Baptist AirCare

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ff_emt

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Does anyone know the VHF tx and rx frequency with PL's that WFU Baptist Air Care uses. I know at one point in time Baptist was operating on UHF, but when landing a helicopter from Baptist at my fire department, we communicate with them on a VHF frequency, so I was curious if they switched to VHF and communicated on them.

Thanks,

Justin
 

kendrik578

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RX: 453.025 TX: 458.025 PL 88.5

When your department talks to them you are probably doing it on the state rescue channel. I know some departments patch that frequency for Helo ops.
 

ff_emt

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RX: 453.025 TX: 458.025 PL 88.5

When your department talks to them you are probably doing it on the state rescue channel. I know some departments patch that frequency for Helo ops.

My fd serves in two counties and whenever communicating with baptist helo, we communicate through multiple different vhf channels. In one county baptist can contact us on vhf fire ops 2, 3, or 4. It's like that in other county as well. We don't use state rescue... I did some research and reading last night and found this.


link to forum

http://forums.radioreference.com/no...ussion-forum/201886-wfu-baptist-air-care.html

Jeff,

That License is now active. Reviewing it also shows a VHF frequency (152.4425) that was previously licensed for a site in Statesville belonging to the same company. Today I heard Air Care on this frequency. Did not get a PL, but it was definitely Air Care on VHF. Also on the UHF frequencies, in addition to the narrowband emission designator, also listed is the emission designator of 7K60FXE. Looks like they could be moving to digital if they use this.

Can you confirm Baptist aircare is using 152.4425 and if so do you know of a tx and rx frequency and pl?
 

SCPD

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Just because you hear a Medevac helicopter communicating with a local agency on a specific band doesn't indicate that they use that band for their routine comms. Most helicopters have multiple frequency-agile radios, such as those made by Wulfsberg, and can talk on about any frequency when the need arises.
 
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fcfd988

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I cannot confirm that Air Care is on that VHF frequency. I did hear them on that frequency one time. I have never heard them on there since then. I wonder if someone was fooling around with a crossband repeater or something.........

Wes
 

jeffmulter

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http://forums.radioreference.com/no...ussion-forum/201886-wfu-baptist-air-care.html

Just for clarity, the above URL is a previous thread regarding Air Care frequencies. FF_EMT also included this link in his comment previously.

In that previous thread, mention was made of Air Care crews using 462.0125 MHz. as a ground frequency. The frequency is licensed to Mobile Communications in Winston-Salem, for a repeater on Greene Mountain in Alleghany County.

Mobile Communications is also licensed for a repeater on 152.4425 MHz. at the same Greene Mountain site. A comment in the same thread mentioned hearing Air Care on the VHF frequency.

FWIW - I have an entry in my logs of a logging on 152.4425 MHz / DPL712 R in the Statesville area in 2005, but I did not hear enough to include a comment in my logging on the type of communications heard.
 
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ff_emt

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So are we saying that Baptist aircare operates on a UHF frequency but there is also a repeater site at Greene Mountain that is 152.4425 MHz / DPL712 . I've heard hear say of baptist using UHF for communications on ground units but I've also heard of them talking on VHF, or a patch. Like an 800mhz to vhf patch. The scanner I have is VHF only, and Medcenter air is on VHF frequency, but when I have saw them, they are using 800mhz radios; So I'm wondering if there is a patch.
 

lmonty50

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I am sure the Air Care radios have capabilities to program the frequency of the local agency they are communicating with on the ground.I t could be VHF, UHF or trunked. The communications with Baptist is usually UHF or WS/FC system. (Winston Salem)
 

fcfd988

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I am sure the Air Care radios have capabilities to program the frequency of the local agency they are communicating with on the ground.I t could be VHF, UHF or trunked. The communications with Baptist is usually UHF or WS/FC system. (Winston Salem)

Air Care currently does not have any capability on the W-S/FC 800 system. They do not have any radios on the system and they do not have any talkgroups on the system. When they fly inside Forsyth County they call us on State Rescue 155.280 and we patch them to the LZ commander on the FC HELO talkgroup on the W-S/FC system.

Wes
 

KM4WLV

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Air Care currently does not have any capability on the W-S/FC 800 system. They do not have any radios on the system and they do not have any talkgroups on the system. When they fly inside Forsyth County they call us on State Rescue 155.280 and we patch them to the LZ commander on the FC HELO talkgroup on the W-S/FC system.

Wes

Wes,

Any idea if they will move onto the WSFC system? It's for obvious reasons that they keep UHF & VHF. I figured they (WFUBMC) would have at least given Air Care the capability to be on the system. Med Center Air (Carolina's Healthcare System / CMC) have trunking capability in the helo's for all the systems down around here. Do they have roaming capability for the W/S system as well?
 

fcfd988

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Daniel,

I have not heard of any plans for them to migrate to the W-S/FC System. First of all, they simply do not have enough responses in W-S/FC to support it as their main way of communication. Especially sine the choppers are no longer based in W-S (AirCare 1 is at Lexington Airport and AirCare 2 is at Elkin Airport). WFUBMC really don't get a vote in the matter. The radios that they have/use in the ED are actually maintained under the FCEMS cache of radios. If they wanted to purchase radios and program them with county & city fire/EMS/rescue talkgroups then that would certainly be allowed and wouldn't cost anything but the price of the radios, programming and installation. And I'm sure the powers that be over the system would let them have their own talkgroups for a nominal fee.

