CAVA/Radios

Radio information

Old radios:

• Work same as before: channel 1 for waiting for tones, channel 2 for talking. We don't use these anymore most of the time.

New radios:

• Channel 1 (analog) works on all radios and is the main CUPS channel. Channel 1 is loud and clear from everywhere.
• Channel 9 (digital) is what you must be on to get paged.
• Right now, pages only go out on channel 9. This will change once channel 1 goes digital, then we will be able to get pages on both channels just like before.
• Keep your radio pointed vertical as much as possible, and free from obstructions.
• It takes about one second for transmission to begin once you push the "Push to talk" button. You will hear a short (quiet) chime, once that chime is done, you can talk. This is less obvious than the old tone which would sound when you pressed the PTT button. You need to consciously wait and listen for the chime, and not talk until after you hear it. We can't get it programmed the old way anymore.
• Bottom side button is battery check.
• Other buttons are unprogrammed
• When the radios are on standby, the batteries last about 8 hours on green, 19 more hours on yellow (27 hours total green+yellow), red three more hours before the low battery chimes start (30 hours green+yellow+red). Once chimes start, they tend to run for 2-3 hours. The critically low battery chirps sound like a chime now. There is no warning once it finally dies - your radio will just die and you won't know it.
• You should change your battery as soon as it becomes red - the radio starts losing power to transmit and you can start breaking up. There is nothing wrong with changing a yellow battery, but you may as well let each battery last two shifts if you can coordinate it.
• There is no tone test button anymore. This model radio can't do that - but you can push any other button to get a keypad tone which will tell you the volume.
• Barnard channel is coming soon.
• Pages do NOT work above 137th street. To be safe, assume you must be in this box and above ground to be paged: 96th street/8th avenue/137th street/hudson river. Basements nearby or on campus are fine. (The new digital technology is a narrower bandwidth and thus has a smaller range. They are working to get more repeaters working, so we can be paged while getting gas).
• If you are going to get gas, leave a radio on channel 1 and pay attention to it. This will allow you to hear public safety ask for Medic 1 if a call comes in.
• While on a call, if you don't have any radios on channel 9, you can't get paged again. Try to have at least one radio on 9 once the crew gets together. Also, pay attention to channel 1, Public Safety will usually try to hail you there first.
• Darst has two extra radios which can be used to do reception testing in locations - just let em know if you'd like a reception test somewhere.

Dispatch procedure

• You only need to carry a new radio.
• New radios can only be paged on channel 9. You will not hear pages on channel 1, so leave it on channel 9 unless you are listening carefully.
• Public safety is supposed to ask on channel 1 for medic 1 any time pages go out. If you (Medic 1) were listening and the crew doesn't respond, ask Public Safety if they paged the crew.
• Once you hear a page (sounds like ringing), switch radios to the main channel (channel 1) as soon as possible. You won't hear any talking on channel 9, nor be able to respond. If you are late, you won't hear what the dispatch is.
• Medic 1 answers, gets the dispatch, all medics respond like normal. Everything is normal after this.
• Members whom don't need to talk to Public Safety should turn radios back to channel 9, to be able to get future pages, and also to keep the scene quieter. You want at least one radio on 9 during each call just in case Public Safety pages you because you aren't listening to channel 1 closely enough.
• After any call with tone failures, the Crew Chief texts or emails darst ASAP reporting the failures and failed locations. Darst will keep a log and use this if any further repair is needed. Darst can do immediate location testing with spare radios.

For Public Safety dispatchers

When you need to reach CAVA,

• Send a page via the NEW radio. Ensure you are on channel 9. You just need to push the P1 button once, and you should see the display lights up and says "CAVA Alert". This emits the paging repeatedly for about 20 seconds. There is no need to use this radio after this point. If you need to send another page, wait at least 30 seconds before pushing P1 again.

• At the same time, use your own radio on channel 1 and ask for Medic 1. There are some times and locations when we can not get pages, but we can hear voice on channel 1. Our team has been trained to listen on channel 1 in these situations. Sometimes, Medic 1 will just listen to channel 1 in order to improve our response times and won't be able to get paged.

• All regular procedures apply from here on out.

• Backup ambulance phone number: _-_-. We do not carry this with us all the time anymore, this is not a reliable way to reach us but is worth a shot.

To-do list

• Continue testing repeater coverage in the MS area.

  • 1096<->1097 in different places, both inside and outside

  • Can the base repeater still hit some of these places where my portable units can't hit the repeater?
  • Test these locations several times to establish if there are fluctuations.
• Resolve distance issues with going more than 20-30 blocks away.
  • Procedures for getting gas.

  • Repeater coverage: MS<->MC repeater.

  • Bus radios. Make them more useful at long range / a mobile repeater?
• Do we want a different alert sound?
• Do we want a standby channel other than 9? (since 9 is hard to know by feel only) The issue here is that then we won't match channel assignments of other CUPS radios.
• Dispatch procedures
  • Tones not coming on channel 1 (will be resolved in several months when we go all-digital).
  • How can we ensure that at least one crew member returns a radio to channel 9 once the crew comes together?
  • Can we ensure base knows to always hail medic 1 on channel 1? Darst doesn't think they have always been doing this. Is listening on channel 1 while off call still OK?
• Other advanced ideas.
  • Method of paging only medic 1.
  • Medic 1 emitting pages the CC radio. Do we want this to be possible?
  • Internal CAVA call group (send messages to other CAVA members only).
• Upgrade our paging system to something more advanced (not sure what this is, but Phil said we could). We have to do the all-digital transition first though.
• Additional channels. Right now all we have is: MS main channel, MC (medical center) main channel, intercampus repeater 1, intercampus repeater 2, backup channel (I think for MS). We could use: Barnard, Baker Field.
  • Question: was the Baker Field channel 15 or 16 on the old radios? If so it is probably the "backup" channel.