Santa Ana Fire question...

[Duster]

Hello Southlanders!

First of all, Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays/Hannakah/Kwanzaa/or whatever your particular belief system supports.

I received a submission for Orange County, regarding Santa Ana Fire. We've been told that Santa Ana Fire is now dispatched by OCFA, and that their talkgroups on their old system are no longer in use. Can someone who lives there and knows the scoop share with me? Does SAFD still use their old talkgroups for admin and talk-around, or have they been completely released from use?

 

[oracavon]

When Santa Ana disbanded their FD and contracted with OCFA several months ago, they continued to use the old Santa Ana talkgroups on the South OC cell instead of switching to the Central OC cell that OCFA uses for its talkgroups. I'll give a listen to see if that's still the case and let you know what they're using now.

 

[oracavon]

I have now confirmed the following:

OCFA Santa Ana units are still using the Santa Ana dispatch and operations talkgroups (3C and 3D, respectively) on the south OC cell. The Santa Ana dispatch talkgroup 3C is now a simulcast of the OCFA dispatch talkgroup 5B on the Central OC cell, so it carries all OCFA dispatch traffic, including Santa Ana. Upon dispatch, Santa Ana units are assigned to 3D for operations.

I would suspect that the secondary Santa Ana talkgroups 3E and 3K are also still in use, although I can't confirm that because there aren't any incidents working now that would use them.

 

[inigo88]

Thanks oracavon! We were curious about how to proceed since we received a submission stating all Santa Ana Fire talkgroups had been vacated due to the move to OCFA. I have personally seen other fire departments switch dispatch authorities, and know from experience that they often still have access to their old talkgroups for administrative and car-to-car purposes even if their primary talkgroups switch.

Thank you again for confirming that Santa Ana is still on the zone 3 talkgroups!

 

[LAflyer]

I'm a little late to the party, but I am also pretty sure I heard activity on Santa Ana talkgroups a few weeks back when driving down in OC.

Additionally according to the below thread from last years cutover time period, the mentioned planed TG usage was:
>Dispatch 3C (with a multicast of 5B)-you'll hear all 5B dispatches on 3C now
>Primary Tac 3D
>Secondary Tac 3E

http://forums.radioreference.com/gr...-discussion/231937-santa-ana-headed-ocfa.html

=

p.s. - For the Db however might be an idea to migrate 3C/3D/3E (DEC 2224/2256/2288) out from the MetroNet & Central/South Cities Fire category into the OCFA category as Santa Ana indeed no longer has its own FD and is fully part of OCFA albeit having brought along its previous TGs.
This might make it clearer to folks in the Db.

 

[oracavon]

I believe that the current arrangement is the long-term plan, for the reasons mentioned in the thread that LAflyer cited (I had forgotten about that thread). Things may change when the new OC P25 system becomes operational, but I wouldn't expect any changes until then.

 

[Markb]

Additionally, the talkaround channels are used for muliple jurisdictions and are more geographic than by agency, so those should still be valid.
As far as their admin TGs (1-A thru 1-E iirc) are concerned, they probably are no longer used, since only the SAFD radios had those TG's I can definitely vouch for the fact that they are still in use, as Orcavon stated.
Seems like you guys get a fair number of updates that are flat out wrong. Thanks for verifying !!!

Mark

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk

 

[pepsima1]

Also the reason why the Santa Ana ORCO talkgroups are still being used is that the Countywide Cell is spotty in the Santa Ana City limits as well as the Countywide Cell transmission have a difficult time penetrating inside buildings. There are some basements within Santa Ana like the police departments, Court Houses, Old City Buildings back from the early 1900's, and there is a deep basement at The OC Register. They had a huge fire back a few years ago and even had radio transmission trouble on the South Cell. The 20 year old infrastructure is aging and needs an upgrade.

Its really a money issue at this point. Its just a Band-Aid until Orange County can re-design their system.