High Band Antenna Installation

On Sunday December 30, 2007 the Middlebury Volunteer Fire Department took another step in the completion of the installation of the new High Band Radio system paid for by a FEMA grant totaling $297.000.00. This grant money was used to pay for new Motorola mobile radios, portables, Minitor V pagers, base stations and antennas. The installation of the radios in the apparatus was completed in late November by Northeastern Communications of Waterbury. The next phase was the installation of base stations. The final step to making this system operational is the installation of an antenna at the Town Hall Tower site.

The main issue with the tower at Town Hall is that it was constructed in 1976, and therefore, was not subject to the current standards and testing procedures. The current tower's structural integrity was called into question given its age. The previous administration was reluctant to accept the liability of having another antenna added to the aged structure, and Northeastern and Motorola were also unwilling to accept the risk. Therefore, an alternative was presented to Northeastern: mount the antenna on the chimney at Town Hall. Northeastern looked at the topography and coverage maps and determined this would be a suitable alternative. This new location provides several benefits.

1) It is actually very close in height to the current Low Band Antenna on the tower which is located near the middle. The nature of a High Band radio system will completely negate any affect that the height difference will cause. Another misconception is that the entire Tower is the antenna. This is not the case the tower is simply a support structure that holds the antennas.

2) There is no need to dig a trench from the Town Hall to the tower. Any time you start digging you run the risk of digging up old wiring. This was avoided.

3) Less wire is required to be run from the antenna to the control room located in Town Hall. This equates to less resistance and therefore better signal strength, coverage and reliability. The closer the base station is to the antenna, the better the signal strength. This is actually very significant, because there will be a marked improvement in radio coverage and reliability.

4) This little operation involving the MVFD and our friends at Watertown Fire saved the Taxpayers approximately $4,000.00.

As a result of these reasons a proposal was presented to the Board of Selectmen and approval was requested. The Selectmen agreed that this was a viable plan and approval was given to Chief Perrotti and Northeastern to go ahead with the project. Chief Perrotti offered to do the project to help reduce the cost, and Northeastern provided the materials to mount the antenna and run the wire. Assisted by 3 other firefighters, Truck 1 was used to mount the 3 pieces of uni-strut to the chimney. It was determined there was no safe way of mounting the antenna using Middlebury's ladder due to the fact that 2 or 3 people would have to be on the tip at the same time in a small area. Therefore in the tradition of the Volunteer Fire Service, Watertown was called to assist with the installation. Their platform responded and a crew of Watertown Firefighters assisted in the mounting of the antenna mast. The antenna was securely mounted to the uni-strut and that portion of the installation was complete.

The last phase of the Town Hall installation will be completed this week. The wire will be run from the antenna to the Control Room at Town Hall. A requirement to mounting an antenna is that a ground wire must be run from the antenna to the ground in the event of a lightning strike. This causes the electrical charge to run from the antenna straight to the ground rather than going through the building. This will be completed at the same time the communication wire is run.

This High Band radio system also provides better coverage than the current low band radio system. The band that we will be operating in is the 150 MHZ band which has a long history of having a good balance between distance and penetration of the signal. We do not always operate in the roads where we have an open sky and clear line of site to the tower. The current low band system has trouble in numerous areas of town, and issues have plagued the Fire Department and Police Department, which could potentially have a detrimental impact on the safety of the citizens of Middlebury as well as rescuers. Many times an officer or firefighter have reached for their portable radio to relay instructions to responding apparatus only to get an unreadable answer or no answer. The High Band will help eliminate or greatly reduce the likelihood of this from occurring. This band will allow the radio transmissions to penetrate further into buildings to allow firefighters with portables to communicate directly with dispatchers, rather than waiting for the driver of a truck to grab a radio and hope they can reach a dispatcher.

 

To the left you can see the site of the new antenna, and to the right on the old tower the proposed site for that new antenna.

This site was the third position down. The antenna in that location is not presently used. You can see that there is little height difference between the proposed site,

and the actual site. Because of the penetration of high band, the difference in antenna height will have little or no effect on reception. However, the elimination of all the cable

that would have been needed to go from the Town Hall to the old tower will cause a marked increase in overall reception.

Because height is much more critical to low band radio reception, the current Fire Department low band radio antenna will remain in place.

This is why the Fire Department moved its antenna back to the Town Hall from the Police station some years back.

 

 

Chief Perrotti climbs to the tip of the ladder to direct the final positioning of the Ladder.
Chief Perrotti drills the holes in the chimney for the anchors using a masonry drill. It should be noted that safety is always an important factor for the MVFD and therefore Chief Perrotti is wearing a ladder belt attached to the ladder.
Chief Perrotti attaches one of the lengths of uni-strut to the chimney, a total of 3 lengths were used.
A view of the old tower which was constructed in 1976.
Although it cannot be seen in the picture due to the resolution of the camera used. There is a clear shot to the radio tower of Northwest Public safety. The arrow depicts the approximate location of the tower.

Story and Photos By Firefighter Jon Vaughan - Middlebury Volunteer Fire Department - All Rights Reserved.