The Radio Information Board

Can anyone tell me if NYPD is using Vertex radios and to what extent? Ditto for NYFD, though I think they are stuck with those fancy digital Motorolas.

A little late on the reply, but...

Reliable rumors have it the NYPD ordered a couple thousand Vertex's in the VX500 style, and had them designed to their specs. I believe those radios have their own model # == I seem to recall VX520, but I"m no sure.

I don't know about FDNY, though.

Gordon

This may be old news, but I recently visited NYPD and received a tour of One Police Plaza, ESU, and a few other NYPD locations. They are using some Vertex radios, both mobiles and portables. I believe the portable radios are VX520's from the shape and button cofigurations. I am surprised they didn't go with the VX900. The Mobiles looked like VX4000 or VX4200.

VX-537 is used by PO's...

In use by the NYPD:

Officers in the Bronx vx-510 and vx-520
Detectives vx-800
SOD and some other select units vx-537 and vx-800

I have also seen a few vx-10 in the fields but unknow if they are Job issued.

FDNY now has vx-800 as an interop radio in addition to their other portables

silverbk wrote:In use by the NYPD:

Officers in the Bronx vx-510 and vx-520
Detectives vx-800
SOD and some other select units vx-537 and vx-800

I have also seen a few vx-10 in the fields but unknow if they are Job issued.

FDNY now has vx-800 as an interop radio in addition to their other portables

so what happened to P25? I thought they were going to the Motorola SSE5000 (an SP Astro Saber with 1MEG vocon and P25 CAI) and the XTS5000?

Not like Vertex is serious about P25....

You don't see many SSE5000's in and around the City. Last time I saw one on someones belt was a year ago.

Almost everyone around midtown seems to carry UHF sabers still - couple vertex here and there.

Officers assinged to the MTA NYCT details almost always have VHF sabers on the transit frequency's.

But, I doubt NYPD will go P25.... They have WAY too much money invested in an analog system that works.

-Alex

Alex is correct with NYCPD using the newer Digital mode of P25 ... the high level NYCPD personnel informed the U.S. Government FCC Officials to take a Flying Leap on the new technology 5~6 years ago.

They're still implementing new /\/\ Analog (Highly SP'd) Spectra-Tac Comparators that were manufactured in /\/\ Schaumburg in 2001 and 2002. Most of these SP'd Analog STAC Comparators have 63 Signal Quality Modules in them which translates to 63 Astro-TAC Analog Satellite Receivers per RF Channel. Anyone familiar with the /\/\ STAC Analog Comparator will know this is not your normal system configuration. There hasn't been one /\/\ module, board, assembly, kit or model that wasn't SP Modified in one way or another to meet NYCPD specifications.

NYCPD then came back to the Big /\/\ in 2003 for brand new SP Quantar Base Station Repeaters to replace their SP Analog MSF5000 Base Station Repeaters. NYCPD wanted /\/\ to replicate the Quantar stations to 1973 /\/\ Micor Type Technology and SP modify each and every module by removing the Digital Volume Controls (otherwise known as software Programmable Potentiometers) and install surface mounted Potentiometers, so their field technicians could "easily" set any level by hand. And this was only one of the SP requirements. I think the SP requirement list was something like 40 pages long! Ooooh, it was unbelieveable!

I heard some time later in early 2004, the /\/\ Engineering team completed a preliminary SP Bid & Quote for the NYCPD station specifications and they overlooked one important item before presenting the documentation to the NYCPD Chief of Police. That one item was to have several skilled NYC Paramedics on hand when the /\/\ Field Sales and Engineering teams presented the System Documentation to the Chief of Police. I heard the "Chief" nearly had a Coronary Heart Attack when he looked at the prices of the required SP Outdoor Cabinets! They were only $10,000.00 each (just for the metal cabinet ... nothing else) and a 12 Week lead time for Delivery ... not even Gold Plated but they had the mounting hardware for the Optional A/C Compressors on every cabinet.

NYCPD will be using Analog forever or till they can't get radio manufactures to build the product any longer.

Sometimes strange things happen, and NYC gets embarrassed or backended into certain things.

For example, back in the day the NYPD has RMPs that had manual steering. When power steering began to be offered as an option, NYPD declined because they didn't want to have maintain power steering systems for their entire fleet. So they actually paid extra money to purchase cars without power steering.

Eventually you could not buy a car without power steering at any cost, so the NYPD was forced to start maintaining power steering.

So given some time anything is likely to happen.