Halton Region Police, 11 + 12 Division

[EJB]

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Doing some "frequency fox hunting" up on the the Escarpment and can hear 1 District calls. In the database, 1 district covers Halton Hills and Milton and they are separated into 2 divisions, 11 and 12.

I heard a few log in's, both designated themselves as "delta" units.

Would anyone here have a list of the soft I'd designations for 1 District? In Burlington, aka 3 District, "charley" cars are for Central Burlington, the core. Whiskey units are for the west end, Aldershot and Echo cover the east end while Lima cars cover the lakeshore.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Eric

 

[mciupa]

Hi Eric, I'm out in Milton today and I'm led to believe that Delta units maybe the ones that patrol along Derry Rd.

 

[EJB]

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Mike; is there any rhyme or reason for HRPS for the Milton and Halton Hills detachments?

I found a cool spot to hunt. Just south of Dundas off Kerns Road there is a new park. It allows for perfect coverage for Guelph, B-fad, the GTA, Niagara and is high enough for Simcoe tower in Norfolk.

 

[ATCTech]

Delta units are typically the detectives. Derry units are usually identified as "Derry".

What's the question about "rhyme or reason"? If you're asking why there are 2 divisions, distance and now population growth are the main justifications. At one time there was also a 10 Division in Acton. (Zone units then were 2 digits, with 10 and 11 being Acton cars, circa mid to late 1970s and onward.)

 

[EJB]

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Delta units are typically the detectives. Derry units are usually identified as "Derry".

What's the question about "rhyme or reason"? If you're asking why there are 2 divisions, distance and now population growth are the main justifications. At one time there was also a 10 Division in Acton. (Zone units then were 2 digits, with 10 and 11 being Acton cars, circa mid to late 1970s and onward.)

When I referred to rhyme and reason I was asking if the soft I'd's used by the Milton and Halton Hills detachements. I.E. What are the Milton cars called, alpha? Bravo? Echo? And what the Halton Hills cars are.

It had nothing to do with population or anything along those lines. As you know, Halton uses a EDACS system and often enough it is kinda hard to tell what talkgroup is patched. I can understand the 20 and 30 divisions HRPS soft I'd's, matching the areas patrolled to the corresponding alpha-zullo phonetics.

 

[exkalibur]

They go by the names of the areas. IE, in Oakville there are "P" units, for Palmero.

 

[ATCTech]

For 1 District zones, Alpha is Acton, Golf is Georgetown, the Milton units are more divided up with November being North and Derry a south zone car. Sierra is a Supervisor, Mike units are in-town (non-rural) patrol areas.

Remember that the Town of Milton runs from nearly Highway 7 in the northwest to nearly Dundas in the southeast, all under the jurisdiction of 12 Division.

I'm not clear on what your reference is about patching. The T/Gs that are patched are all within the same District. Years ago north and Oakville typically ran a single dispatch desk, but that hasn't happened for many years now. Do you have an example of PD T/G patches outside of the usual 3 District stuff (which is done for radio coverage between Brant and Rattlesnake sites.)

 

[mciupa]

I've wondered about (DEC)148 (AFS) 01-024 which we have listed as spare in the database.

Is it assigned to a specific area?

 

[EJB]

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For 1 District zones, Alpha is Acton, Golf is Georgetown, the Milton units are more divided up with November being North and Derry a south zone car. Sierra is a Supervisor, Mike units are in-town (non-rural) patrol areas.

Remember that the Town of Milton runs from nearly Highway 7 in the northwest to nearly Dundas in the southeast, all under the jurisdiction of 12 Division.

I'm not clear on what your reference is about patching. The T/Gs that are patched are all within the same District. Years ago north and Oakville typically ran a single dispatch desk, but that hasn't happened for many years now. Do you have an example of PD T/G patches outside of the usual 3 District stuff (which is done for radio coverage between Brant and Rattlesnake sites.)

On my Home Patrol the Halton EDACS system sometimes shows the HRPS appearing on the listed patched talkgroup like 15-155, 15-157 and others.

My 250 shows both the actual talkgroup and the patch it will appear on.
I.E a 3 district HRPS call shows 03-021 and 15-155.

I appreciate the info given and will have a lookout for what Mcuipa mentioned in his later post.

 

[ATCTech]

On the t/g 094h/148 DEC all I can say is over the decades I've seen both 091 and 094 being used as 3 District dispatch, with a patch always in place as well. I know 094/148 is called a spare here, but I've never known what the logic was in using one then the other on the part of the EDACS system configuration unless it was purely the layout of the original radio room at PD HQ / 20 Division on White Oaks in Oakville. It will probably go down a 'mystery' as the P25 system takes over soon.