It is my understanding that any public safety agency that is privately owned/operated (private ambulance services, air ambulance transport services, hospital based transport services, campus law enforcement agencies, etc) can get on board the system as long as they are a paying customer. I know of at least one private university that is in W-S that uses the system for their primary comms, It would be interesting to know the terms for such an agreement.

We were recently informed that Novant's Critical Care Transport units now have radios programmed on our system, but as far as I know they do not have their own talkgroups, they simply have access to FCEMS talkgroups. The only reason they have this is because they purchased radios for the VIPER Medical Network and decided to add the county stuff in them too.

As far as roaming goes, there is none that I'm aware of. Once you get out of range of the system, you simply don't talk. This is standard across the board for all users of the system.
 
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KM4WLV

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Daniel,

I have not heard of any plans for them to migrate to the W-S/FC System. First of all, they simply do not have enough responses in W-S/FC to support it as their main way of communication. Especially sine the choppers are no longer based in W-S (AirCare 1 is at Lexington Airport and AirCare 2 is at Elkin Airport). WFUBMC really don't get a vote in the matter. The radios that they have/use in the ED are actually maintained under the FCEMS cache of radios. If they wanted to purchase radios and program them with county & city fire/EMS/rescue talkgroups then that would certainly be allowed and wouldn't cost anything but the price of the radios, programming and installation. And I'm sure the powers that be over the system would let them have their own talkgroups for a nominal fee.

It is my understanding that any public safety agency that is privately owned/operated (private ambulance services, air ambulance transport services, hospital based transport services, campus law enforcement agencies, etc) can get on board the system as long as they are a paying customer. I know of at least one private university that is in W-S that uses the system for their primary comms, It would be interesting to know the terms for such an agreement.

We were recently informed that Novant's Critical Care Transport units now have radios programmed on our system, but as far as I know they do not have their own talkgroups, they simply have access to FCEMS talkgroups. The only reason they have this is because they purchased radios for the VIPER Medical Network and decided to add the county stuff in them too.

As far as roaming goes, there is none that I'm aware of. Once you get out of range of the system, you simply don't talk. This is standard across the board for all users of the system.

I gotcha. I knew about the Novant trucks getting VIPER radios. I don't know if the Novant trucks have roaming stuff for Rowan in them or not. I've heard them talking to Rowan Regional on RRMC ED on the Rowan system but I'm not sure if they just have roaming capability for our system or if they have the Rowan Regional VIPER TG patched into the Rowan system. I'll investigate that.

Rowan has been using CMC for several years now as the primary helo transport service for us. All Med Center Air helo's have 800's in them. They contact the LZ commanders in Rowan on SALS ROAM DISP talkgroup on our system. Not sure if they can communicate with Cabarrus, but I feel sure they could. Maybe yardbird could chime in on this one.

As far as the WS/FC system goes maybe they will get some roaming stuff set up later on as more counties move to 800 or VIPER. Let's just hope those that do actually make an educated decision before just making a jump :)
 

KG4KHQ

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Air Care currently does not have any capability on the W-S/FC 800 system. They do not have any radios on the system and they do not have any talkgroups on the system. When they fly inside Forsyth County they call us on State Rescue 155.280 and we patch them to the LZ commander on the FC HELO talkgroup on the W-S/FC system.

Wes

Wes,
Is Forsyth County still using a pl of 82.5 on 155.280? Alexander County uses the same tone and I figured it would play havoc with an incident in Forsyth. I have it programmed in and get a good signal from them all over the county but I have not heard any Forsyth traffic on 280 since the switch to 800 mhz.
 

fcfd988

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We do still maintain a base station on 155.280 and 155.340 with the 82.5 PL. These two frequencies are maintained for 2 reasons. One is for out of county units without VIPER capability or without capability on our system to be able to communicate with the hospitals. The other is to make the NC OEMS folks happy.

We NEVER use 280. The only designated time we use it is when we have an incident where we fly AirCare and then we patch our FC HELO talkgroup with 280 and AirCare calls us on 280. Wilkes, Alexander and Alamance all wear us out on 280. Honestly this way of doing things stinks but we don't have any other VHF options. We certainly are not going to patch in 340 and then some out of county unit start calling wanting to talk to a hospital ED right in the middle of AirCare trying to land. The only other VHF frequency we sill maintain is our 154.205 that is used for Fire/Rescue dispatching and it stays patched with FCFD F1 talkgroup. The 154.205 base has RX disabled so it is only used for TX.
 

