New radios too

KMRT has suffered for a long time with radios which on numerous recent occasions have proved unreliable. We were not alone in this, with many UK teams trapped between the need to replace old and failing equipment operating on a frequency band which had a limited life on the one hand, and a marked reluctance by those in control of the purse strings to commit funds to make replacement possible on the other.

Discussions began in a leisurely fashion in the late 90's and accelerated in intensity as the Millennium came - and went. Types of equipment, the band to be used and the source of funds were all discussed endlessly with no great progress at first, but once it became clear that we would have to move off lowband before the year 2009 and that the current radios did have a limited life, attention became more focussed.

Police funding was an early major stumbling block, with uncertainty at one point as to whether teams might after all have to buy their own comms equipment. Money would no sooner be approved, than another financial review would reduce it or sweep it away entirely. Despite all that and the distracting, albeit temporary, temptation to give teams police-issue Tetra sets (temporary that is until the administrative nightmare, the staggering cost and the fact that they wouldn't work on the moors were all recognised) some kind of common sense eventually prevailed, action was taken and we now find ourselves at the start of 2005 with some nice new effective kit to use.

Almost as soon as the radios were delivered to us, but in the somewhat sad circumstances of the massive search for Peter Henshaw, we were all able to confirm without doubt the usefulness and reliability of the new equipment.

The next step forward is likely to be the introduction of one or more regional repeaters allowing us in many cases to replace the traditional but much-maligned 'link' station. We are also due to take delivery of a satellite phone, over the supply of which there has been considerable debate.

To prevent our making non-official calls, we were initially asked to state which numbers we wanted programming into the sat-phones, thus at a stroke reducing their usefulness in the unpredictable scenario of an incident to virtually zero. When it was pointed out that one very good use might be for making direct contact with anyone we might suddenly find we need to speak to from somewhere in the middle of the moor where mobile phones don't work - the whole point of having a satellite phone in the first place - this daft restriction was withdrawn. Even so whoever finds themselves carrying the satellite phone, don't use it to call the betting shop!