Hi all. I want to make you all aware of a possible change coming to the town of Irmo. The town of Irmo's police and fire departments are looking to switch from the Lexington county consolidated dispatch center to the Columbia-Richland dispatch center. They are looking at this because of 2 reasons. First reason is the layout. Most of Irmo is in Richland county and second the Lexington county dispatch center is way understaffed which is resulting in multiple talkgroups being patched 24/7 compiling agencies on top of each other. I'm being told if they make the switch that they will either have their own talkgroup or will share a talkgroup with Columbia police west region on talkgroup 25669. Currently Irmo PD is on Lexington county municipal law north (24522) and is shared with Chapin PD, County animal services and County coroner. With the staffing level at the Lexington county consolidated dispatch center the 3 municipal talkgroups are almost always patched creating a non stop amount of radio traffic.
Irmo Police
- Thread starter mrat1234
- Start date
Thanks for the update. I've noticed SCHP patching a lot of talk groups together more than in the past, too.
Caesar
Member
I could be way off base on this, but my understanding is *IF* this occurs it will be 2+ years from right now.
From my experience Irmo pd cant manage to programm their radios the same so I doubt they are able to manage a dispatch center switch. Almost every Irmo pd radio I've seen was programmed differently and on top of that the encryption is most of the time not set up correct so irmo pd officers will get a fail when they try to talk with RCSD/LCSD/LE COMM 14/15/16
MCA programs all their radios. They program them to the way they want them done. Who ever is encrypting the radios isn't assigning the key to the correct talkgroup.I only know this because I used to work for them as a tech Also behind the scenes is the new Richland county 911 center that's being built. They are supposed to hire more dispatchers and call takers
Well then whoever at the Irmo police department is in charge of the radios is doing a poor job at keeping it consistent. I also spoke to a friend who works for Lexington county Ems and he says they have only 6 ops talkgroups not 9. I also only ever hear ops 1, 2 and 6 ever used. Has anyone seen/heard ops 7, 8 and 9?
Yes I have, but they are not used often. I have them in my unitrunker logs as well.
One other point I find interesting with the Lex Co Municipal PD talkgroups: when they are patched together (which is very often), they don't use the same kind of patch as many other patched talkgroups. That is, the Lexington Co. patch is simply all three talkgroups transmitting at the same time using three separate frequencies. On the other hand, when SCHP uses patches, they only tie up one frequency no matter how many talkgroups are part of the patch. I'm not sure why Lexington County does it this way. I'm not sure if it's the way the dispatcher initiates the patch or there is some other reason. It seems like a poor use of system resources on an already very busy site. I wouldn't be surprised if system users occasionally get the busy bonk when they try to key up on this site.
Steady bonk means denial for trying to PTT over someone/you can't talk into the system.
Beeping bonk means system busy and you're in the queue/wait for the go-ahead PTT chirp.
As expensive as TDMA is it makes sense to see a select few channels from a select few sites have it enabled at first for testing purposes. You'll typically notice those channels protected and used last in the lineup to stay available for TDMA traffic. Similar to how the BSI channel and alternate control channels don't get used until all the other voice channels are occupied.
Beeping bonk means system busy and you're in the queue/wait for the go-ahead PTT chirp.
As expensive as TDMA is it makes sense to see a select few channels from a select few sites have it enabled at first for testing purposes. You'll typically notice those channels protected and used last in the lineup to stay available for TDMA traffic. Similar to how the BSI channel and alternate control channels don't get used until all the other voice channels are occupied.
Most of the time its a steady bonk which would mean that people are holding the ptt longer after they finish talking. Most of the time its a steady bonk but sometimes it will be the beeping bonk so its both. On the patch taking up 3 frequencies is concerning to me. The Lexington county site is 15 channels with one being control so that leaves 14. With 3 being taking up for the municipal law patch so that leaves 11 channels for the other agencies such as SCHP, Lex co Fire/EMS so capacity is a big concern. Coverage is a concern as well. My agency and surrounding agencies are constantly getting out of range beeps and display notifications even if we are outside and not in the car or buildings.
Hey everyone I have a question on SCHP. I currently don't have the SCHP tac talkgroups in my scanner and was thinking of adding them. How often does the tac talkgroups get used. I currently only have the dispatch, shep, sp ops talkgroups.
In the Upstate, I'd say they are used occasionally. Every once in a while (maybe once a week) I'll hear two troopers use a Tac channel as a talk-around channel, when they can't or don't want to use a mobile phone instead. I believe that these channels are not monitored by the SCHP dispatcher.
Mostly I hear these channels used for speed enforcement operations, where multiple troopers will be staged to perform traffic stops based on radar/lidar readings from another trooper. The trooper running the speed measuring device will call out a car color/make/model, lane position and speed, and another trooper will perform the traffic stop. The trooper initiating the stop will switch to the dispatch channel to call in the stop to the dispatcher. I'd say I hear this sort of operation about once or twice a month.
Usage may vary in other parts of the state. I'd say you're not missing much by not monitoring these tac channels. I hardly ever hear the Special Ops channels in use. In Troop 3, I only hear it used for Clemson home football games. I can't say I have ever heard the Troop 2 or Troop 4 Special Ops talkgroups used in my monitoring area.