Does anyone know the repeater locations for the Santa Barbara County command repeaters? I assume that they do NOT have 20 repeaters on each command channel. Possibly some command channels operate in just certain parts of the county. Perhaps checking the FCC database can answer that question. Lets take a look. [per 2015 FCC info - Ch1 has 5 repeaters - Ch2 has 3 - Ch3 has 1 - Ch4 has 8 - Ch5 has 1 - Ch6 has 1 - lets see if anything has been licensed since 2015]
There are several repeater sites that operate simulcast countywide and other modules that can be switched on as needed in areas not covered well by the main sites. The main sites are:
Santa Ynez Peak
Tepusquet Peak
Santa Cruz Island
Harris Grade
Plowshare Peak
Dispatch is on Command One. Large incidents are assigned a command channel with Command Two being mostly used on the South Coast and Command Three being used mainly in North County. Tac channels are also assigned by incident. The tac channels are simplex only with no link to the dispatchers. Additional command channels are assigned to multiple incidents. Command Six is often used as a logistics channel in major brush fire. The system suffers from phase distortion despite major efforts to keep the sites synchronized.
As far as I know all sites have repeaters on all command channels. However, some commands work better in some parts of the county than others. The large number of listings is the result of each fire station having a base radio and all other departments in the county being able to operate on the county system.
In spite of the apparent capabilities of the system it bogs down because there is normally only one dispatcher for all six command channels. Frequently calls go unanswered due to the overload of multiple incidents on several channels.
Santa Barbara County is part of Pulse Point. This makes it easy to set alerts for emergencies. Mine is set for vegetation and structure fires. Thus, I can leave my receivers off until there is a call of the type I'm interested in.
Other county services like roads, health department, animal control and parks are on an 800Mhz (non-trunked) system. Listings in the RR database are incorrect. I will post the new frequencies and users when I get it straight.
These excel spreadsheets are typically hand-done to help design a department load, and accuracy is more in line with channel name and number vs what the actual freq is. These are also used as printouts/guides to protect the radio from being ejected out the engine, or a severe beatdown/wire-yanking by the operator for not being able to find where Tac 1 is in their 500zone 23,200channel radio.
