Sutherland RFS

[Longreach]

I could think of 2 spots straight off the top of my head where GRN coverage whips the RFS PMR coverage. both on the Federal highway. one from about 5km north of Collector to the first lake rest area the second from Gearys gap to Bywong hill. the PMR in both areas are pretty sad, your relying on Voting to do the job(particuarly around collector) and forget portables.
same answer again, costs too much
cheers
Matt

[system_tech]

The official RFS mantra appears to be:

Rule 1 - PMRs are best
Rule 2 - if GRN is better than PMR, Rule 1 applies.

Obviously there are a few RFS Districts that practice logic and have discarded the above rules

[centralcoastscanman]

yep but you forgot one rule, if we get hassled about why aren't we on the grn... rule 3 activate smartbridge

[ivahri]

ha ... duty of care .. GRN should be used in those circumstances!

OH, yes, and a Premiers Directive to boot.

Never let a Premier's Directive, safety and common sense get in the way of brownie points for reducing a budget.

Local politics trumps Premiers Directive far too often (sadly)... don't get me wrong- most agencies prefer them OFF the GRN as we have a lot less problems then caused by their misuse of trunk radio (Wollongong bushfires some years ago still etched in my mind for how many talk groups could be activated per person in a single agency in the middle of a major incident). It comes down to training and radio training in all agencies is hopelessly inadequate (always has been).

But I think I've said enough...

Cheers


Richard

[ivahri]

yep but you forgot one rule, if we get hassled about why aren't we on the grn... rule 3 activate smartbridge

I don't really mind that as this only consumes one talkgroup (ie one base channel). There were problems today with one agency with THREE active analogue talkgroups on a single site... that has only three voice channels... now that IS a problem!

Cheers,


Richard

[Bigfella237]

Each RFS district has it's own GRN account so obviously it's up to each district manager whether they use the GRN or not, and I think that's where the problem lies, what other agency bills it's individual units for radio usage? None I'll bet!

It should all be amalgamated into the state budget and activated state-wide.

Andrew

[Bigfella237]

~ It comes down to training and radio training in all agencies is hopelessly inadequate ~

I'll second that! I've even heard dispatchers who need to go back to radio school.

Andrew

[system_tech]

Each RFS district has it's own GRN account so obviously it's up to each district manager whether they use the GRN or not, and I think that's where the problem lies, what other agency bills it's individual units for radio usage? None I'll bet!

It should all be amalgamated into the state budget and activated state-wide.

Andrew

Many years ago, under the original framework for GRN, each agency was to be single billed, so roughly 40 or bills all up. Also, as I understand it, but could be wrong, each agency was given enough money as part of their allocation by Treasury to cover GRN (direct funded agencies anyway).

The bills have exploded! RFS = one per district, and in the Rail environment, over 90 bills, for example. There are different billing regimes, inner budget (direct Treasury funded) , outer budget (government business enterprises), volunteer agency(SES, RFS and VRA if they wanted to use the system), volunteer agency - out of footprint (no charge unless GRN is actually used bythe radio). So billing aint that simple.

That put a whole lot of out of scope work on to the billing system provider. There are some good reasons to have multiple bills such as accountability, and actually know what area in an agency has a particular radio.

In all honesty, billing itself has its costs. Don't forget also extra billing needed fo cover those who use telephone interconnect.

Over the years there has been discussion by GCIO about having no billing at all, and direct funding. This in theory reduces the cost of providing billing to zero, and makes the GRN available to all that should be using it.

My big concern is for operational efficiency and safety. What happens when a non-GRN use radio is tasked to attend an area where GRN is used? Like in a fire appliance? Especially in a big hurry like a running fire?

Well, a reprsentative from the RFS district rings the NOCC and asks for the radio to connected. Now if you have a number fire appliances in the situation you have it all happening at once. If its a bad fire day it will be happening in a number of areas and the pressure at the NOCC is not a good thing.

You end up with fire appliances with NO comms with the active fire district and othet appliances involved, until the NOCC makes the change. They mean well but is does take time with multiple radios needing attention.

To me that is a BIG safety and operational issue. I have been in an appliance that needed upgrading. It took extra time as our district could not find the list that had our radio ID on it. We had to get it of the radio and ring the NOCC ourselves! That is not what you would call a slick operation!

I have also been in the NOCC upgrading radios.

Thus I have sen both sides of the problem. This could easily be fixed with direct funding / no bills.

S_T

[cartman]

Re the rail billing for 90 odd acts i think you will find there is only a dozen or so now.
I can sympathise with the NOCC accounts but it is the audit people who give the government departments grief
If you sign stuff off willy nilly and don't check it accountants and auditors go to town on you .... we are on a revolving door with ICAC
Even when you get a good system going, some mongrel restructures the organisation and it falls apart again
Every year they have an asset check to identify the location of individual items, but i found the database never got updated
Another restructure brought on by the government and no staff do the update
Rail has been restructured too many times in the last ten years, hence the chaos.

Even yesterday
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/n ... 5968538699

Back to Sutherland RFS, the Woronora Bushfire Brigade (which is essentially a water-based boat fire-fighting brigade) has an interesting website

http://www.woronorafire.org.au/Welcome.html

Of particular interest is the weblink that reveals how the boats are numbered in the Sutherland Shire RFS District

http://www.woronorafire.org.au/numbering_scheme.html

Sutherland Shire Brigade Station and Appliance Numbering Scheme
Sutherland Shires first FCO (Fire Control Officer), Ray Watchorn, developed a numbering system for fire stations and vehicles that enabled rapid identification of call signs in the field. The call sign was a four digit number, the first two being the station number, the third the vehicle type and the last the vehicle number. Sutherland Shire has thirteen stations, with Heathcote and Headquarters being recently amalgamated. The station ID numbers are :-


ID Station

10 Headquarters
11 Waterfall
12 Heathcote
13 Engadine
14 Loftus
18 Woronora
19 Menai
20 Illawong
21 Sandy Point
22 Maianbar
23 Bundeena
24 Kurnell
26 Grays Point

Vehicle categories were broken down as follows:-

Type Description

1 Communications
2 4x2 Personnel Carrier
3 4x4 Personnel Carrier
4 4x2 Light Striker Tanker
5 4x4 Light Striker Tanker
6 4x2 Heavy Tanker
7 4x4 or 6x6 Medium Tanker
8 4x4 Heavy Tanker
9 Boat

Using this system, 1931 is a Menai Personnel Carrier and 1891 is a Woronora Fireboat.

Woronora has three fire boats so

1891 = Fireboat 1
1892 = Fireboat 2
1893 = Fireboat 3

From memory they use Woronoa Alpha, Bravo and Charlie as the boat callsigns on the GRN radio exchanges


Grant