Morse code on Wash Co Fire Lately?

[zephyrshockey8]

Anybody else hear that or know what its for? Its been happening pretty frequently, often right before or right after a tone goes out. Not sure what it means though. Any ideas?

[local487]

It's the FCC's requirement. Emergency services radio must identify themselves on the air and one way of doing that is to have a computer generate the county call sign and transmit it by morse code. FM radio stations usually just identify near the top of the hour by saying the call sign "101.3, KDWB" but emergency services has to ID near any radio activity. That's why you hear it near a page or some radio traffic on the frequency.
I hope that makes some sense.

[techsender]

WQKC554, 5 locations for Washington County. Pretty darn good signal. I heard some testing on the old 154.265 freq the other day.

[n9upc]

Washington County Fire now uses a simulcast system on 2 different freqs throughout the county on (if memory serves) approx 5 towers. Therefore, unlike the old system, the page for forest lake can now be heard all the way down in Denmark Township as it uses all towers instead of the Forest Lake tower only.

This simulcasting was able to be done once the county moved over to the ARMER system and vacated the old freqs.

As for the CW this is due to the fact that the 800Mhz traffic from the Fire N tkgrp is patched to the Fire Paging N VHF freq, as well as Fire S tkgrp is patched to the Fire Paging S VHF freq. In addition both Fire tkgrps are patched together also. Therefore, ALL fire traffic on main tkgrps are patch to the VHF paging. Thus, the CW needs to take place due to the patching, and of course, FCC law.

As for the old fire freq it will go back on line someday as a VHF freq that can be patched into the 800Mhz by Wash Co for interop with the VHF'ers (i.e. St Croix Co, Pierce, Polk, Chisago Co, etc...) They will run off 2 towers with one in Forest Lake and the King Stack, and these will only be when the need for interop takes place.

[techsender]

When I looked up the license via the CW ID I found the "paging" license. The .845 frequency shows 5 locations on the license. It is nice to hear everything on one freq now. One of the firefighter/ medics I was talking to says all their minitors have been programmed to the new frequency but they dont care for the CW ID too much. I gave him what info I had, he thought it was cool and was going to look up the stuff on the website.