Which Freqs work best in built up areas

[CharlesHarris]

Recommended practice for police, fire and EMS is to have portable repeaters for voice, data and imagery installed in the POD used for the incident command post. This way responders to an incident are not dependent upon the available channel loading of nearby repeaters used for routine traffic, and having the repeaters located nearby at the staging area for the ICP enables portables working the incident site to have reliable coverage, even using minimum transmit power, so as to maximize talk-time on a set of batteries.

This was a hard lesson learned on the pile in NYC after 9/11 as several of the public safety main site repeaters were located on the WTC towers which went down. At the Pentagon the Virginia Task Force One urban search & rescue team was already equipped with multiple, frequency agile repeaters in their command post, which permitted flexibility and interoperability between local, state, federal government and military assets all working the site, permitting simultaneous voice, data and imaging on multiple operations, logistics and administrative channels, updating the status boards in the WebEOC incident management software in real time and having real time imagery with voice contact on the ground available to leadership, using multiple bands and modes simultaneously.

Eventually NYC came up in the network once replacement truckloads of equipment arrived and were set up.