At the moment (as its been mentioned already) Fire is paged out on VHF 154.415, the same freq it has always been. The former fire channel 3 153.740 I think off the top of my head, which is commonly alpha tagged as 'DIRECT' is being used as the communication channel which is patched to VIPER talkgroup 42016. I hope that's not terribly confusing, but if so here's a breakdown... call comes in, its dispatched over talkgroup 42016, CH 3 (153.740), and paging (154.415), all call info is given out over both frequencies and tg42016 however, the tones for paging are only heard over 154.415. From there the fire department will use 42016 (or channel 3) for communicating with dispatch. However, for the users who do not have viper radios or a radio that receives CH 3 dispatch is echoing the traffic on 154.415. So when a unit is checking in route on 42016 the dispatcher will acknowledge it by saying "unit XX copy you in route" or "unit xx copy you on scene", or whatever the case may be. That way even the users that only have pagers will still have an idea of whats going on. Another side note. EMS is also paged on 154.415 but they have a separate TG for call traffic (42032). Fire is assigned a TAC for each call, usually on dispatch. It will be either Alpha 1-4, Bravo 1-4, or Charly 1-4. As of now I'm almost certain Sheriff's office is completely on VIPER tg 42000, and the municipal police departments can be heard on 19136. I can't speak for all the municipal departments but I have seen Ramseur carrying Motorola XTS series radios. Forgive me if that's wrong, I only got a glance. Randleman PD cars have 800MHz antennas on them so I assume they are migrating as well. I heard it will be a little longer before Asheboro PD transitions, although, I have heard some talk on the Asheboro PD admin Tg 56592 (before it was being used as fire Charly TAC 2) but it mostly sounded like they were testing the radios, nothing official. Also... not to drag this on, but it appears some of the talkgroups in the database are being used for other things. I can confirm that 56576 (ASHEBORO PD DISPATCH) is Fire Charly TAC 1, 56592 (ASHE PD ADMN) is Charly TAC 2, 19232 (nc zoo rangers) is Charly TAC 3, and 19264 (randolph training) is Charly TAC 4. I've also attached a screenshot of some info on the direct channels. Hope someone finds this useful and that I wasn't too confusing in my explanation.
