AA County questions

[CapitalPunishment]

I listen to eastern, and alot of the time the dispacher will tell a unit to switch over to "C Charles" or "B Baker". My question is, what are all the names of the channels?

For instance, last night i heard something strange on eastern. I had come back to my room just in time to catch the tail end of this:

Radio: "Unit 514, you are still in Emergency status. Whats your status?"
Radio: "Unit 514, whats your 20?"
514: [I dont remember what he said, but he was very out of breath]
Radio: "Unit 514, you are still on [insert channel name here], switch over to [insert channel name here, i think it was C Charles.].
3 David 2 (I think): "Radio, weve got him in custody."

I wanted to follow 514 to see what was going on and where, but i dont know what channel he went to!

 

[TinEar]

CapPun (John Wayne), those channel designators come from the band plan. If you look in the database you'll see that AA County Police use Zone 11 for their basic district channels. Northern is 11A, Eastern 11B, Western 11C and Southern 11D. If they change to another district, for instance Western, they'll often just say switch to C or the letter of the other district's channel if other than Western. CID is 11E (TG1744) and Teletype is 11F (TG1776). You'll very often hear them say they're switching to F or Frank when they go to Teletype.

Last night for an operation, there were cars going all over the place - first to Western District (11C, TG1680) and then to the Special Ops channel of 11L (TG1968).

Their talkaround channel is in the Zone 12 plan. That's why you'll sometimes hear someone say to "go to 12" rather than "change over/switch over/go to TAC." The talkaround/TAC channels are laid out the same way - 12A, 12B, etc. Being aware of how the channels are assigned in the band plan really helps when they start hopping channels

 

[Admin0140434]

just to add to tinear's post... if you listen to sheriff's office or APD, they will say "switch to (frank, edward, charlie, etc.)

this basically meants switch to thier channel designated as (frank, edward, charlie, etc.) for tac.

i have some new info to submit for A A Co. but i am waiting to confirm a few channels, so it may be a while

one of the channels i need to submit is the AACC talkaround channel, which i THINK AACoPD uses also (im waiting to confirm it)

 

[TinEar]

Are you going to 13I with that one Admin0140434? I've been trying to recover that one and 13K/L since they switched to this system. I'm fairly sure 13L is Detention Center/Prisoner Transport. The rest of Zone 12 would be nice to have also.

 

[Llwellyn]

Just to add a little bit of background about the radios that are in common use, the channels are laid out that way because of how Motorola has the radios designed, and the way the county has chosen to configure them.

The old radios were 48 channel (Balto City still uses these as mainline radios!). They have a rotary dial that's labelled from A-P and a switch labelled from A-C. This gives them three "zones" to choose from, and the only channel reference they have is by letter. These radios don't have displays, and the radios which have replaced them have 160 (or is it 256?)channels but the patrol radios still do not have displays or keypads.

So, when you used to hear them say "go to B" it would switch them from 11A to 12A if their channel selector was on A and they flipped the switch to position B. This put them from dispatch to secondary.

The new radios have the same type of selector, although it's 10 (or 16?) position just like the channel selector.

I've gotten to see a couple of these up close and personal, they are nice units and they are entirely configurable by Comms to do as little or as much as they want the personnel to be able to do. The radios with keypads and displays are usually reserved for supervisors and such, and can support field programming and stuff like that. They also have a nice radio holster that is quite durable, and support a ton of different speaker mics and stuff like that. Nice weight on them too, only a couple ounces heavier than my Pro-92 when it's loaded with AA's.

Fire Alarm and PD dispatch also have the capability to dynamically regroup a radio or set of radios by ID as well, allowing them to reassign a bunch of radios to a talkgroup they don't normally have during special circumstances.

At the college, all the supervisors are issued radios that they keep 24/7 and only the patrol units swap radios when they go on and off shift out of the radio pool. I assume county PD is the same way, especially since most police never really go "off duty".

 

[mlevin]

Just to clarify.

It's 16 channel rotary knob, and 255 channels total.

 

[n3bxv]

I assume county PD is the same way, especially since most police never really go "off duty".

And since the AACO officer's Badge Number is a part of his radio's ID it wouldn't make sense to swap between officers..........

 

[Admin0140434]

Are you going to 13I with that one Admin0140434? I've been trying to recover that one and 13K/L since they switched to this system. I'm fairly sure 13L is Detention Center/Prisoner Transport. The rest of Zone 12 would be nice to have also.

am i going to 13I with my post??? the answer... yes and no

the talkaround channel i heard was a conventional frequency (and sitting my 246 next to my 96) there is no talkgroup patched with it.

like i said, i have to do a bit more digging to see if AACoPD uses this.

13K/L... beats the hell out of me with these... keep in mind that there are numerous talkgroups that are "blank" (the county has them, but dont know what to use them for)

also, just to note... there is a zone 22 for AACo's system. this is the disaster zone. give me a week.

 

[CapitalPunishment]

Thanks for your help folks. Actually, after i posted this thread i looked at the database and realised the coincidince. :lol: