 was in
Fitchburg - and the dispatcher wanted to talk to both of them at the
same time - you could configure the radio infrastructure to connect
the dispatcher to a Mt Wachusetts transmitter and to a Hyannis
transmitter - and the radio system would figure out if 2 different
radio freqs would be required - or if both transmitters could transmit
on the same freq - or maybe you could even synchronise the 2
transmitters on the fly so they could both xmit at the same time on
the same freq

bottom line - there are probably ways to provide 6 different comms
paths to 6 different medevac helos in Massachusetts at the same time -
without keying up 100 different xmit sites on 600 different freqs

yes - we said 6 different comms paths - you could have 6 different
dispatchers each talking to 1 helo pilot each -that would probably
take a lot of useless crap out of the pilots headsets - considering
that there are 3 or 4 medevac dispatchers working 24/7 in
Massachusetts now - we are nearly at the point where 6 dispatchers
would be working - and if you throw in the USCG and MSP - right there
you are talking about a minimum of 6 helo dispatchers on duty 24/7

lets circle back - what does 'statewide' mean?
A. key up all 100 base stations statewide at the same time
B. key up just 2 base stations at once to allow Helo 1 on Cape Cod to
talk to Helo 2 in Fitchburg - the 2 base stations would be connected
by the infrastructure
C. Helo 1 lands on a sand bar on Monomoy Island - Helo 1 should not
have to hunt around amongst 100 channels and 100 PLs to talk to
someone - between the AFF and the TRS - his radio should work
flawlessly from anywhere at anytime

Maybe there are 3 or 4 or more operational aspects of the term
"statewide" as applied to any radio channel -
1. can the 'statewide' channel be received by a field unit anywhere
and everywhere in the state?
2. can the field unit reach a dispatcher or another field unit from
anywhere in the state?
3. can the dispatcher talk to 1 unit at a time? or all units at the
same time? or just some of the field units?
4. can a field unit talk to 1 party at a time? or all units? or
subgroups of partys?

The best radio system design would allow YES answers to questions 1
thru 4 - at the lowest price - with the fewest number of radio
frequencies involved

harump - yadda yadda - just saying

actually - just trying to hash these ideas out in my head - and it
helps to type them out and save them for another day

keywords - radio system design - land mobile radio system - LMR