Fort Worth Fire Question

KG5TQZ · Apr 20, 2018

I work a couple of days a week in Fort Worth near the 8th Ave medical area. On occassion I bring my scanner, programmed for Fort Woth FD, ambulances and the ambulance-to-hospital frequencies. Every time I monitor these frequencies, I find that at 9:30 am plus or minus a few minutes all these frequencies go silent. I thought at first it was someone in the building I work in turning on some kind of RF shield, possibly to protect sensitive computing. However, I still get rail and air frequencies, WIFI and cell phone service. I took my scanner outside and found that even then, the fire/ems frequencies were silent.

Does anyone know what happens at 9:30? Prior to that time it is almost constant dispatching and talking.

KE5MC · Apr 20, 2018

S.W.A.G.
I’m thinking a control channel change your radio is not seeing. How are you getting the radio to receive voice again?
Mike

KG5TQZ · Apr 21, 2018

I'm not doing anything to get it to receive voice again. When I get to Fort Worth, I turn it on and it receives until about 9:30, then goes quiet. The next time I go to Ft. Worth, I do the same thing with the same results.

It seems strange that it is all the FWFD channels (locution, human dispatch, fire tac) but also the hospital channels that the ambulances and ERs use to talk to each other.

I don't know what time these channels come back to life - I'ts sometime after I leave to go back home.

BenScan · Apr 21, 2018

My guess is that you're suffering from poor performance from a scanner that doesn't work well on simulcast systems. The control channels are pretty stable(they don't change very often). For poorly designed and manufactured scanners, it doesn't take much for things to not work. I suppose there could be something that causes interference starting at 9:30, but it probably comes down to the scanner not working well.

KG5TQZ said:
I work a couple of days a week in Fort Worth near the 8th Ave medical area. On occassion I bring my scanner, programmed for Fort Woth FD, ambulances and the ambulance-to-hospital frequencies. Every time I monitor these frequencies, I find that at 9:30 am plus or minus a few minutes all these frequencies go silent. I thought at first it was someone in the building I work in turning on some kind of RF shield, possibly to protect sensitive computing. However, I still get rail and air frequencies, WIFI and cell phone service. I took my scanner outside and found that even then, the fire/ems frequencies were silent.

Does anyone know what happens at 9:30? Prior to that time it is almost constant dispatching and talking.

KG5TQZ · Apr 22, 2018

Thanks to both of you for your input. I don't have the latest and greatest scanner, by far. I should be grateful I can get anything from FWFD at all; in fact for a couple of years I couldn't until a firmware upgrade came out. Some day I'll trade up to something that can track control channels and handle simulcasts. But, for now what I've got works well where I live.

Fort Worth Fire Question

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