over the weekend, was in the area to visit family and take in the Bills game at the Ralph. brought the ole trusty scanner with me (it's the RS equivalent of the PSR600), a Kenwood TK2170 with receive only Catt Co fire programmed in, and a Unication G1 pager with Cattaraugus, Allegany, Wyoming, and McKean Co fire controls programmed. where I was at for most of the weekend, in proximity of the Interstate near the county line, heard more Allegany County transmissions that I did Cattaraugus. of what I did hear in Catt Co, most of it was off the Olean/Allegany area transmitter sites so my listening ear was quite deaf, in my opinion. a few observations:
* has low band fire been completely turned off? not a peep on 33.70.
* do all fire departments use 154.325 for dispatch/alerting? is it not repeated for some reason or is the county trying to mimic what 33.70 was?
* Olean City FD dispatch is P25 - and yet I heard tones, that sounded awful!
* speaking of tones, did 911 switch over to Motorola from Plectron flavors? didn't recognize any of the "new" tones for familiar fire departments.
* law MRD of course now is P25 conventional on the same frequency, and again maybe it's just because of my listening post, but only heard units in the SE corner of the county; I had expected to hear all cars countywide (simulcasted).
while there, I did hear two fires dispatched - the Ischua Five Mile Road call Sunday night and the Bolivar Main Street call Monday morning. listening to Little Valley was "hit or miss" (in fact was right next door to a fire hall that was called mutual aid to the Ischua scene!) yet Belmont was coming in loud and clear. I'd be horrified as a fire commissioner if my district had to pony up thousands of dollars to replace pagers and portables/mobiles for a system that, to me at least, seemed "hit or miss" with reception.
it's too bad that it still seems like the "politics as usual" ideology is still alive and well in Hazard, er, um, I mean, Cattaraugus County.
