Hays County fire pagers

[JohnTX]

How can I listen to the fire pagers in Hays County TX?

We had a major incident nearby a few days ago. SWAT, Reverse 911 calls to "shelter in place", LEO's and medics running code racing in from all over the county, etc. Listening to the Hays County Fire and EMS feed gave me some info, but it wasn't terribly helpful. Plenty of information on staging areas, command post, etc., but instead of hearing the initial dispatch, there was just a "Page received. In route."

I haven't listened much since the county moved from P25 Phase 1 to Phase 2, but IIRC, dispatches used to go out over that talkgroup. Seems like they made a change around the time they moved to the new communications center behind the government building.

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

How can I listen to the fire pagers in Hays County TX?

You'll need a P25 Phase-II (TDMA) capable scanner, see list here. Sheriff talkgroups are partially-encrypted (mode "Te")

Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) P25 Trunking System, Various, Texas

Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) P25 Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

Seeing 4 sites listed for Hayes, not sure if they all carry the same traffic (someone local would need to weigh in) but best bet is to program in the site closest to you

RFSS	Site	Name	County	Freqs
104 (68)	004 (4)	San Marcos	Hays	769.45625c	769.53125c	769.91875c	770.20625c	770.30625c	770.66875c	770.95625c
				771.50625c	772.28125c	773.29375c	773.58125c	774.04375c	774.20625c	774.33125c
				774.79375c
114 (72)	014 (E)	West Hays	Hays	773.30625c	773.59375c	774.05625c	774.34375c	774.80625c
126 (7E)	026 (1A)	Wimberley	Hays	769.21875c	769.46875c	769.93125c	770.21875c	770.45625c	770.68125c	770.96875c
150 (96)	050 (32)	Dripping Springs	Hays	769.19375c	769.65625c	769.94375c	770.40625c	770.69375c	772.03125c	772.85625c

 

[SeniorBasic819]

there was just a "Page received. In route."

Most likely they used some kind of application to send a text "page" to anyone involved. Most Computer Aided Dispatch systems have the capability to send out messages to cell phones pertaining to certain calls or call-outs. These types of messages wouldn't be picked up on a scanner.

 

[willdanl]

The county dispatches all fire/ems outside of the city of San Marcos on TG 5635 - Hays Fire Alarm. That’s where you will hear what the call is. If you’re listening to Hays Fire Dispatch you’ll only hear the response. San Marcos has a talk group 5640 (SM Alarm) for their city. So it depends on if you’re talking about somewhere in the county outside of San Marcos, or in San Marcos city limits. I cannot comment much about San Marcos, I am in the north part of the county and don’t hear them - it’s as if they only affiliate with the San Marcos site (104/004). The county makes good use of the Ops channels too - for any incident with multiple units on scene for any amount of time they’ll ask for an Ops channel (or 2). There have been occasions such as the one you described where I’ve heard a Tac Med unit ask for an Ops channel for a SWAT operation, and there was no “alarm” notification. San Marcos PD is full time encrypted. Hays County SO says part-time, but I listen a ton and have never heard any, even on their SWAT channels - so, for now I can say the “e” is very minimal.

Most (if not all) TGs are now Phase II. As far as I know, only the Dripping Springs site is simulcast, so any Phase II capable scanner should work on the other sites - I haven’t tried my BCD436 on the Dripping site since it went simulcast, so I can’t tell you how bad the distortion is or not. Another option that works here in North Hays, is that they still dispatch Fire/EMS on the analog vhf frequency of 154.995 (simulcast, or multicast with the P25 TG - whatever the term is) - I don’t know if that takes place in other parts of the county or not, and I don’t know how long that will go on.

Hope this helps.

 

[Boingel331]

Hays County SO says part-time, but I listen a ton and have never heard any, even on their SWAT channels - so, for now I can say the “e” is very minimal.

Monitoring from San Marcos 99% of the time using an SDS100 as well as SDRTrunk, I've never seen any of the known Hays SO channels encrypted. I'm really not sure what prompted the database change.

Here's a nice tip:
The Hays Alarm channel always broadcasts pages for all cities in Hays County. Even though San Marcos and Kyle have their own Alarm TGs, Hays Alarm always broadcasts everything.
From what I've heard, Fire & EMS unit numbers out of San Marcos are below 20, e.g. Medic 11. Units out of Kyle start with a 2, e.g. Engine 21. Units out of Buda start with a 3. Units near Wimberley start with a 4. Units around Dripping Spring (North Hays Fire) start with a 7. Using that info, you can tell what city Hays Alarm is paging for without knowing addresses (unless mutual aid).

TGs around San Marcos feel somewhat simulcasted as my BCD325P2 recently started suffering with some transmissions, especially county comms but the control channel seems fine.

When not with a scanner, I've found that OpenMHz has a much more complete list of streamed TGs than Broadcastify here in Hays County. You can listen to all County comms through the San Marcos site feed. Here's a link: OpenMHz