Some Ky. Agencies Complete Switch to Digital System

ASHLAND, Ky. -- If you monitor police scanner traffic in Boyd County, you may have noticed a decrease in the amount of chatter over the past few days.

That's because the Regional Public Safety Communications Center and some of the agencies for which it dispatches have switched to digital radios, which cannot be picked up by analog scanners.

The changeover, which occurred on Tuesday, involved Boyd County Emergency Medical Services, the Boyd County Emergency Management Agency and all of the fire departments in the county except for Catlettsburg's, RPSCC Director Sandy Ott said. The Ashland Police Department, Catlettsburg Police Department and Boyd County Sheriff's Department are still using analog radios, she said.

The switch to digital has been about a year and half in coming, Ott said. It was funded by a $1.1 million federal Assistance to Firefighters grant applied for by Ashland Fire Chief Scott Penick. Each of the agencies and the RPSCC itself had to kick in 10 percent matching funds.

According to Ott, there are advantages and disadvantages to using digital radios for emergency communications. On the plus side: Digital signals tend to have larger "footprints" than analog ones, meaning they cover larger areas. Also, the quality of the signal itself is better.

But, while analog signals could be weak and static-filled, depending on the location of the radio user, at least those signals were usable. With digital, "you either have a signal or you don't," and that's one of it's drawbacks, Ott said.

Early reviews on the new system have been "pretty mixed," Ott said. Some emergency responders have praised new signal clarity; others dislike the fact that the system translates human speech into information packets so what's heard over the radios aren't actual human voices. Plus, Ott said, there are a few bugs in the system that still need to be worked out.

However, seeing as how the switch to digital was the largest changeover in the RPSCC's 31-year history, minor complaints and problems were to be expected, she said, adding she expects matter to improve as responders grow more accustomed to the new system.

Going digital also has created some challenges for dispatchers as well. One is that the digital radios are more sensitive than the analog ones so "you can't talk as loudly on them" as you can on analog ones, Ott said.

With the dispatching center still using analog radios, that means things can get a little tricky going back and forth between the two, she said.

Also, digital radios tend to cut off the first few words of sentences if the user begins speaking too quickly after keying the microphone. That means dispatchers have had to train themselves to count "one, two" after pressing the mic key before they say anything, Ott said.

"We're all on a learning curve," she said.

Boyd County's law-enforcement agencies will likely be switched to digital radios eventually, but Ott said she couldn't say when that might occur because funding for such projects has mostly dried up since the firefighter grant was obtained.

The Kentucky State Police Ashland post went to digital dispatching several years ago. However, the KSP uses a UHF system, while the RPSCC's is VHF, Ott said.

Copyright 2012 - The Daily Independent, Ashland, Ky.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service