AFRRCS - Alberta First Responders' Radio Communication System - INFO HERE

lzrman

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Grande Prairie
Anyone have any TGID's for MD of Greenview ? They are just having radios installed and programmed. I am told they will have 5 dispatch channels, followed by 4 working channels, followed by the EMS Mutual Aid 11-14, Forestry MA and then Simplex. (16 bank)

Also note County of Grande Prairie will be transitioning to a Single Dispatch channel for all their fire stations likely in the next month. Using the same TGID's just renaming the uses.
 

lzrman

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Grande Prairie
Thanks for the Agency Number.

I currently am in the process of acquiring it once they go live. The GP County and MD are going to be using that vs . NW Mutual Aid as they deal w/ forestry more outside the city limits.

GPFD have NW Mutual Aid as their 15 spot.
 

Jay911

Silent Key (April 15th, 2023)
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Thanks for the Agency Number.

I currently am in the process of acquiring it once they go live. The GP County and MD are going to be using that vs . NW Mutual Aid as they deal w/ forestry more outside the city limits.

GPFD have NW Mutual Aid as their 15 spot.

What is NW Mutual Aid?
 

lzrman

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Grande Prairie
Okay thanks guys! Ya, just popped up and was so random.

Looking forward to figuring out who Agency 66 is and what they're up to on GPFD TGID.
 

Jay911

Silent Key (April 15th, 2023)
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Debolt is in the MD of Greenview, and geographically near GP, which may explain being on GP. I had Greenview MD as agency 247, but I think both Harry and I have never seen any radios with that ID and I can't recall why I have 247 listed for them.

How did you come to decide that talkgroup is Debolt Dispatch? Audio?
 

lzrman

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Grande Prairie
How did you come to decide that talkgroup is Debolt Dispatch? Audio?

Had someone key the channel from the County and that's what popped up on Debolt Dispatch. We tried keying other ones but they didn't pop up, so we figured you'd have to be in that geographical zone to have it work, even though Debolt and Grovedale are neighbours to GP/County.

Would Fox Creek , Valleyview and Grande Cache work in the GP Region if keyed in the region?
 

lzrman

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Grande Prairie
If they had the GP Fire talk group they should. Could Greenview have some Mutual Aid channels in a second zone?

Greenview has EMS Mutual Aid 11-14 which is used in multiple zones. And I know their radio is programmed exactly the same as County with Alpha Bravo Charlie and a few other municipalities TGIDs.
 

Jay911

Silent Key (April 15th, 2023)
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Would Fox Creek , Valleyview and Grande Cache work in the GP Region if keyed in the region?

The answer is a definite maybe, and it depends on a couple of things.

1. Most trunk systems, including AFRRCS, will only broadcast communications on a tower if there is a person on that tower listening to them. This doesn't mean a scanner user, it means an actual subscriber radio, and it has to be actually tuned to that channel (just being in the scan list doesn't count). The reason for this is to make the system more efficient - if you only send a talkgroup to the tower sites where you know someone is who wants to hear it, you're not using up channel space needlessly on the other 390+ towers in the network. So if you had a talkgroup called Fox Creek, and the only users who are tuned to that talkgroup are affiliated to the Fox Creek tower and the Valleyview tower, only those two towers are going to hear the talkgroup - no other sites are going to hear it.

2. The talkgroup has to be authorized to use that tower. For similar reasons to point #1, the administrators only allow talkgroups to be used in certain areas. For example, I'm with Redwood Meadows Emergency Services. My response area is in a region that spans the City of Calgary, Rocky View County, Kananaskis, Tsuut'ina, and potentially I could be called to aid in Bighorn MD, Foothills County, and a few other regions close by. So my agency's talkgroups are configured to work in those areas. If I drive to Red Deer with my radio, it won't work on my RMES talkgroups there, because I have no business using my talkgroups in that area. If I was truly working in that area, for example if I was helping on a major disaster, I'd be switched over to a common event talkgroup that covers that area. The purpose behind restricting talkgroups to the area they service is to prevent them from taking up resources in other areas. Another example - let's say I am in Fox Creek for whatever reason, and had my RMES radio with me. I want to keep track of what's going on back home, so I switch my radio to RMES dispatch. However, every time someone uses that talkgroup, that takes away one channel (frequency) on the Fox Creek tower, leaving one less channel for the local users to use for doing their work in Fox Creek and area. Eventually someone might get "busied out" (no channels available) because I'm taking up space listening to things that are happening 500+ kilometers away.
 

Jay911

Silent Key (April 15th, 2023)
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I had no idea it took up a channel even in a monitoring state. Good information to know.

If you mean "monitoring" as in just parked on the channel (talkgroup) with no action going on, it doesn't take up anything at that point. But once there's audio traffic (or even data traffic, in some uses), a site channel is used up. On a lot of these sites, they only have 3 channels/frequencies available for voice/data, so using one up for unnecessary comms takes away 33% of the system's capacity.
 
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