As for the current patches, it wasn't until the Oakville and Burlington Fire Departments merged their dispatch operations that anyone but HRPD used patches regularly, one for Burlington north/south and one when 1 and 2 districts were dispatched from a common desk. (As an aside, prior to going to EDACS they used to cross-couple 142.275 (north) and 142.515 (Oakville) manually - that's how long I've been listening to Halton!) When the Fire services partially combined what we all thought of as PD patches became simply patches as the Fire dispatch talk groups between the Town of Oakville and the City of Burlington became almost a shell game from one day to the next. It always seemed very fluid in how they configured the FD operation and I admit I rarely listen to them to know what the 'typical' FD t/g and patch layout is these days. Fortunately my 'home' department (Milton FD) stays out of those sort of configurations. Last time I saw them try to establish a patch for a common call with Burlington FD they never did get it to work before the call was cleared.

Your mention of a HRPS patch of 03-021 and 15-155 should in fact be a fire patch as 03-021 (191h/401 dec) is (or at least always was) Oakville FD channel 1.

I'm going to miss the old girl. It was a pretty sophisticated system for it's day and was the driving force in me learning a bit about trunking and building my first slicer and RS232 interface for the two Icom R7000 radios here, the same setup I still use now.

 

[EJB]

ATC: Just from how you mention your location (County) I undestand that you have been scanning a long time here.

Running both scanners now, 3 HRPS talkgroup also appears on a patched t/g 15-157 at the moment.

As we speak I am also monitoring the new Halton South tower and it seems to be running encryption :-(

 

[ATCTech]

I have to say I'm glad this thread popped up as I didn't know until today my dual-boot PC has quit booting to DOS. All fixed and ETRUNK now running again.

Ok, here's what it's reporting for patches in place as of 11PM tonight:

Patch ID 07FCh contains Burlington FD t/gs 0111h (Ch 1), 0114h (Ch. 4) and 0118h which I believe is the group off of the Rattlesnake tower, used by the volunteer station in Kilbride primarily.

Patch ID 07FDh contains t/gs 0119h and 011Ah, both Fire. I think that's their dispatch groups, but I'll have to wait for activity to verify.

Patch ID 07FFh contains HRPD talk groups 091h and 094h.

FWIW over the years, this PC has logged 201 talk groups, 2107 radio IDS and 16 patch IDs on the Halton system.

 

[EJB]

I have to say I'm glad this thread popped up as I didn't know until today my dual-boot PC has quit booting to DOS. All fixed and ETRUNK now running again.

Ok, here's what it's reporting for patches in place as of 11PM tonight:

Patch ID 07FCh contains Burlington FD t/gs 0111h (Ch 1), 0114h (Ch. 4) and 0118h which I believe is the group off of the Rattlesnake tower, used by the volunteer station in Kilbride primarily.

Patch ID 07FDh contains t/gs 0119h and 011Ah, both Fire. I think that's their dispatch groups, but I'll have to wait for activity to verify.

Patch ID 07FFh contains HRPD talk groups 091h and 094h.

FWIW over the years, this PC has logged 201 talk groups, 2107 radio IDS and 16 patch IDs on the Halton system.

I havent run Unitrunker off Halton for over 4 years. It is not a program that I understand, or like. I also dont use your trunking format but please explain:

I can see and understand more what you are saying, I see that what you call tg094h is 01-024 or 148. What talkgroup is 091h? AFS 01-021/145 DEC?

On my Home Patrol when I see calls for 3 district HRPS, they go out on 01-021 but on my 250 they appear as 01-024.

For the Burlington Fire talkgroups your Patch ID 07FDh, your talkgroup 0119h and 011Ah are what exactly. Is one of them 02-021 or 273 DEC? Whats the other one?

Now as for Burlington's Station 5, the volly's. When their is a fire call, I hear it being dispatched out by Appleby but I hear it also going out on a page to the volly's. Do they have different radios or just have different pagers? I also hear a call for them 'there' being sent out on BFS north. I guess all the station 5 calls are bounced off the Rattlesnake Point Tower. So are the volly's automatically patched thru to the fire talkgroup in place from what you call 0118h ?

FWIW- I dont monitor Oakville much. As you mentioned, the fire dispatch for Burl and Oak is on Appleby Road and both are broadcasted on the Burlington tower. OFS is never set up to patch and the 2 District Oakville police cars I only see them off the Oakville Tower and only on their dispatch channels, not patched.

