Franklin County History Question

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WuLabsWuTecH

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There was a discussion about this years ago that I was a part of--hopefully some of those members are still around!

When I walk around some of the Franklin County Firehouses, some of them still have old plectron's displayed in a case as part of their historical collections. Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what frequencies they used to be dispatched off of and what the station tone outs were?
 
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i found a old Scanner Master book i had from 1993 this is what i found Columbus Fire had a trunking system and these listed fire-10 (fire) 154.310,fire-3 (Bravo\8 Delta) 154.400,fire-5 (Charlie) 154.340 Columbus Police N.E.-460.075,S.E.-460.125.S.W.-460.275,N.W.-460.350,LEADS-460.400,RECORDS-460.450,SHERIFF RECORDS-460.425,SHERIFF CAR-2-CAR-460.175 Just a few i found listed in this book from 1993
 

wa8pyr

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There was a discussion about this years ago that I was a part of--hopefully some of those members are still around!

When I walk around some of the Franklin County Firehouses, some of them still have old plectron's displayed in a case as part of their historical collections. Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what frequencies they used to be dispatched off of and what the station tone outs were?

Pick a frequency, it probably got used around here at one time or another before 800 MHz trunking showed up.

154.310 - Columbus
153.980 - Grandview
33.96 - Clinton Twp (might have been 33.94)
460.575 - Upper Arlington (and low band before that)
33.86 - Norwich Twp
33.80 - Perry Twp and Washington Twp
33.76 - Sharon Twp
154.160 - Westerville (and 155 something before that)
33.86 - Plain Twp
33.52 - Mifflin Twp
155.745 - Jefferson Twp
33.92 - Truro Twp & Whitehall
33.86 - Hamilton Twp
33.84 (I think) - Madison Twp
45.06 (I think) - Franklin Twp
33.84 - Jackson Twp, Pleasant Twp
33.86 - Prairie Twp

I'm not 100% sure on Madison Twp and Franklin Twp; they were fairly early converts to being dispatched by Columbus Fire. Prairie Twp was still using 33.86 until a few years ago for their firehouse alerting. I still have my old Perry Twp, Sharon Twp and Westerville Plectrons at home, for all the good they do me.

Columbus FD never used paging tones, but they did have an in-house PA system designed and built by city employees which used DTMF tones to open the station PA. Seriously degraded and noisy phone lines led to it's demise and replacement with MOSCAD in the late 90s or early 2000s, if I recall correctly.

Delaware County used 33.86, but their channel 2 was 33.82, which led to interesting skip from LAFD's Valley Division when the band was open. Union County used 154.250 (and still does for paging as far as I know), but the other surrounding counties used 33.86 as well.

Originally, Perry Twp and Washington Twp were dispatched by Perry Twp; the station tones were 910.0 and 992.0, activated with tuning forks (which I still have) held in front of the radio mike. I would have to see if I could find my old Franklin County Fire Chief's Association resource books to find other tones.
 
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W8UU

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Tom,

You're good on those frequencies!

Clinton Twp. did use 33.96 MHz
Upper Arlington started on 33.86 then went UHF.
Franklin Twp. used 46.56 MHz back in the day but was 100% dispatched by Columbus when I moved to Central Ohio in 1988-ish.
Westerville's original frequency was 33.86, then 155.04, then 154.16 MHz - which they ended up sharing with Sharon Township back in the "Fire Control" days. That was a blasting little radio system that had a very unique "clickety-click" sound when the receive voter lost the mobile signal and before the repeater's hang time dropped.
I have no idea about Madison Twp. They were 100% Columbus FD dispatched for as long as I can remember.

Almost every Franklin County fire department that used low band for dispatch had a PAC-RT mobile repeater that operated on 153.83 MHz. There was an ungodly list of PL tones in use to keep one department out of the other PAC-RT systems on the scene of a big fire. Most departments carried VHF portables on the Columbus 154 MHz system with the township's PAC-RT channel also installed. Almost every suburban fire and EMS unit had a VHF mobile that could access all the CFD channels.

When Columbus kicked in the automatic response. it was neat to monitor CFD on one scanner and listen to all the other dispatch centers on another. Engines and Ladders and Rescues and Medics marked their own dispatchers on a gaggle of different frequencies then they hopped on the CFD system to indicate they were responding. It was very de-centralized and inefficient in a way but there was so much redundancy and the multi-agency dispatching was so well orchestrated, it was truly amazing to hear.

What an interesting and unexpected trip down memory lane.

Rick, W8UU
 

wa8pyr

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What an interesting and unexpected trip down memory lane.

Rick, W8UU

Very much so. It's been an interesting 30+ years, that's for sure.

Pretty sure I have the Madison Twp frequency right, but they jumped ship to CFD very early on along with Franklin Twp; at the same time, Madison Twp PD moved to the SO for dispatching. Franklin Twp PD had been dispatched by the SO for awhile before the FD went to Columbus.

I remember all those doggone PAC-RT units. When everybody and their brother and their wife's uncle showed up on a fire scene and started up their PAC-RTs, 153.830 got crowded pretty quickly.

On the other hand, fire departments in Franklin County had a reasonably good handle on fireground frequency use long before Columbus FD figured out that they could actually use Channels 3 and 5 for fireground operations, and clear Channel 1 for normal operations in the rest of the city. 154.280 was pretty popular before people started moving to 800 MHz.

(Speaking of Fire Control, last time I checked those Zetron desktop consoles were still in use at New Albany PD).
 
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