By Shannon Pieper

For years, firefighters have struggled to use radios on a fireground that’s hardly amenable to their use. Gloved hands, background noise from PASS alarms and chainsaws, and exposure to water and heat have all made radio use difficult. Digital radios were meant to be the solution, but many departments found they just often created a new set of background noise issues.

As a result, radio manufacturers have been racing to catch up to the needs of firefighters. Take Motorola’s new APX 7000XE, a dual-band radio that’s P25 compliant. At Fire-Rescue International this week, Motorola demonstrated the features of this radio, which it says is built specifically for the fireground. The radio’s three buttons—emergency, volume and channel—are much larger than other P25 radios on the market, making them easy to access with a gloved hand. Other features also make the radio easy to use—the radio announces the channel and volume settings so you instantly know that you changed settings, and activating the emergency button switches on an orange color display so that other firefighters carrying the same radio know that you’re in trouble.

But the real techie stuff comes in the radio’s volume and noise-suppression abilities. Motorola demonstrated the radio against regular P25 radios and the results were startling: In both received and sent transmissions, the volume was significantly higher, the audio more crisp and, ultimately, the transmissions were much easier to understand. In a demonstration mayday call on the regular P25 radio, many of the firefighter’s words dropped out; on the APX 7000XE, we clearly heard and understood the transmission.

But all the technology in the world is useless without education. That’s why the IAFC and Motorola collaborated on a video to help disseminate radio best practices. Tests have shown that often, the problems firefighters experience with things like background noise are easily resolved through simple changes in the way the radios are used. The IAFC developed the best practices—which apply to all kinds of radios, not just digital—and partnered with Motorola to produce the video.

Effective fireground communication will always depend on situational awareness, 360-degree size-up, good radio techniques and compliance with standard operating polices/guidelines. But whatever additional help firefighters can get—in advances to the physical radio and/or advances to the internal workings—will be key in supporting good radio practices and building firefighter trust in the tool that’s often their only lifeline to the outside. Firefighter and fire department feedback to companies like Motorola will continue to drive that process and ensure that eventually, radios truly meet the demands of those who use them.

Shannon Pieper is deputy editor for FireRescue magazine.

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