As I be will relocating to Richmond Hill hopefully by the end of the year, I read the Georgia threads. I'm curious as to how the volunteers are alerted in Bryan & Liberty Counties, it sounds as if members are given trunked radios and monitor the respective alerting TGs. Wouldn't it be cheaper to maintain a conventional paging channel? That's what we did up here in NJ where counties installed trunked systems.
Jeff,
While I cannot comment on how Bryan County pages since I have no knowledge of their paging, I can tell you that Liberty County simulcasts over multiple talkgroups and has a crosspatch to the VHF EMS channel. So when a tone goes out for 2 departments, dispatch tones across the departments talkgroups, the fire dispatch talkgroup and sometimes the VHF EMS channel. I hope this is explained good enough for you. If not, then I will try again to explain it more clearly.
Also, you are correct that Liberty firefighters are issued trunking radios and listen to their respective stations for tones. The user can listen to their station talkgroup for pages, or they can listen to the dispatch talkgroup and hear all pages for every station. When I get my radio issued, I will probably listen to dispatch while awake and have it on my station when I sleep so if I hear the page, I know it is for my station and to get my rear out of bed and go.
Ronald
