[FedCom] West Point NY Trunked System (K. Stone)

[Dan Yemiola]

>From reading this article, it appears to me that either Ryan Currie or Eric Bartlett don't know their P's and Q's about how the system operates. Just a lot of buzz words,  golly gosh, gee whiz, and ain't that neat talk.
 
Dan Yemiola


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Can you hear me now? 

United States Military Academy - West Point, NY

West Point moves to Trunked Radio System 

By Eric S. Bartelt
Assistant Editor 

West Point has bucked its conventional radio system for the modern Trunked Radio System. 

The TRS is more reliable, efficient and allows assets to be available to all users, said officials at West Point’s Directorate of Information Management’s Communications Branch. 

“We used a conventional radio system where every net had one repeater,” said Ryan Currie, DOIM’s TRS project manager. “The PMO for example, they had four nets and each one of them had their own separate piece of equipment. 

“Now everybody shares the same equipment,” he added. 

The best part of the new system, Currie said, is that it offers one coverage area with 12 trunked radio repeaters. 

“In the old system, when a post organization had one repeater and something went wrong with that repeater they couldn’t talk,” Currie said. “With the new system, everyone is sharing everything, so if one repeater goes down, it just goes to another repeater.” 

Five of the repeaters are located at Bull Hill and seven are located at the Ski Slope. The radius covers the range areas, main post and provides a link to Stewart Airbase. 

The idea started back in January 2003 and the full completion of the project is expected in January 2006, Currie explained. The system works through a computer system, based at Spellman Hall, which has radios attached to it. 

“It has its own separate computer network, the brain that’s in this building [Spellman Hall] it’s all fiber connected,” Currie said. “We have something called the interoperability solution and what it does is tie Highland Falls into our system so the local Highland Falls police can still talk on our system. 

“With the interoperability solution, we were able to integrate to cellular service and the SINCGARS radio (FM radio), so someone out at Cadet Summer Training can dial up a specific frequency to come into our system,” Currie added. 

The $6.1 million system includes handheld devices (walkie-talkies), mobiles (for vehicles) and desktops for dispatchers that total 1,337 pieces of equipment. 

Base Radio Systems runs the contracts and M/A-COM, Inc. was chosen as the preferred vendor of the TRS system at West Point. 

“M/A-COM, Inc. started installing the system in May and was operational in mid-July,” Currie said. 

The new system will provide better emergency services and communications among post organizations like the PMO, EOC, MEDDAC, security guards and the fire department and that adds up to a safer community, said Michelle McCurry, a DOIM telecommunications specialist. 

“It’s about public safety,” she explained. “This system gives us more communications and frees the extra frequencies we’re not using, so we’re not crossing over aviation frequencies and so forth.”