Aeneas antenna could address safety concerns

Putting a repeater antenna on Mount Aeneas is one of the solutions Flathead County has to safety concerns caused by radio signal gaps south of Kalispell.

The other option is to put an antenna a couple miles outside of Bigfork, on Swan Hill.

“We've been working on this for a long time” said Lincoln Chute, the fire service manager for the county. “We're just looking for a permanent solution.”

The county and the Forest Service have been working together to figure out what the best permanent solution is. The Forest Service said they will issue Flathead County a special-use permit to install a repeater on Mount Aeneas if the county can prove the broadcast range is better from Aeneas than Swan Hill.

Responders to emergency calls-fire, medical, and law enforcement-lose radio service in some parts of Bigfork, Somers, Lakeside and Creston, Chute said.

The hills and mountains that make-up the Flathead, hinder the range of the seven radio repeater antennas that already broadcast emergency service signals around the valley. Only around 62 percent of the county is currently covered by those repeaters.

One of the antennas sits on top of Blacktail Mountain at 6700 feet above sea level.

But, Chute said the signal is blocked on one side by a huge ridge line causing shadowing, which prevents signal coverage in areas on the north end of Flathead Lake.

It's a tough valley,” he said. “There's a large population base outside of city limits.”

Where the county needs coverage to respond efficiently to emergency calls.

The spots lacking radio signal coverage are not broad, sweeping areas, but are scattered. So, like cell phone service can be, signals are spotty. Both analog and digital radios go in and out of range.

Currently all the county's law enforcement officials use digital radios, and county medical and fire runs on analog, Chute said.

If they were to put up another antenna, it would have the ability to work with both signals, said Jack Spillman who heads the public safety communications office.

The Forest Service and Flathead County are in the process of testing the Swan Hill site to see if it fills the gaps.

Multiple television and radio antennas already broadcast from a property on top of Swan Hill. The property sits at around 4,000 feet.

Although testing isn't completed yet, preliminary tests show that signals from Swan Hill are still affected by the shadowing affect that the Blacktail antenna has problems with, said the director of emergency services, Scott Sampey.

The next step is to put a test radio in the building already on Mount Aeneas, to see if the signal range covers a significantly larger area than that of Swan Hill.

“The mountain is like a big tower and it should be able to beam us into the shadowed areas,” Sampey said.

Aeneas tops out around 7,400 feet. The building on top holds three microwave satellite dishes and is now owned by Optimum, who took over Bresnan Communications in 2011

They have a special-use permit with the Forest Service, said Gary Danczyk.

He said the building was designed for the specific purpose of protecting the dishes inside which were made to collect signal from one side of the Rocky Mountains and send them to the other.

Emergency services' goal is to put the needed antenna inside of that building.

But, Danczyk said the Forest Service has some concerns.

A higher place doesn't always mean a better signal, because of the shadowing affect.

They want to make sure any permits issued comply with the Forest Service plan, because their long-term policy is to reduce the human footprint in federal forests.

Also, any decision the service makes is partly based on public opinion.

“Every issue in the forest has passionate people on both sides of the issue,” Danczyk said. “It's not as simple for us to say go ahead and put an antenna up, because we have to have some form of public review.”

But before any sort of public review can take place, the county first has to complete testing that determines the signal's range.

Dependent on weather, the testing should start in the next couple of months. Sampey is confident that tests will confirm what the county already knows.

“It's understood that is the best spot,” he said.