Funny, I'm 270. The dispatch office was telling the Sheriff SGT on duty that the Bergheim Tower would be down for both P25 and Open Sky. Yes they are co-located. LCRA mainly uses Open Sky. The SGT didn't understand and asked if they would still be on primary. I asked him to go to Op One to explain that it would effect all TGs in that area, but not a specific TG. I'm still not sure he understood. Working on trying to give some radio operation classes throughout the County to eliminate some of this confusion. Rod
That's good that you can help out and I am so surprised that training is not something that many agencies seem to give or get when they switch over to various TRS'. It should be a mandated test that you have to pass before you can continue on I think.
I've got some Fort Worth area officers that are friends and enjoy the hobby of monitoring as well. They've got many years of experience and understand their radios but so many of the other officers in their departments don't. They get all excited about the gee whiz, big change, interoperability capability and then don't know how to use it when it is needed. I've heard this so many times that I've come to expect it. But I've been real impressed by the DPS aircraft that assist in the area and the pilots that fly those aircraft and know what they're doing. When they come to assist they know what they're doing as far as how the radios work. And they have just about everybody in the whole DFW area programmed in to their multiple radios in the helicopters. It's not even their TRS and they know how to work on it better than many of the agencies that use it daily.
The radio can be just as important, if not more sometimes, as the firearm or many other tools law enforcement uses. It's their lifeline and every last one of them should know how to use it flawlessly. But once they get the radio it just seems like nobody knows how to use anything so they don't for a long time. And then when they need it, and need to go to another channel or do something else, it's total confusion to switch to a channel or a zone or whatever and be able to communicate.
I honestly miss the old Intercity days where everybody knew how to use it and all they had to do was switch a knob to a different channel position haha. I've heard countless pursuits where the perp drives through multiple jurisdictions and gets away because nobody knows how to get on a channel, an interoperability channel, and communicate. I just hope it doesn't ever cost an officer or public safety personnel their life.
Brian (COMMSCAN)
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