RadioReference.com Forums

I am in Bethany, CT and have been having some trouble monitoring the local Fire and EMS channels. Fire/EMS Dispatch is given as 33.54 at the RadioReference database. I put that into my scanner and have picked up dispatches for both Fire and EMS. The transmitting base identifies itself as Bethany Fire-Comm. The difficulty in my scanning is in regards to responding units. I can pick up the base very clearly (which makes sense with a low band transmission and relatively small town). However, I can rarely pick up responding units and when I do, the transmission is very broken up. It's as if Bethany is using a simplex system. However, that would limit car-to-car communications since the base is the only one with a tall tower to pick up the transmissions sent out by the responding units. In that case, if a responding unit wanted to hear what another responding unit was saying, the transmission would be broken up like it is for me. I haven't heard of a town/city Fire/EMS service not using a repeater in a long time. Can anyone help me with this? Thanks in advance. Andy