Chicago Fire Dept. 2012

[Tx4]

If you press the "Home" button it will change the channel to the new radio system. I bet that happened I've been hearing that from time to time. Some changes are in store very soon...

 

[MFD4305]

Here's Where

Asheville's in the mountains of Western North Carolina. BTW - I once enjoyed a visit to CFD Main maybe 30? years ago. Never had an invite to CPD dispatch or OEMC, though....

Where is Asheville at? I've never heard of it, good luck in your move. Your gonna miss all the fun around here. There are so cool things to come very soon!

 

[Tx4]

Sound nice good luck too you there. I guess you new stuff to monitor there. I've seen some tours on the operations floor but not in sometime. Lots of changes taking place in radio here very soon stay tuned

 

[werinshades]

CTA Fire Channel

460.0625 (CTCSS 203.5)...this apparently will be a repeatered channel as i'm hearing CPD Zone 1 mobiles activating the channel the last few days. I'm not sure if this is intentional or some kind of an issue with the new receiver site(s)....oemctx4 come in please...?

 

[Tx4]

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New channel city wide coverage including the red and blue subway tunnels hence Red/Blue. I put the above ground transmitter in service Thursday. I was wondering how long it would take it to show up on the forum lol. This is a narrow band frequency works pretty good so far I bet there was some testing going on we where using it Thursday

 

[Tx4]

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New channel city wide coverage including the red and blue subway tunnels hence Red/Blue. I put the above ground transmitter in service Thursday. I was wondering how long it would take it to show up on the forum lol. This is a narrow band frequency works pretty good so far I bet there was some testing going on we where using it Thursday

 

[werinshades]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_7; en-us) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/530.17)

New channel city wide coverage including the red and blue subway tunnels hence Red/Blue. I put the above ground transmitter in service Thursday. I was wondering how long it would take it to show up on the forum lol. This is a narrow band frequency works pretty good so far I bet there was some testing going on we where using it Thursday

Yes it works well, coverage is good down here by Midway and have been listening to it probably since you flipped the switch. Is it intentional that the Zone 1 mobiles are being retransmitted on here?

 

[Tx4]

No, it must be testing maybe??? Who on zone 1 was out there?? I took off Friday so I wasn't listening...

 

[werinshades]

No, it must be testing maybe??? Who on zone 1 was out there?? I took off Friday so I wasn't listening...

The mobiles apear to be intermittingly bleeding over. Heard it this morning too...had to lock it out for now...

 

[Tx4]

I sent you a pm shades not sure if you accept them

 

[werinshades]

I sent you a pm shades not sure if you accept them

Got it..I do accept them...responded.

 

[Tx4]

The Fire Museum of Greater Chicago will have a special display on Saturday, March 31st from 1000 to 1400 hours that will activate a 911 call to the Main FAO that will go toa 2-11 with joker stand, radio, speaker and fire gound communications heard and explain how dispatch was done witout computers. Old timers and candidates are invited to bring family and friends/neighbors to see how we did it "in the old days" The FMGC is at 5218 S Western AVenue and parking is free. Please remember this is YOUR museum and your history.

Is anyone going to the FMGC this weekend? Just wondering.. Thinking of checking it out.

 

[werinshades]

EMS going Digital

Received two memo's today. April 15, 2012...0800 hrs., anyone with an EMS capable radio will switch to their repsective digital Zone. Yes folks...the day has come...or hell has frozen over...lol!!

Couple of notes of interest: Any EMS-related Subway CTA incident, companies are to switch to Metro-3. Notify the OEMC "We're switching to Metro-3"

Any high-rise fire incident, comapnies may utilize OPS-11 at the discretion of the ranking EMS officer.

 

[elrod]

Digital Changeover

Shades, Thanks for all the info that you supply us all.
Now that the DAY is just about here I want to be sure I am ready.
I have each of these freqs programed individualy as a P25 single freq trunk system. 6 different systems.
I also have them on the same system quick key so they will all scan at the same time.
Is this correct or will I only be able to have 1 system going at a time?
This is what I have:
477.78750 Fire Main
477.98750 Joint Ops
478.21250 Fire Englwood
477.51250 Ems North
476.68750 CityWide Fire
478.46250 Ems Englwood
I hope this will help others as much as it will me.
Thanks again,
Chuck

 

[werinshades]

Shades, Thanks for all the info that you supply us all.
Now that the DAY is just about here I want to be sure I am ready.
I have each of these freqs programed individualy as a P25 single freq trunk system. 6 different systems.
I also have them on the same system quick key so they will all scan at the same time.
Is this correct or will I only be able to have 1 system going at a time?
This is what I have:
477.78750 Fire Main
477.98750 Joint Ops
478.21250 Fire Englwood
477.51250 Ems North
476.68750 CityWide Fire
478.46250 Ems Englwood
I hope this will help others as much as it will me.
Thanks again,
Chuck

Chuck...your welcome and you have all of them correct. I'm not sure setting them up under 1 quick key is the optimum way to monitor. For now...it will only be EMS. Fire is being trained as we speak on radios. The only "directive" we have thus far , is utilizing the 2 EMS channels, EMS Command (analog), and OPS-11 (analog ), as well as Metro-3 (Subway communications), which is the current (soon-to-be old) EMS-North.. You might want to put the analog UHF's in their own system, then divide them up by groups. I'm still tweaking on how i'll set it up, so it's trial and error as well as user preference.

I was at work when we switched over for the "30 day trial evaluation", in March 08 and at 0800 hrs. the OEMC made announcements on both analog and digital channels about switching to the proper channel etc. The good news (for us on the ambulances) this time around, is our apparatus radios are programmed so using portables strictly is not an issue. I suspect this time around, it'll be a smooth transition...once everyone get's on the right channels...lol!

 

[Tx4]

Metro3 is the old EMS Main channel. Opps I see now that you posted that. That channels does work in the subway tunnels.

 

[Tx4]

Are you all ready for EMS switch-over tomorrow 8am?

 

[werinshades]

Are you all ready for EMS switch-over tomorrow 8am?

Yes...it happened. Seems to gone off without a hitch. I've been using the radio alot today, to make sure it's working )

 

[Tx4]

Does the digital scanners show "ENC" or something when someone is running secure in P25? I thought someone would have notice that we use secure on the JOps channel from time to time?

Does the digital scanner make funny sounds when monitoring say the county system which is secure or is there silence? Since I don't have a digital scanner I was just wonder what you guys hear on them in secure/encrypted P25 traffic.

 

[rbrtklamp2]

I listened for a while today, everything sounded good. I'm kind of in a fringe reception area, I get quite a few transmissions where the BER is to high and all I get is digital noise. What kind of ops are you using ENC for and how often will it be used? One last question for Shades or OEM, I listen with a Motorola XTS5000 and APX7000 what digital modulation are you running C4FM or CQPSK, also is this new digital system narrow or wide banded?

Thanks for any answers and I cant wait for fire to switch over too.
Thanks again,
Bob