Johnston County- Positive Side

[JH2184]

I was just going to say that even though some channels are on Provoice in Johnston County, there is still a fair amount of traffic to monitor in Johnston County. A lot of people probably think it is completely Provoice but it is not the case. You can still hear the dispatch for Smithfield, Selma, Kenly, micro, pine level, Princeton, Wilson's mills, and four oaks PD's. There are digital private channels for Smithfield and kenly but the other patrol channels for Smithfield and the other county PD units as far as I know are analog. Most of the time though, these police depts will stay on their dispatch channel . The mutual aid channel that is used mostly by the county animal control is also analog. I know wilsons mills PD's channel is also analog. Also Ops 8, 9, 10 are always completely analog if they are ever used. If you have the wake county VIPER system programmed in, you can hear Ops 3 Talkgroup "26896" on the wake county system. Also a lot of the time you can also hear the dispatchers talking on Ops 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7. Occasionally you can hear just the dispatch from Clayton PD and Benson PD and the Sheriffs Dept but that is it. I have found that you tend to hear Clayton PD dispatch more on the North and West towers and Benson PD Dispatch on more of the South Tower. All of the patrol channels and various other channels for Clayton, Benson, Sheriffs Dept and all of the private EMS and fire channels for each department are all provoice. I have never seen any talkgroups listed for the Private Fire Dept and EMS stations so I am unsure of how many stations or all of them have a Private channel and what the talkgroup name is. You can even hear the patient information on occasion on EMS Dispatch when it is occasionally switched off of Provoice from the dispatcher. You can only hear the dispatcher though when this happens. I have never heard JMH at all when they switched to Provoice, even just the hospital talking. I still enjoy listening to Johnston County. I just keep my hopes up for a change..either a provoice scanner which will never be or maybe one day, the better chance of switching to a Motorola system. I just wonder how much of a chance that would ever happen. We have to be the only county in the state and one of the 40 or 50 in the US to operate such system. If anyone wants to comment on this or about Johnston County's system feel free to do so. I hope this information helps for people like me who monitors Johnston County.

 

[khubbard]

all the fire depts have there own private talk groups that other depts dont have.

 

[scannerpro]

Thanks for the post!

 

[jthorpe]

I don't see Johnston County changing out to Motorola anytime soon. Not with the investment they've made in the Macom system. If you've ever been in their communications center, you'd understand why. If anything, you'll see more and more dept's going digital later down the road once they can afford to get new radios.

 

[KM4JTW]

Man, we sure had it made years ago when Johnston County and small town municipalities operated on VHF and UHF. I spent countless Friday and Saturday nights listening to Benson Pd, back when cruising was going strong. Never was boring, to say the least. Now, all I can do is monitor Fire/EMS dispatch. I currently have a scanner that will scan up through the 900mhz's. Is there a frequency/s that you listed above that I could program into my scanner to listen to Benson pd? Really, I would be happy to listen to any county fire/ems/ law radio traffic. Kinda gets boring hearing tones all the time...

 

[scannerpro]

Actionguy....Nope Benson PD is 800Mhz Provoice EDACS like everything in Johnston County besides those 154.340 and 155.235. I hate it myself personally. If they had to go digital they should of chose Motorola Digital.

 

[KE4ZNR]

Actionguy....Nope Benson PD is 800Mhz Provoice EDACS like everything in Johnston County besides those 154.340 and 155.235. I hate it myself personally. If they had to go digital they should of chose Motorola Digital.

Allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment: Why "Should" Johnston County have chosen Motorola Digital over MA Comm EDACS Provoice if the Provoice system gave them all of the features they needed at a price they could afford? Just because we as scanner buffs cannot monitor most of the counties radio traffic? Sorry but those in charge in Johnston County only care about Johnston 911 being able to hear the units in the field...Both Motorola and EDACS systems have positives and drawbacks...I know we tend to dismiss EDACS provoice systems due to the fact we can't monitor them in our hobby but when implemented correctly a Provoice system can be just as effective as a Motorola system...Do I wish there was a commercially available Provoice capable scanner/receiver? Of Course! However I will not let my frustration at not being able to monitor Provoice influence being fair when it comes to discussing Provoice systems...
Happy Monitoring!
Marshall KE4ZNR

 

[welshtorg]

Yeah but,

Interoperabilty stinks btwn the 2 or 3 EDACS users and the rest of the State that uses Motorola...And the first person who says "Why don't just just put up a patch" obviously has never been in the field as a user or on the dispatcher side of patching, because sound quality is HORRIBLE!!!

Patching is reducing a radio to it's least common denominator...Makeshift at best...

I have a friend in Harnett County who told me that the System that they are/were using is actually a business-class system (as opposed to Public Safety Grade) complete with hand started Honda generators as a tower site back-up power supply...I DO NOT KNOW if it's true or not, anyone got any first hand knowledge of this?

Now, I'm not knocking the EDACS product or the PROVOICE features...I've used it with no complaints in the past, but bad guys go across county lines and sometimes the nearest ALS truck is coming Mutual Aid...

 

[JH2184]

Man, we sure had it made years ago when Johnston County and small town municipalities operated on VHF and UHF. I spent countless Friday and Saturday nights listening to Benson Pd, back when cruising was going strong. Never was boring, to say the least. Now, all I can do is monitor Fire/EMS dispatch. I currently have a scanner that will scan up through the 900mhz's. Is there a frequency/s that you listed above that I could program into my scanner to listen to Benson pd? Really, I would be happy to listen to any county fire/ems/ law radio traffic. Kinda gets boring hearing tones all the time...

Actionguy, if your scanner is a trunking scanner, You can put in all of the correct frequencies and if you are trunking on the South tower for johnston county you sometimes can hear benson PD dispatch. These units will be the 500s. The talkgroup is 12-021. You can only hear the dispatch if it is switched off of provoice which would be analog of course but you can never hear the police officers. Sometimes you can hear this on the regular east tower but usually it is south. Clayton and Benson PD are the only two police depts in the county that are like this. The rest of the depts dispatch are analog. For us in johnston county, what we miss out on the most is the sheriffs dept. Their S.O. main talkgroup 10-055 is only analog if it is switched off of provoice but again, you can only just hear the dispatch. It is rare if you ever hear this. Talkgroup 10-021 S.O. Dispatch is a completely analog channel. It is rarely used though, but if it is used you can hear both the deputy and the dispatch. So you aren't hearing anything other than the 154.340 and 155.235? Let me know if you are hearing anything else.