CCHLLM

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155.280 is worse than CB radio. It wasn't long after its implementation as a statewide rescue interops/mutual aid channel that it actually became virtually unusable as an interops channel due to a complete lack of common sense in dispatch protocols. Soon after every Tom, Dick and Harry County got a transmitter on the frequency with a dial encoder/decoder, they all threw logic out the window and decided to use it as a primary rescue dispatch channel and added paging to the mix. Alamance County has always been one of the most flagrant violators of the FCC requirement to monitor a shared channel before transmitting, and if you want to hear a telecommunicator cuss, ask him/her what he/she thinks of the RF anarchy on 155.280. With the altitude advantage they have, air ambulance operators would rather build a fire in the aircraft floor and use smoke signals than use 280.

Wes,

I have been asked this question several times and I'm sure it has been asked here before, and I might even be the one who asked, but I'm encumbered by CRS and don't remember if there was an answer. How come 154.205 doesn't have PL on it so that users don't have to regularly hear the numerous others on the same frequency? If it's an audio mixing problem with the pagers, can't the PL be stripped for the duration of the paging tones?

I remember that F1 had 107.2 on the base receive side for decades, but has never had PL on the base transmit side, and I've always wondered why. Politics maybe? Reminds me of ham radio - PL is evil and signifies a "closed" repeater and only encourages the use of more of the sinful tenets of progress, ha ha! :D.

Oh, and what's the plan for 2013? Narrowbanding? New pagers or digital pagers altogether? Inquiring minds want to know.
 
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ems902

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Try 453.025 with a PL of 88.5 for AirCare operations. As far as what frequencies they use when they are on a mission, this is the one that dispatch and flight ops are usually on. Their old repeater was on Sauratown Mtn. in Stokes Co., but I think they have moved it to Greene Mtn. as previously mentioned. Depending on where you are located, this may cause a problem trying to monitor operations. This may help local monitoring. When they fly to scene runs they use the available frequencies for the area, usually VHF fire or EMS frequencies for the County/ Department they will operate with. State Fire 154.280 seems to be used frequently, as does State Rescue 155.280. The problem is that many counties still use State Rescue for EMS dispatch operations and a helicopter flying @ 2500 ft is a powerful antenna that can cause issues if the agencies haven't considered using the PL for their county. Locally, we have patched 155.280 PL 127.3 to our 800 system on Helo Ops for years to give LZ commanders the ability to communicate with Helos w/o having to be in a vehicle that has a VHF radio as well as 800. Also be alert for operations on VIPER TGs:

12848 LZ EAST
12880 LZ CENTRAL
12912 LZ WEST
51104 MAMA DISP
51120 MAMA AIR OPS
58688 MISSION
59360 MISSION
21360 WKMED AirMobile
28960 WAKEMED AIR OPS
34595 WAKEMED ED (Patch)
58944 WAKEMED ED
28896 UNC AIR DISP
28912 UNC AC AIROPS
57984 UNC HOSP ED
51200 MEDCTR AIR DISP
51216 MEDCTR AIR OPS
57904 CMC ED
21536 ECDISP
21568 ECAIR
58048 PITT MEM
55552 LFEFLIGHTOPS
55568 LFLIGHT AIR
57584 DUKE MED
 

fcfd988

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CCHLLM,

First let me apologize for not seeing your questions when you posted them in September of 2011. Wow, where have I been?

Anyway, an update to the Wake Forest Baptist Air Care situation is they are now using VIPER as their primary means of communication and their main dispatch talkgroup is 4528.

They are still being paged via 2-tone paging. You can hear the tones coming across the VIPER talkgroup. What I don't know is if they are carrying Minitor pagers on the old UHF frequency for the purpose of paging or not.

Although the answers to CCHLLM's questions are off topic here, I'll go ahead and provide the answers.....

Yes the reason for no PL on 154.205 is because many years ago it was decided by someone that PL mixed with the paging tones would cause problems and the pagers might not activate. I think this is a little far fetched myself. There are plenty of systems out there that transmit PL with paging tones and they never have trouble getting pagers to activate.

As far as 2013 and narrowbanding, the plan is to update the current license for narrowband (already done), apply for a power increase to help offset the slight loss of coverage due to switching to narrowband (signal to noise ratio issues) and there will also be a significant change to the current paging tone plan to discontinue using any tones below 400 Hz and above 1100 Hz. We will continue to utilize digital pagers in addition to text messages to alert responders as secondary methods to the VHF paging.

Wes
 

CCHLLM

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Thanks, Wes. I remember the "subtone/QC tone mixing" argument from "the old days," but when the 800 system went into service and the VHF xmtr was moved to the current location, I sort of ASSumed newer equipment, i.e. newer pagers, had long ago thrown that argument to the wind.

I understand the feeling of need to increase power to offset the usual anticipated range loss in narrow band, but that may be a moot move because I can consistently copy F1 in Chesterfield, SC and Rutherford County, NC (both of which are licensed for 154.205), and in Mecklenburg County, VA, LOL! Love that DX!
 
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