Questions about Delaware County fire

[ocguard]

Visited DelCo last night and attempted some scanning. Had all of the 500mhz fire channels programmed in, and was surprised at how poor coverage was in some spots. I noticed that the VHF paging channel seems to be only POSCAG paging - no voice - is this accurate? After not hearing any voice dispatching, we dialed in 46.48 and heard some calls going out. Calls on 46.48 seemed to coincide with paging on 154.205, HOWEVER, there were some instances where paging occured on 154.205, and no call was voiced on 46.48. This leads me to believe that some agencies are dispatched by the POSCAG only. Is this accurate.

Can anyone give some insight on how to effectively monitor DelCo for someone who's not too familiar with the system. Are calls ever dispatched on any of the 500mhz channels? Some calls not voice-dispatched at all? Which departments still dispatched theirselves on their own channels?

Has DelCo ever consodered pooling all of their 500 mhz channels (PD and FD) together and creating a kick-butt trunked system? With all of those frequencies available, it would be a very high-capacity system. Thanks in advance.

 

[HM1529]

Visited DelCo last night and attempted some scanning. Had all of the 500mhz fire channels programmed in, and was surprised at how poor coverage was in some spots. I noticed that the VHF paging channel seems to be only POSCAG paging - no voice - is this accurate?

Yes, the highband frequency is for alpha paging only. Not all of the UHF frequencies are on all of the tower sites so you will not get good countywide coverage on all channels.

After not hearing any voice dispatching, we dialed in 46.48 and heard some calls going out. Calls on 46.48 seemed to coincide with paging on 154.205, HOWEVER, there were some instances where paging occured on 154.205, and no call was voiced on 46.48. This leads me to believe that some agencies are dispatched by the POSCAG only. Is this accurate.

There are a couple of other voice dispatch frequencies in use. Among those are 42.24 for Ridley Township fire and 46.22 for Haverford Township fire. Marple Township uses 453.225 to tone out fire, but I think this is also still simulcast over 46.48. It has been mentioned on this board before that the plan in Delco at one time was to move to all-aplha paging for fire/ems with no voice tone outs.

I would imagine that, like other places using alpha paging, administrative messages not related to an ongoing fire call would be sent via alpha pager. This might also address some of your POCSAG receptions that did not correspond to a fire/ems dispatch.

I don't know if trunking has ever been considered or not. Someone else will have to address that issue.

 

[ctrabs74]

Yes, the highband frequency is for alpha paging only. Not all of the UHF frequencies are on all of the tower sites so you will not get good countywide coverage on all channels.

There are only a handful of freqs that are broadcast county-wide (a couple of PD channels, including NCIC and "Command" and the low band fire alerting channel, which is fairly hit and miss in some parts of DelCo). One of these days, I'll just have to go through a listing of all freqs licensed to Delaware County and figure it out; I don't get to listen to Delaware County that much since the signal tends to fade just a little bit east of West Chester.

There are a couple of other voice dispatch frequencies in use. Among those are 42.24 for Ridley Township fire and 46.22 for Haverford Township fire. Marple Township uses 453.225 to tone out fire, but I think this is also still simulcast over 46.48. It has been mentioned on this board before that the plan in Delco at one time was to move to all-aplha paging for fire/ems with no voice tone outs.

I thought Radnor still had 33.90 as one of their tone out freqs.

I don't know if trunking has ever been considered or not. Someone else will have to address that issue.

I doubt it. Although, I don't see why DelCo (or even Chester County, which may have to replace it's TRS in the near future due to rebanding and reliability issues) couldn't apply for freqs in the 470-480 mhz range for a potential TRS. I'm not aware of any counties that are using that range within 50-60 miles of Media, so I'd think that would be an option worth looking into.

 

[ctrabs74]

Can anyone give some insight on how to effectively monitor DelCo for someone who's not too familiar with the system. Are calls ever dispatched on any of the 500mhz channels? Some calls not voice-dispatched at all? Which departments still dispatched theirselves on their own channels?

Are you talking PD or FD/EMS? FD and EMS is dispatched over low band with responses on the UHF channels. All PD dispatches are done over the UHF channels as well.

The only muni LEO agencies that self-dispatch are Haverford Twp and Media Borough. Over the past year or so, Marple, Radnor, and Ridley (which also dispatched Eddystone Borough) turned their PD dispatch functions to the county. Upper Darby PD (also covering Millbourne Borough) is dispatched by DelCOM over freqs licensed to UD Twp.

The Haverford Twp Bureau of Fire is the only FD that I'm aware that still maintains its own dispatch. Everyone else is dispatched by Delaware County Fireboard. Like UDPD, Upper Darby fire is dispatched by county, but over township licensed freqs.

 

[DELCOLHFC]

Delco's tangled web......

