Emergency radio system for Washington and Clackamas counties ...

BEAVERTON -- Some refer to the small, nondescript cabinet in a secured room not far from Tanasbourne Town Center as the brains of all police, fire and dispatch radio communications in Washington and Clackamas counties.

Others call it the heart.

Pick your body-part metaphor, but what's not in dispute is that a $2.2 million transplant operation is under way.

The device, formally known as a zone controller, is both crucial to emergency communications and badly in need of replacement, officials say.

"If the zone controller is working properly, no one knows a thing about it," said Ron Polluconi, technical services supervisor for the Washington County Consolidated Communications Agency, which serves as dispatch central for the two counties, as well as Newberg and Dundee in Yamhill County.

"But if it goes out, no one can to talk each other," he said. "We would have a huge crisis on our hands."

The zone controller is critical, Polluconi said, because it allows instant and seamless contact among the thousands of portable radios, in-car units and remote public-safety radio sites in Washington and Clackamas counties.

Without its ability to instantaneously locate the nearest and clearest open radio channel, police and fire personnel would get either busy signals or pure cacophony when trying to obtain or send emergency messages.

As it is, the zone controller shunts users from tower to tower, among three or more channels, during even a few seconds of conversation without anyone realizing it.

Device's age an issue

The problem, said Larry Hatch, WCCCA's logistics manager, is the current zone controller's age. It was installed in 2000. The four power supplies that came with the controller aren't made any longer by its manufacturer, Motorola.

The company, with far bigger contracts to fill, is increasingly unable or unwilling to repair power supplies that have failed, said Polluconi. The most recent repair job took three different attempts and one full year to complete.

Technicians, desperately seeking alternative supply chains, have contacted secondary markets and even eBay in efforts to locate backups.

"It can run on a single power supply, but the risk of doing that is extraordinarily high," Polluconi said. "Two supplies is our minimum configuration."

Washington County's commissioners recently signed off on WCCCA's $2.2 million request to buy a new controller. Clackamas 800 Radio Group, a stand-alone government entity consisting of all Clackamas County fire and police agencies, except Milwaukie, is also on board.

Use determines cost

Cost of the acquisition will be divided based on radio- traffic use. That means Washington County will pick up 61 percent of the tab, with C800 -- the name comes from the 800-megahertz frequency the system operates on -- paying the remaining 39 percent.

Some federal grant money will also be used to buy the new zone controller.

The new system, unlike the analogue controller now in place, will begin paving the way for the gradual transition to an all-digital system. And, with a so-called "open architectural" system, it will eventually allow the use of non-Motorola radios.

"We won't use competing radios on the system right away," said Bob Cozzie, Clackamas 9-1-1 center's director. "But this will remove the monopoly that some vendors have on radio systems."

It will also, presumably, make the new system less reliant on any one company for crucial parts such as power supplies.

Still ahead are the long-term challenges of making similar upgrades to the entire radio-communications system, Polluconi said. That involves improvements to all of the 22 remote tower sites, which stretch from above Sandy toward Mount Hood to the upper slopes of the Coast Range to the west.

But for now, he added, at least the brains of the system -- or the heart, depending on who is talking -- should be fully replaced and ready to go by sometime next year.

"We are all about redundancy around here," Polluconi said. "That's why we put both a belt and suspenders on everything we do. It's a level of security we can't afford to be without."

-- Dana Tims

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/beaverton/index.ssf/2011/10/emergency_radio_system_for_was.html

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