Mecklenburg County Dispatch Changes

Status
Not open for further replies.

yardbird

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Mar 3, 2004
Messages
946
Location
Concord, NC
I guess by now most of you have noticed the changes on Mecklenburg Dispatch.

I noticed all traffic is starting to be switched to county fire 156.165.

I asked a Paramedic Crew Chief what was going on an he told me the following:

1. Medic crews are no longer carrying Minitor V pagers. Each crew member carries an 800 Mhz radio while on duty. They have a new dispatch software that pages the crews 800 Mhz radios of a call and let's dispatch know the crew recieved the call and if the radio does not recieve the alert then it locks up the console and let dispatch know there is a problem.

2. Only the first responders are paged on 462.950 Med-9.

3. After dispatch all traffic for the county is being sent to county fire, to stop congestion and tying up Med-9
Thus leaving it open for dispatching only.

4. All county agencies first repsonder are firefighters and part of the fire departments.

5. Med-2 on 800 Mhz will still be used for calls within the City of Charlotte only.

6. Medic dispatch has started the process of simlucasting all county EMS calls across 462.950 and 156.165.

I expect in the future all first responders in Mecklenburg will be turning in their 462.950 Med-9 pagers and all will be done on county fire 156.165.

It makes since figure most firefighters are first responders, and their is no real need to carry two pagers when one will do for both purposes.

Mecklenburg Firefighters carry one VHF pager for fire and one UHF pager for first responder

Just thought I would pass this tid bit of information along as to what I was told.

David
 
Last edited:

NCFireman11

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Sep 9, 2006
Messages
322
Location
NC
I am not 100% positive, but Med-9 may be phased out because even North Meck and Matthews Rescue have a tone on 156.165 now. Our UHF pagers at the VFD I'm on were turned back in to medic last week and I think the cross-patch on Med-9 will be up until they can get everyone switched over programming the 2 tones for fire and medical for the county departments in the VHF pagers. After everyone is switched over, I don't know what will happen to 462.950. Corrections are welcome.
 

yardbird

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Mar 3, 2004
Messages
946
Location
Concord, NC
I like listening to Mecklenburg on Med-9

The worse thing I hate about it and county fire is the fact they do not recieve PL.

I have county fire in my VHF radio, and some mornings on my way to work the static and bleed over is so bad that I finally have to hit the delete button and lock it out of scan. I finally grab my XTS-5000 or XTS-2500 and switch to county fire to monitor it.

I have a Med-9 Pager that I have programmed with Newell, North Meck, West Meck, and Cornileus rescue tones in it. The problem I have with it is that when I get north of UNCC College I start picking up Randolph County who is on Med-9.

I finally get home I turn off the Med-9 pager, because I do not care to listen to Randolph County to rest of the day.

If Mecklenburg would put PL on the recieve side of county fire and Med-9 they would have a pretty decent system.

As far as North Meck I think I have them programmed in my county fire pager and will see if it alerts tomorrow at work.

David
 

yardbird

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Mar 3, 2004
Messages
946
Location
Concord, NC
I had it programmed on county fire and all of a sudden I quit hearing anything.

I do know that other agencies that use Med-9 have put PL decode on the recieve side

Haywood uses 186.2 Tx and Rx

Cumberland uses 107.2 Tx and Rx

Randolph is a strange system

Tx 127.3 Rx-151.4

David

Also Ncfireman check you private messages
 

Alarm

Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2001
Messages
24
Location
Carolina Beach, NC
Hey Guys.

Thought this may explain the PL issue. My memory may be a little off, but as I remember, A few years ago the vhf fire repeater and the uhf med 9 repeater were disabled because everyone was on 800 and there was no need to continue to pay for expensive repairs to old failing equipment. The only need for the two conventional freqs was as a way to alert the minitor pagers, and dispatch monitoring was no longer nessary.

The vhf and uhf freqs were left interconnected to the 800 trs for a while. You used to be able to key med 9 and be heard on Medic dispatch on 800. Eventually this was also disabled and a one way simulcast was established to transmit outbound traffic on 800 to the uhf and vhf freqs. Therefore no PL or DPL was needed because only the minitor pagers "listened" to these freqs and they could be set to only open when there was a call for that carrier, so out of county traffic was not a big issue.

The call volume eventually increased on the medic side and began to overwhelm C-Med. Having the "vollys" on dispatch for all county calls made it that much worse because of the constant chatter. (Don't yell at me, I'm a volly too, and lets face it, we chit chat..) In 2007, I think it was 07, anyway, Mint Hill Fire and Ambulance service did a test run and had all traffic for them moved to county fire. It was great, I carried one pager and could hear all pre-arrival traffic. Eventually Idlewild VFD, who acted as our medical first responders, complained to the county fire fighters association that this setup cause an undue hardship for them and the test run was over.

Now, and I am not sure about the specifics, (Derek, perhaps you can correct this), medic has removed minitor pagers from service and now alerts the radio's of the medic crews directly. My wife loves carrying one less thing and she says the radio alert is very convenient. Now all county (outside of the City of Charlotte proper) medical dispatch traffic is being moved to fire dispatch because it has much less activity and will allow the county units to remain on dispatch until arrival.

I may have repeated earlier info, and I know I may have went in circles with this prolonged explanation, but I hope it helps.....

Chris
KG4CAN
 
Last edited:

yardbird

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Mar 3, 2004
Messages
946
Location
Concord, NC
Chris,

That is fine.

I just wish the PL was on the recieve side, because like I said I have a vhf radio in my ruck with Meck Fire and in the early moring hours I get a lot of static and especially when I get near other electronic equipment.

Also I have a uhf as well. Med-9 is not as bad, till Randolph County starts dispatching. Then when the two start talking at the same time it is a garbeled mess.

Like I said, Fire is not to bad because I can grab my 800 Mhz and listen to fire but Medic is a different story.

Mecklenburg has given the okay for outside agencies to have county fire 800 talkgroups in radios, but will not give the okay for the Medic channels as of yet. As for Charlotte Fire forget it you don't get them if you don't respond with Charlotte Fire.

David
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top