Another situation not already mentioned where the VHF Digi signal will go out without a voice transmission on the 46.48 is SOME dispatchers will put out updates (Reduced speed order, on scene reports, hold to units on scene, recalls......) on the digi pagers. This info will be on the UHF freq assigned but not repeated to the dispatch channel. Hopefully the powers that be will come up with a better plan in the not too distant future to replace the low band dispatch voice with something more user friendly than these POS digi pagers that we are now using. I plan to wear my low band voice pager as long as the system is broadcasting. In a perfect world I think a good way to go would be to move dispatch to a UHF freq so that all the county radios could have dispatch in them along with the ops channels.

 

[ocguard]

Well here's an idea to drop to the "powers that be." It seemed to me with the little bit of monitoring I did that the VHF paging channel (154.205) had fairly reliable coverage. Also, the amount of airtime needed to transmit a digital page is very short. Why not use the same channel to transmit voice pages. You'd have to replace your old low band Minitors with high band ones. The equipment required at the dispatching center would be very minimal; less that $1000 to link the dispatch console to the paging system to allow voice access. The transmitters and paging encoders are already in place. Seems like a very cost-effective alternative to keep voice paging up and running, and the fire and EMS personnel of the county happy. When a dispatch needs to be made, the dispatcher sends the alphanumeric page first. Once it's cleared the channel, the dispatcher sends out the two-tone pages, and voices the call.

I'm trying to sell this idea to the "powers that be" in my county, who also seem dead-set on getting rid of voice paging forever. Does anyone know of any sucess stories of similar set-ups?

 

[HM1529]

I'm trying to sell this idea to the "powers that be" in my county, who also seem dead-set on getting rid of voice paging forever. Does anyone know of any sucess stories of similar set-ups?

Lehigh County, PA uses 154.175 for both voice and alpha dispatch right now.

 

[Boomeranger]

Load the fire frequencies from the RR database:

http://www.radioreference.com/modules.php?name=RR&ctid=2263

Med A and Med B are ambulance response. Always busy.

That and toss in Delaware Valley Metro Radio on 451.9 mHz for their incident broadcast network. They cover much more than DelCo as they've merged, expanded their network recently.

Stay tuned,

Andy

 

[Radius350]

here is one for ya, i was at DCMH the other day and saw this cool looking thing called a DTS 2000, it seems to be a big alpha pager mounted to the wall. some company named platan makes it, im trying to figure out some more information about this thing. the way i heard it was that county contracted somone to come in and install these things in place of instalerts or minitor used for station allerting. the research that i have done shows that this peice of hardware is part of a much larger network. any insight or opinions on this thing would be awsome

 

[ff026]

found this for you after you had me curious


http://www.platan.pl/doc/platan_catalogue_digitex.pdf

 

[ocguard]

In the video of a DelCo fire station, I see a "scrolling marque" sign in their engine bay, like one you'd see in a fast food place of at an arena. I can't make out what it says, but I know that in Prince Georges County, MD, they have these in stations and they display the dispatch information of a call when it is recieved, like a big wall-mounted pager. Does DelCo have these?

 

[Radius350]

Platan

i have seen the PDF. version of the catalog for platan but thats abut all i can find on it, some company named Digitex seems to be the distrubutor of the hardware but thats where i run in to a dead end. and of course my remaining question is how does Delco's alpha pageing fall in to this whole thing, and as for the scrolling marque, this platan system has the capability of displaying an alert mesage on one of these things, as well as being hooked up to a priter or relays for strobes and stuff, oh well, who knows!

 

[ocguard]

More questions...

For fireground ops, are the simplex channels used, or the repeater channels? Also, are channels 1-10 ever used in simplex mode? Last, how do EMS units contact hospitals? On the standard UHF MED channels? Thanks!

 

[DELCOLHFC]

For fireground ops, are the simplex channels used, or the repeater channels? Also, are channels 1-10 ever used in simplex mode? Last, how do EMS units contact hospitals? On the standard UHF MED channels? Thanks!

Most fireground traffic (at least in the early stages of jobs) is on the primary channels (1,3,4,5,&7). Most jobs will stay on the primaries until things start to wind down some, however some co.'s / officers will move ops to simplex early on and only have command available on the primary channel. Frustrating when you are trying to monitor a job from work!

There is no option to use Channels 1-10 in simplex they are all repeater channels. Simplex only on 11-14.

I don't run on an Ambu but to my understanding 95% of comm between EMS and hospitals is handled via cell phone / Nextel. Every so often an EMS crew will ask Fireboard to relay info to a hospital due to "phone problems". The two Med channels are pretty much just ALS - BLS - Fireboard comms. (responding, on location, enroute to "x" hosp., available, o.o.s..........)

 

[ocguard]

That helps alot - thanks, everyone, for your input!