[FedCom] Federal Protective Service Radio System Operation?

[Chris Parris]

Ken,

I believe the system can have different repeaters in the dispatch  
region tied together. It is a function that the dispatcher at the FPS  
Megacenters can enable or disable. In other words, when any unit keys  
up a repeater, other repeaters in the regions that are enabled will  
key up also. This allows all the units in the dispatch region to hear  
the traffic.

I believe that the FPS repeaters are controlled via IP packets over  
data links, either fiber, microwave or other means. Yes the traffic  
from one repeater would go back to the dispatch center first, then  
gets sent back out to whatever repeaters the center has set up to be  
active.

The FPS dispatcher for the Pacific Northwest area sometimes links the  
repeaters together and I heard units from Seattle over the Portland  
repeater. Most of the time, however, only local area traffic is heard  
over the local repeater.

Other agencies have similar systems where multiple repeaters can be  
tied together from a central dispatch point, i.e., DEA, CBP...

- Chris
  --
Chris Parris
Fed Files Columnist
Monitoring Times Magazine
chrisparris at monitoringtimes.com
http://www.monitoringtimes.com
http://mt-fedfiles.blogspot.com/




On Jan 7, 2008, at 6:02 PM, Ken wrote:

> I'm a bit confused as to how the system operates.
>
> I've noted from my location monitoring activity on 417.2 Repeater  
> (Digital & Digital Encrypted) that the local repeater gets keyed up  
> even when units in Maine, Eastern MA, Conneticut call into  
> dispatch.  I was always under the assumption that the system  
> basically came active back to dispatch ONLY on the specific  
> repeater site and not regional wide?   IF it were regional wide  
> wouldn't the transmission first have to go back to the dispatcher  
> console and than be connected to all area repeaters via fiber optic  
> cable or microwave?
>
> Ken
> Springfield MA Monitoring Area
>
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