Atlantic City Fire old VHF!

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wt2fd

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Last night and while I was in Wildwood this past weekend on several occasions on 154.025 I heard fire units dispatched. I know Atlantic City Fire is on the TRS system which is very weak from what I've heard. I searched the database which now has 154.025 assigned to Atlantic City Public Works. The dispatch announcement sounded just like Atalntic City prior to them switching over to the TRS system, " Wide awake, wide awake, Engine 7 respond etc." Could anyone shed some light on this?
 

Joseph11

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From listening, it sounds like ACFD is still dispatched on VHF but operates on the TRS. Atlantic City DPW uses that frequency, as well.
 

DJ88

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If my memory serves me correctly (maybe it doesn't), I thought I either read somewhere or someone told me that fire pagers can't be activated via a trunk system talk group. Yet, I see on the database that the Atlantic City System has a TG for fire dispatch. Could someone explain? Thank you.
 

scanjunkie

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DJ88 said:
If my memory serves me correctly (maybe it doesn't), I thought I either read somewhere or someone told me that fire pagers can't be activated via a trunk system talk group. Yet, I see on the database that the Atlantic City System has a TG for fire dispatch. Could someone explain? Thank you.
The TRS TG for Dispatch is for voice only. You are correct in that pager activation can not be done via the TRS.
 

wt2fd

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The database has Atlantic City Public Works listed as using a pl of 114.8. After listening for a couple of days now, the public works guys don't shut up, non stop chatter. How does ACFD dispatch with all the dpw traffic, or are they assigned another pl tone that isn't listed?
 

Joseph11

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It's all 114.8 Hz. The pagers only alert to the pager tones. They never hear DPW.
 

ansky

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Why is ACFD using pager tones? Do they have volunteer firefighters?
 

902

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I don't know about AC's FD having volunteers or recalling paid firefighters, nor am I sure what they're doing. I won't guess.

There are some misconceptions about trunking and alerting.

You CAN alert radios in most trunking formats. You can even alert in P25 conventional and it is FAST! Not 4 to 6 seconds (or like 30 seconds to send a list of stations), it's less than 1 second and can't even be heard over the air! Because many volunteer departments can't afford to buy their individual volunteers trunked radios, they generally retain their prior alerting methods. There is no such thing as an 800 MHz or trunked pager and those would be considered niche market products with a net loss on the engineering investment (that's why there's been little innovation in alerting since the Plectron days, and more advanced formats like Zetron's Model 6/26 FFSK haven't taken off). You CAN partition a trunked system to always put a certain ID or talkgroup on a certain frequency. So, non-7/800 MHz trunked systems may actually be able to alert page to Minitor pagers (or other receivers), although the page may be delayed or held in queue until the channel comes available if the system is busy.

I've seen two systems, one in South Carolina near Myrtle Beach, the other in Missouri, which are sending two-tone signaling to trunked control stations through analog trunked radio. After-market two-tone boards, like CommSpec, are installed on control stations in the fire station and will unmute the receiver and beep. I'm not sure how (or if) that would work on P25.

There is also a trend now to have TWO INDEPENDENT alerting methods, which conforms to the NFPA1221 standard. In that way, alerting may be done on trunked mode, and on VHF independently toward a reduced ISO rating (the lower the rating, the lower the cost of insurance in the community).
 
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