Thank you

Eric

 

[ATCTech]

I just wrote a detailed reply but took so long doing so that I wasn't logged on by the time I tried to save it. Damn! Anyway, I use this site:

Talkgroup Converter

to convert hex/decimal/AFS. Everything here is in HEX because ETRUNK is a DOS program and since the Motorola systems use hex as well I kept them the same so I didn't have to think when switching between the two.

"For the Burlington Fire talkgroups your Patch ID 07FDh, your talkgroup 0119h and 011Ah are what exactly. Is one of them 02-021 or 273 DEC? Whats the other one?"

Actually patch 7FD is 15-155 and contains t/gs 119 and 11A hex, or 02-031 and 02-032. I have them as 'unknown' BFD channels, but I did see a BFD radio affiliate with BFD channel 1 (02-021) then switch to 02-032, but there was no voice call unfortunately. FWIW, my EDACS log has seen BFD radio activity on 10 channels over the years 02-021 to 02-032. This patch may be part of how OFD and BFD get cross coupled between the two sets of frequencies too, but if so I don't get why a radio would affiliate that way unless it switched towers on initial log-on and hence changed control channels between districts perhaps.

I've never been told what the purpose of all the 3 District patching is beyond the need to use Rattlesnake (which does not use the 3 District frequencies but relays certain calls using the 1 District freqs via 3 District patch IDs). My best guess is the Brant tower coverage is too localized, so they added Bronte some years later to cover west Oakville and east Burlington.

The amalgamation of OFD and BFD Dispatch may have also had a bearing on the Bronte site being added?

Based on signal strength here, only Brant St. transmits on the 3 District frequencies no matter what user is talking. I've never checked to see if the 2 District freqs are transmitting from White Oaks and Bronte, or just White Oaks. Bronte may just be a receiver site.

The Burlington volunteers use the regular EDACS radios for calls AFAIK, but the paging is still coupled from the EDACS t/g to 154.205 is it not? I haven't tried that frequency for years....

 

[EJB]

Thank you for explaining this to me ATC.

This system is on its way out, the testing on the new one is active.

As much as I do not like this system that Halton currently uses with the patches at least it is in the clear.

We are not going to be as lucky with the new one.

 

[ATCTech]

I agree, I think we'll be without a lot of things on the P25 side. There are so many seldom-used TGs on the EDACS side. For example, I'm sitting on 2 District right now and TG 03-036 is in use. It's Oakville FD guys doing something - training I suspect. I've heard mention of "about 8 feet from the building", and "clear of the doors" and "next stop Long Branch", very rail-like but on also lots of references to rescue type activity. "Let Ladder 232 know we've rescued everybody and put out the fire". A weird combination and obviously a simulation on some small scale.

When I see how few t/gs are listed here versus what I've logged but not positively identified over the years it's obvious a program like Trunker is invaluable to "see" versus hear what's going on. I'll have to force myself to get used to Unitrunker (Windows). This old DOS layout just seems so intuitive by comparison.

We'll collectively soldier on here and hopefully pool our observations into something useful going forward.

 

[EJB]

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Yup. You gotta adapt with the times.

I am here at Dundas and Kerns, hunting. I am monitoring the Halton tower. I have logged a few "Romeo" soft I'd's. Any idea what these are? They responded to a call in Acton.

Thanks,

Eric

 

[ATCTech]

You'll have to give me a district to know what you refer to as the Halton tower. I'm guessing you mean the north? I'm not sure what a Romeo unit is to be honest. I used to hear "RT##", which was/is the Regional Traffic unit cars, perhaps it's been abbreviated? A Romeo unit might also be a roaming unit within the division, in this case covering all of 11 Division as in Acton and Georgetown, or even "rural"? I hear "Romeo" associated with Milton calls as well and I can't think of any geographic area that starts with "R" for it to be named for. If we hear it in Oakville and Burlington then I'm thinking the roaming car might be the best match.

Anyone else know?

 

[Forts]

I never understood why scanner manufacturers embraced the AFS talkgroup format. 'Real' EDACS radios don't even use it... Talkgroups are all entered as decimal.

 

[ATCTech]

I'd guess it's because it's part of the original EDACS design as mentioned here:

An Introduction to GE EDACS

A 'real' EDACS radio may be programmed with decimal values, but the system layout is done with AFS in the logical design phase it would appear.