MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan -- The station’s radio system was upgraded with a digital trunking system and a command and control system April 3.
While the shift was relatively seamless to users, the upgrade was anything but minor.
“It’s like going from a VCR to a Blu-Ray player in two minutes,” said Staff Sgt. Curtis Kelling, staff noncommissioned-officer-in-charge of peripheral repair and land mobile radio here.
The new system brings a lot of bells and whistles to the show, most of which won’t be mentioned, but the important features are all there.
Most importantly, the new radio system has greatly increased radio communication reliability.
“Whenever we were in Monzen, it was rare a transmission would go through,” said Lance Cpl. Jeffrey Brenden, a traffic enforcement section military policeman with the Provost Marshal’s Office.
Issues were not relegated to the handsets and those out and about; even the important central communication hubs struggled.
“The old system, 8 out of 10 times we couldn’t get the transmission to go through correctly,” said Yusaku Funakoshi, Emergency Command Center operator.
Transmission trouble is a thing of the past now the new system has been up and running for everyone for just under two months.
“Anywhere around base it’s clear,” said Brenden.
Kelling did some testing of his own and had full and clear reception from the Iwakuni Shinkansen station.
The increased reception allows personnel operating out in town for emergency purposes the ability to communicate effectively with Iwakuni.
In turn this will improve disaster response by increasing clear communication for coordinating resources.
If repeaters, towers that essentially boost radio reception, are installed, communication could be extended throughout all of Japan, including Okinawa, said Kelling.
So the communication is great and most users would probably be satisfied with that, but there’s more.
The old system was akin to an overloaded mule with a broken leg while the new system is more like a prize winning race horse carrying an infant.
“We were running (the old system) at about almost 90 percent of its capabilities, so we were bogging that system down; we were pretty much running that system into overdrive. It was hurting it,” said Kelling.
“The new system, with everything online right now, we’re only running at 20 to 25 percent, so we have a lot more space to add on more users and radios with the same amount of channels we were using on the old system,” he added.
With the new system, radios can be purchased, programmed and dropped to the user with ease. Even more promising is scheduled inclusion of over-the-air programming.
OTAP is exactly what it sounds like.
Once implemented, the land mobile radio section will be able to re-program radios via wireless transmission, eliminating the need for the radios to be physically picked up and attached to a console.
Transitioning to the new system was quite an undertaking and required some juggling.
Despite the overhaul, ten of the quantars, or channels, from the old system are used on the new system.
These ten components really are the backbone of the system and functionally are necessary whether the system is analog or digital.
As a result, during the upgrade, technicians had to balance how many and when these quantars were removed from the old system and implemented onto the new system, while still supporting station radio communications, especially first-responder communications.
In the end, the upgrade has made station-wide communications significantly better with more features and options and has provided the station with the equipment and infrastructure to expand as needed.