K4AAQ
Member
Hello, downeast!
I'll be working with BikeMS New Bern this coming weekend (Sept 11/12, 2021). They'll have up to 2000 bicycles riding 30/50/75 and 100 mile routes on Saturday and Sunday. Routes both days start and end in New Bern (Union Point Park by the bridge). On Saturday, they'll cross the bridge and head into Pamlico County. On Sunday they'll mostly be in the rural parts of Craven County.
My question: for ambulance/hospital comms specifically, but anything else you know about, how much is on VIPER, and how much is still on VHF? I see 155.34 listed for hospital comms in most areas, with a few different PL tones.
I know the New Bern Public Safety system (non-VIPER) is active, and I see some talk groups have been added since my last visit in 2019. Do ambulances use that system when they're in town?
It's an unfortunate fact that when that many bikes are riding one course, there are likely to be between one and three ambulance runs a day. Anything from a bad case of road rash to a broken bone is common. We've had weekends with zero, and weekends with more. I've been doing radio for BikeMS (formerly MS150) for 30 years, and I've only seen 'worse' a couple of times.
I like to keep an ear on public safety comms during the event. I've got a Uniden 536 HP mobile scanner, and a SDS200 handheld. I can only keep about ¼ ear on the scanners, though. My job is usually to 'Shadow' a course official, driving the route, keeping an eye on things, and rushing (carefully) to the site of any accidents in our part of the course. As for monitoring, the ham radio activity comes first, and I'm working with people much of the time, so the scanner stuff is whatever I can glean when things quiet down around me. And it's not always easy to determine if a radio call is about a rider on the Bike tour, even if they report it's a bike accident.
But I've caught enough to make it worthwhile having the scanners and keeping the programming up to date. Most of the useful traffic is from the New Bern Police as they block traffic and lead the bikes over the bridge. Toward the end of the day, they start asking about how many bikes are left, so I know to direct a ham to stop and fill one of them in along the road. But while all 2000 bikes take off (in stages) over the course of less than an hour, the other end of the day is far more spread out - groups of 2 to maybe 10 bikes, widely spaced. The news they're looking for... the last bike... comes a lot later then they were hoping.
I've also been on the scene of an accident in a very rural area, and I've monitored the progress of the ambulance (what little they report). I've heard ambulances get lost (they've been improving rural addresses, but they're not perfect), and we are not that good at figuring out where we are when it's between a cornfield and a grove of trees.
I do have all the VIPER talk groups loaded in. But it's nice to know what to expect. Traffic is fairly light on all the radio channels 'out there' (compared to Raleigh, and now Charlotte). It can take a while to dope things out by listing with ¼ ear. Can you help me out?
I'll be working with BikeMS New Bern this coming weekend (Sept 11/12, 2021). They'll have up to 2000 bicycles riding 30/50/75 and 100 mile routes on Saturday and Sunday. Routes both days start and end in New Bern (Union Point Park by the bridge). On Saturday, they'll cross the bridge and head into Pamlico County. On Sunday they'll mostly be in the rural parts of Craven County.
My question: for ambulance/hospital comms specifically, but anything else you know about, how much is on VIPER, and how much is still on VHF? I see 155.34 listed for hospital comms in most areas, with a few different PL tones.
I know the New Bern Public Safety system (non-VIPER) is active, and I see some talk groups have been added since my last visit in 2019. Do ambulances use that system when they're in town?
It's an unfortunate fact that when that many bikes are riding one course, there are likely to be between one and three ambulance runs a day. Anything from a bad case of road rash to a broken bone is common. We've had weekends with zero, and weekends with more. I've been doing radio for BikeMS (formerly MS150) for 30 years, and I've only seen 'worse' a couple of times.
I like to keep an ear on public safety comms during the event. I've got a Uniden 536 HP mobile scanner, and a SDS200 handheld. I can only keep about ¼ ear on the scanners, though. My job is usually to 'Shadow' a course official, driving the route, keeping an eye on things, and rushing (carefully) to the site of any accidents in our part of the course. As for monitoring, the ham radio activity comes first, and I'm working with people much of the time, so the scanner stuff is whatever I can glean when things quiet down around me. And it's not always easy to determine if a radio call is about a rider on the Bike tour, even if they report it's a bike accident.
But I've caught enough to make it worthwhile having the scanners and keeping the programming up to date. Most of the useful traffic is from the New Bern Police as they block traffic and lead the bikes over the bridge. Toward the end of the day, they start asking about how many bikes are left, so I know to direct a ham to stop and fill one of them in along the road. But while all 2000 bikes take off (in stages) over the course of less than an hour, the other end of the day is far more spread out - groups of 2 to maybe 10 bikes, widely spaced. The news they're looking for... the last bike... comes a lot later then they were hoping.
I've also been on the scene of an accident in a very rural area, and I've monitored the progress of the ambulance (what little they report). I've heard ambulances get lost (they've been improving rural addresses, but they're not perfect), and we are not that good at figuring out where we are when it's between a cornfield and a grove of trees.
I do have all the VIPER talk groups loaded in. But it's nice to know what to expect. Traffic is fairly light on all the radio channels 'out there' (compared to Raleigh, and now Charlotte). It can take a while to dope things out by listing with ¼ ear. Can you help me out?
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