Saint Charles, MO, September, 2010: Allen J. Underdown, President of Praecom Consulting, announced this month that final approval for the project in Emporia, KS was awarded to, and will be completed by Praecom Consulting.
Praecom Consulting will be providing a needs assessment in addition to reviewing the City’s system prior to the FCC’s Narrow Band Mandate for January 1st, 2013. In addition to the City Police Department, City Fire and EMS, the City also provides dispatching for Lyon County Rural Fire Protection districts.
“We’ve found that Emporia is an exciting opportunity for us in growing the footprint of Praecom Consulting. This is the type of work we really enjoy doing, and where long term relationships are really built.” stated Mr. Underdown.
Emporia, KS is home to Emporia State University. This small town in Lyon County, Kansas has a population of just over 34,000. It is located on the Kansas turnpike between Topeka and Wichita and is best known for it’s newspaper, The Emporia Gazette, which was first published in the mid-1890’s by the well-known journalist, William Allen White.
Praecom Consulting is a professional services and consulting company with a 35-year heritage as independent consultants. With expertise in the technical and regulatory aspects of electronic communications, Praecom consultants hold certifications and licenses in several disciplines including networking, unified communications, microwave, land mobile radio, and web presence engineering.
Saint Charles, MO, September 2010: Twin Falls, Idaho has selected Praecom Consulting as their engineering firm for completing a system review and needs analysis, announced Allen J. Underdown, President of Praecom Consulting.
Twin Falls will utilize several of Praecom Consulting’s services, including “Quick Fix” services. Additionally, Twin Falls has several unique geographic challenges for coverage. One of the key portions of the project is working on Twin Falls behalf for interoperability with the regional communications center. Twin Falls utilized a Qualifications Based Selection (QBS) process in their evaluation of consulting firms.
The technology that we will have to review to insure seamless interoperability with the regional communications system will be exciting. Every customer is unique in their needs, and Twin Falls is no exception. This project will encompass several technologies, software and networks, which is one of our strong points.
Twin Falls is the largest city (with a population of over 40,000) in Idaho’s “Magic Valley”. As the largest city in a 100-mile radius, Twin Falls serves as a regional commercial center for both South-Central Idaho and Northeastern Nevada. Twin Falls boasts beautiful scenery and one of it’s three waterfalls, Shoshone Falls, is taller than Niagara Falls by 36 feet.
Shoshone Falls, Twin Falls, ID
Praecom Consulting is a professional services and consulting company with a 35-year heritage as independent consultants. With expertise in the technical and regulatory aspects of electronic communications, Praecom consultants hold certifications and licenses in several disciplines including networking, unified communications, microwave, land mobile radio, and web presence engineering.
Saint Charles MO, August 10th, 2010: Allen Underdown, President of Praecom Consulting in Saint Charles, MO has been selected to serve on the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International, Inc’s (APCO) 9-1-1 Emerging Technologies Committee for the 2010-2011 term.
Mr. Underdown was chosen by the Chair of the 9-1-1 Emerging Technologies Committee to be a part of the ongoing work in public safety communications.
“I’m extremely excited about helping develop and define new standards in Public Safety – I hope my broad background in IP Networks, Telephony, Computer Telephony Integration along with my experience with wireless networks and Land Mobile Radio will bring a unique perspective to the committee.” Mr. Underdown further stated that “Being on a committee like this is also a two way street. You learn from your fellow committee members and this translates back to being better able to service our customers as well. I’m interested in the public policy aspect of the committee. This is an area where I see a lot of development needed, particularly in areas where 9-1-1 is underfunded and the application of specific technologies can provide cost savings with better services to the public”
Mr. Underdown’s background can be found on the Praecom Consulting web site at http://www.praecom.com. Information on APCO International can be found at http://www.apcointl.org and specific information on the 9-1-1 Emerging Technologies Committee can be found at https://apconetforum.org/eweb/
Saint Charles MO, August 3rd 2010: Praecom Consulting received its second certification as a Women Business Enterprise recognized by the St Louis Airport Authority (SLAA) as of July 27th, 2010. It is the latest achievement for this Independent Communications Consulting firm.
Emma Underdown, Chief Executive Officer of Praecom Consulting stated, “This will enable us to further commit our resources to our customers requiring diversity and provide additional opportunities for our company to partner with agencies.”
Praecom Consulting will also be included in the Directory of Disadvantaged, Minority and Women Owned Businesses online directory located at www.mwdbe.org which, according to the SLAA is “utilized by city departments, airport tenants and all firms bidding on city and airport contracts.”
Praecom Consulting’s first certification was back in December of 2009 acknowledged by the Missouri Department of Supplier and Workforce Diversity.
A few months ago, a client called with an unusual problem. They were in the process of adding a new radio system to their dispatch operation.
Their radio tower was a few hundred feet from the 911 center and was connected via private telephone cable that we had engineered a number of years ago. The problem was they had run out of cable pairs in the telephone cable. Their growth over the last few years, as they had gone to county wide dispatch, had taken all future growth we had allowed in our planning.
The radio system was a simple simplex system with tone remote control. The cost estimate to add a new telephone cable was not in this year’s budget. The administrator came to us and asked what other alternatives do we have? The service shop had offered a number of high tech solutions including adding digital multiplexing to the cable to derive the needed circuit. This was also cost prohibitive. We offered to solve the problem for only a few hundred dollars plus our hourly fees.
In years past, the telephone company derived “phantom circuits” on physical copper cable pairs by the use of transformers (in telephone parlance, they are called repeat coils). This method is still a viable solution as it can give a third audio circuit for every 2 copper cable pairs and the use of six 600 ohm center tapped transformers which are still readily available.
We made up a drawing and an equipment list for the local radio shop to order and install. When it was completed we were able to take the new radio system and apply it to the phantom circuit that was derived and the system was made operational without the expense of additional cable or multiplex equipment.
The explanation of how this works is as follows:
Both wires of the circuit labeled Circuit A in Figure 1 become one conductor of the phantom circuit. As the current flow in these two wires is identical and in phase there is no voltage differential across the pairs and no audio is heard in the Circuit A audio circuit. The two pairs of the Circuit B audio circuit work in an identical manner. By taking the center taps of the two transformers and using them as the conductors for the phantom transformer, a third audio channel is derived that is not heard in either Circuit A or Circuit B audio paths. Note: it is necessary that the conductors themselves for each of the two side circuits must be within 2 ohms of each other and ideally below 0.5 ohm of each other. If this is not the case, the side circuit audio and phantom circuit audio will crosstalk.
There is even one more circuit that can be derived. By the addition of an additional set of transformers, connected between the center tap of the phantom transformer and ground, an additional audio circuit can be derived. This circuit is unbalanced and can be susceptible to audio hum, however, this circuit can be used as an intercom circuit between the radio equipment building and the dispatch center. This gives four separate voice circuits over 2 copper cable pairs and some inexpensive center tapped audio transformers.
A PDF version of this article is available for download in the White Papers section of this website.
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