Lackawanna narrow banding?

[One13Truck]

Just after 19:40 on Tuesday the 19th Lackawanna County put out an announcement on Zone 3 to all fire & EMS agencies using Zone 3/Fire Band to be advised that the narrow band project has been completed and at this time all units are to switch all radios using Lackawanna County Fire frequencies to the narrow band channel bank.

Anybody have any ideas what channels have been completed and what the new frequencies are? I've been trying to monitor but from where I am all I can get under normal conditions are Lower Lackawanna and Zone 4 and only the the occasional bits from Zone 3 or Abington & Mid Valley area Fire Grounds so I haven't been able to notice any changes.

 

[alf2109]

The fire frequency was the initial step, today (Wednesday) EMS/Zone 4, then PD1, PD 2, Scranton PD, Scranton Fire, and the others. The plan is to have all channels converted to 12.5 mhz Tx deviation over the course of the next few days. I understand PD 3 will take a little longer since there are other "issues" to be dealt with.

The only "new" frequencies in Lacka-knowledge county will be

County Operations: Rx- 159.4425 Tx- 159.4425 116 DPL
Field Operations 1: Rx- 151.2125 Tx- 151.2125 125 DPL
Field Operations 2: Rx- 151.4675 Tx- 151.4675 125 DPL

 

[One13Truck]

Very good. Thanks! Any ideas on who will be using each of those new channels or how they'll be assigned out?

I just hope it won't affect my receiving. Like I said all I can get right now is Lower Lack and Zone 4. Every now & then I can get Scranton Fire & Zone 3 and on rare occasions the Mid Valley & Abington FG. I hope I won't lose what I have now.

 

[Bandre88]

County Operations: Rx- 159.4425 Tx- 159.4425 116 DPL
Field Operations 1: Rx- 151.2125 Tx- 151.2125 125 DPL
Field Operations 2: Rx- 151.4675 Tx- 151.4675 125 DPL

has anyone heard anything on these yet?, i plugged them into my scanner and i havent heard anything yet and im in the scranton wilkesbarre area.

 

[Bandre88]

to make note also i dont know if anyone else has noticed but i have been seeing about 90% of just lackawanna county excluding scranton city, using moto XPR HH, i noticed lack amb had them as well as the local borough police as well. even beside blakely pd i know they have had them for awhile now because there local channel is heard in the clear and in trbo.

 

[One13Truck]

I programed them in this afternoon but nothing heard yet. But it also remains to be seen if these new channels will have the juice to make it down to me on a consistent basis anyway.

 

[alf2109]

I understand there are no firm plans with these new channels with the exception of the field operations channels- those are licensed only for mobile operations and will not be monitored at the PSAP. The county ops channel remains in flux; there's a new boss taking over so we'll have to see what happens on Jessup mountain.

 

[One13Truck]

Ah the dreaded in flux. Well that's s till better than the hot mess we have here in Luzerne. I know others that have issues with the way Lackawanna runs but I always thought they way they run things is very good. Compared to Luzerne at least. The only thing that still confuses me is why they still have a patch to CMC on Zone 4. That should've been moved to Regional Med or one of the Med channels years ago instead of tying up the zone.

It sounds almost like these new channels will be used for large scale/long term incidents like those never ending brush fires on the mountains or used for training to keep the FG channels clear. Did they make any changes to Zone 3 & 4 and the FG channels or are they staying the same for now while things are in flux?

 

[alf2109]

The county's narrow banding project has ground to a halt. With fire, EMS, MVMA completed the project encountered "problems." The project is set to resume July 5th.

 

[One13Truck]

Well... That sounds promising... LOL I wish they'd pump up the juice again too. Might not be related but since they moved to the new building it's majorly decreased what I can pick up from them. I can get every other county in NEPa consistently except for them and when Wyoming County wants to be stubborn.

 

[brey1234]

County Operations: Rx- 159.4425 Tx- 159.4425 116 DPL
Field Operations 1: Rx- 151.2125 Tx- 151.2125 125 DPL
Field Operations 2: Rx- 151.4675 Tx- 151.4675 125 DPL

I HOPE these are just more channels to use and NOT the replacement of 154.310--155.295 etc...The reason: If these are replacements what a MAJOR waste of tax dollars. The FCC says systems must narrowband but they don't have to migrate to new frequencies!
Narrowbanding

 

[One13Truck]

Re:

Bob,

I'm in Luzerne not Lackawanna so I may have taken it the wrong way but to me it sounds as if these will just be additional TAC channels and not replacing the current ones. I added them in the scanner and yet to hear anything on any of them. I still wish they'd get the CMC paging off of Zone 4 (155.295) or if they insist on leaving it there make it for the patches only and move all County fire & EMS paging over to Zone 3 (154.310) as a dispatch only channel and have ALL ops on regional TAC channels (Mid Valley, Abington, Lower Lac, etc). For as far backwards as Luzerne keeps going at least they got the dispatch only channel right.

 

[One13Truck]

Hearing a lot of radio checks from Radio Repair on Scranton Fire. Is that part of the narrowbanding project or did the channel go down?

 

[alf2109]

All frequencies are expected to be completed by the end of the week, this includes Scranton fire and police.

 

[alf2109]

I'll have to retract the last. The expected completion date has been pushed to July 17th. The testing you heard on Scranton Fire centers around the narrow banding and "certain" Motorola radios.
Motorola's cosmo series (xtl/xts/pm) will not open up (un-squelch) for a narrow band transmission when the radio is programed for wide band operation. To make sure there are no "issues" with compability the county, the county's radio vendors, the local Motorola shop and Motorola are researching / testing the trouble.
This will push the deadline for Scranton fire, Police 3 and the EMS channel to next week.

 

[One13Truck]

Well that makes sense then. I forget who they were testing with but they were having a ton of trouble on the portables but the mobiles were working fine. Will there be any frequency changes to SFD, SPD, or Zones 3 & 4 once these are completed?

 

[alf2109]

I don't believe we'll see any changes in the county. Money is in the forefront today, so I'm sure it will take a while to even get that operations frequency into the game.

 

[One13Truck]

That's what I figured but you never know when you'll get thrown a curve. Strangely just for kicks I tried replacing the current Zone 3 and 4 with the "narrowband" equivalent and on Zone 4 it dropped reception to about what I can usually get on Zone 3 so I changed that back. But on Zone 3 I got a much better reception that what I have been getting so I kept that one in there. Might just be coincidence because the last few days since those tests I can actually get Scranton Fire inside as well but I wasn't going to chance it and change it back.

 

[One13Truck]

About an hour ago LCCC was advising somebody to switch to local because Zone 4 is partially down. They said they were only able to communicate with some units but not everybody. I didn't catch who they were talking to though. Might've been somebody on the Area 5 box but I'm not sure.