Douglas county sheriffs office GA

I know I keep asking and y'all Probably time of me asking.....but can some pls tell me SO ch4 freq again

154.905 I believe. Either that or 154.935, I get them confused. I thought it was published on the freq site, but I didn't see it the last I looked. They are simplex so unless you are close or have a tall antenna you won't hear them much. Also, some units xmit their PL tone (118.8), but others don't. I've missed some conversations when I set T-SQL on my radio so I leave it open now. I believe the freq is state wide (state band as some say), so you may hear others if your antenna is tall enough.

154.905 and 154.935

Both of these freqs are used state wide by ALL law inforcement agencys , state, county and city agencys ALL have these freqs .154.905 is usually used for car to car simplex and 154.935 is usually used for base to base and car to base.They are referred to as "state band car" or "state band base". Most agencys have the capability to switch back and forth and some use split freq transmissions where they trans on one freq and receive on the other.The only exception to this that I know of is Cobb County Police uniform division. They do not have vhf only 800Mhz.Cobb County SO has both 800Mhz and vhf.

SO ch4

The channel number just depends on what agency it is, but usually channel 4 is 154.905 and channel 5 is 154.935.

http://forums.radioreference.com/georgia-radio-discussion-forum/257190-douglas-county.html

DCSO Dispatch 156.1650
DCSO Ch 2 155.5200
DCSO Ch 3 155.3700
DCSO Ch 4 154.9050

I HAVE read in the douglas co. newspaper that the S.O. wants a bond to go 800mhz p25 system unsure if it will happen this year or next year. Something to keep in mind

I broadcast both DCSO and DPD. DPD is on P25. The quality is lacking and sounds digital. I replaced the included scanner antenna with one cut for 800MHz and it's still horrible. Current DCSO is much clearer.

I learned a long time ago to never apply LOGIC to ILLOGICAL questions. But would it not make sense for an agency in the metro area that is still on conventional but wants to go to a trunked P25 system to join one of the systems already in place and not float a bond issue at taxpayers expense to build yet another system. Good thing our cell networks weren't engineered this way with customers building their own networks

It wouldn't surprise me if they do create their own system, but what facts do you have to support your statement?

From what I understand it's not a bond issue, but an increase in property taxes.

Douglas County Sheriff's office is a prime example of how to spend/waste money. Take the jail for example. You have all seen it.. it's like a welcome sign as you enter Douglas County on westbound I-20. They are so proud of it. They like it so much they decided to spend nearly a half million dollars on just the sign out front. Needless to say the citizens don't trust how the Sheriff spends their money.

So they want new radios because of the lack of coverage they have, but yet you can here their transport units all the way from Bartow County. I was in Stone Mountain over the weekend and heard them just fine. If it ain't broke.. don't fix it.

References:
Bond vote likely this year after all: Sheriff's Office's 'dire need' for radios sways BOC - Douglas County Sentinel: News
DCSO dispels $750k sign figure floated by tax hike critics - Douglas County Sentinel: Local News

the problem for DCSO isn't that their 150 watt ERP repeater can't be heard in Stone Mountain, it's that body worn portables can't talk in from Bright Star Rd.
They also no longer have interoperability with Paulding county (went to UHF MotoTRBO), the city (long left for 800 analog trunking now digital), Polk and Carroll county (moved to WARRS)...get the idea?

The deputies sound fine on their mobile radios, who wouldn't? The average single site repeater installation like they have is designed for MOBILE coverage. VHF already sucks for body worn operation, portables use inefficient antennas.

It would make better sense for them to migrate to either the Cobb DTRS or the WARRS network as subscribers.

Cant they use pac rat repeaters . 1 watt ht to the car and 100 out of the car. i worked they for 30 yrs i know know where they can and can not be heard and a agree that the 5 watt radios work good except for the dead spots in the south and west of the county but the so has a new antenna and location and it has a lot stronger signal here in rome now. We used to use the pac rat system when i first started there in the late 70s and it worked great. the SO didnt want the bond on the same ticket with the prop tax because they were worried it wouldnt get through, you know and i know it wont be 10 million it will be 10 plus. my daughters prop tax went up by 30% and thats why the so didnt want it on the same ticket. I still have lots of friends at the so, But the system still works great. Why dont they go to a vhf ltr 5 ch.trunk system like the fire dept has? Does it have to be a 800 system? just to keep up with the jones? A LTR vhf or even uhf system with 5 or 6 ch system would cost a fiction of the cost of a 800 system and still full fill the needs of the dept. I dont know how much it would cost to tie in to the cobb 800 dig system like dville pd. did, who has their own 800 analog system not being used, Why couldnt dcso buy it from douglasville ? I am unsure how much going to WARRS would be. Lots of western counties like carroll ,heard, harrison have switched over to warrs so maybe dcso could do the same if dcso just wants a new digital system.

