Testing and sounding good in Northbrook this morning.
Chicago Fire Department 460Mhz. P25
- Thread starter werinshades
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I’m also in Northbrook. Loud and clear on 460.625 MHz.
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Mostly S Englewood so far sounds great here.
Could hear it by the Lake Forest Oasis. What’s the main north frequency that’s also being tested?
ChicagoRadio736
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Testing on CFD MAIN and Englewood this morning.
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Yes and I am hearing they will be tomorrow also it will probably be all the channels being tested
Yes testing going on again today. Sounding good in Northbrook.
ChicagoRadio736
Member
One thing I learned during testing is that the firefighters keep their radios on fireground or Ops 7 during their shifts. Makes sense no need for the crew to monitor dispatch
Funny how all fire/ems users here keep ch 1 on "silent watch" on dispatch here. Then go to various other TG depending on needs. Same in most places. Chicago is different in so many ways apparently, lol.
ChicagoRadio736
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During the lakefront incident yesterday, I noticed the helo and ground units were using fireground 5 for the search. At the same time Fire units, a coupe blocks away was also using fireground 5 for a building alarm. Moments later there was a call on the CTA platform, and you guessed it they were using fireground 5. My question is why wouldn't they use the lakefront tac for the water rescue call and use the CTA tac for the CTA platform incident? The CTA and Building alarm incidents had to hear the helo on the channel from the lakefront incident.
What's Fireground 5?
The other channels are probably not in the FD 800 Zone code plug and many don't know how to get there or that they even have it available to them. Switching Zones is like asking some of them to perform a root canal, quite confusing. As long as everyone heard everything they needed to hear, not much of an issue.
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ChicagoRadio736
Member
ChicagoRadio736
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458.0250
Ok, that's referred to as Fireground and it's channel 4 across all the Zones on the radios. Channel 5 is Fire Command channel and I'm not sure if it's in the FD 800 Zone code plug on the radios.
All Chief officers are issued a second radio which is dedicated to either fireground (Battalion Chiefs or above), or Ops-7 (EMS Field Chiefs or above). The testing occurred on the secondary radios and all the chiefs were being advised to switch back to the primary operation channel. If radio ID's are programmed, you can see which radio is being used.
All firefighters are issued a radio and "should be" set on fireground only, no scan. That issue has been published in many NIOSH reports on firefighter fatalities lately...lack of training/knowledge of radios.
A while back, the chiefs were issued APX 800 replacement portables as a secondary radios because the old yellow canary radios weren't capable of receiving mixed-mode communications. Depending on which zone the radio is set, the transmission might be P25 conventional or analog. Both are listed in the database because mixed-mode listings aren't allowed. The best bet is to set the channel in search so both modes come through.
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Fire Command is not part of the FD800 but is on the radios so they can access it
I used to have the code plugs per zone many years ago, so didn't want to get it wrong..LOL! What's channel 5 now in the FD 800 zone?