Using PAC-RT means adding expensive VRS hardware, and still doesn't solve the problem of not enough channels/talkgroups. Douglas county is stuck in 1989 with a single channel VHF repeater that has inadequate portable coverage. I can't count the times I've heard these folks in chases on foot not being able to get in when chasing some suspect. VHF just doesn't work well on portable radios, especially in a modern urban environment. The noise floor is sky high now thanks to all these part 15 devices' CPU clocks, cheap cell phone chargers, you name it. If you look at a spectrum analyzer you'd see how impractical it is to setup a radio system on this band in an urban area.
Douglas county is no longer "the sticks", it has a fast growing suburban population, no wonder Google decided to move a data center there. Cheap taxes, great location.

VHF trunking means getting pairs that play nice with combiners, not to mention the interoperability issue. It's just a crap band for portable radio coverage these days. And with interference growing from digital carriers on the band, getting performance down to -118dbm on RX is a difficult challenge. LTR is NOT designed for public safety and their current system is not even Passport capable, which lacks even APCO-16 features like emergency call, unit ID, remote radio disable, dynamic regrouping, etc. LTR is great for non-public safety, but a recipe for disaster for mission critical users.

They NEED a modern radio system with more voice channels, and more importantly in building body worn coverage. VHF is not the band for it, sorry. I know some will disagree with me, but this isn't 1985 and Douglas is not a rural area. It's time to move forward.

The WARRS system has sites in the county, one or two additional sites would probably be needed to expand the network, or moving to the Cobb DTRS (which absorbed the old Douglasville analog system BTW) would be a prudent move. This would give them much needed portable coverage, more channel/talkgroup capacity, and they would be on a modern radio system with public safety grade feature sets, not some SMR type network designed for the garbage man.

They need to make public safety a priority and stop playing games with the budget, but then this IS Gawga we are talking about, we lead the nation in corruption and Douglas county has been in the news quite a bit in this regard...no surprise there.

Why did DCSO back out of WARRS at the start? I know at one time they where going to use this system. They even built a douglas tower. Not sure if it is active or not.

Trends show that when crime comes to the county, and leaves the county, it goes east towards Atlanta. (Imagine that). Joining a system that covers west of Douglas County would be counter productive.

since I live west of them, I guess that is good news.

puterman said:

Why did DCSO back out of WARRS at the start? I know at one time they where going to use this system. They even built a douglas tower. Not sure if it is active or not.

Click to expand...

WARRS was an 80/20 SAFECOM funded system. Many of those great pie in the sky Federal grants are over. Many P25 systems were built out using funds this way. I think the original intention was to build out and connect to the various metro Atlanta systems in the future via ISSI- this is easier said than done.

Douglas county has always had good inter government relationships with Cobb- we have a unified board of health:

Cobb & Douglas Public Health

And our radio 911 radio manager has been very active with the city of Douglasville, to the point of assisting them with the implementation of their original Smartnet II analog trunking system to their migration (and eventual absorption) of Douglasville's 800MHz channels into the Cobb county DTRS.

It would make more sense (from a coverage and intergovernmental agreement standpoint) for the county to "play nice" with Cobb and expand that system. Cobb has already made great headway with ISSI in Forsyth (and hopefully) the soon-to-be new Fulton county DTRS, so this would be the next logical step if they want to enter the 21st century public safety radio wise.

But to ignore the problems with the existing S/O radio systems is dangerous. That system while it may "talk out" 100 miles, has poor portable coverage and no capability to interface to surrounding jurisdictions who have moved on to more modern radio systems on other RF bands. They need to make this a priority before someone gets hurt (or worse).

MTS2000des's comments make perfect sense. The players in all of the counties should work together. Why should taxpayers money be sent foolishly? I thought interoperability was how the fed $$ were to be spent.
This can be seen by all the counties that were 150MHz analog, and were duped into unnecessary odd ball digital systems that don't mesh with anyone that their county lines touch.
I'm still waiting to see how Gwinnett deals with programming Forsyth's new TGID's into the FD and SO HT's.
Metro ATL isn't the only messed up area, the city of Cleveland, OH, where I'm from, had an chance to join the OH MARCS system, and decided to do their own again.
So, what's wrong with being able to talk to your neighbor? Fences are built to keep others out, not to protect.
JMTCW,
Larry