Louisville Emergency Communications Network: MetroSafe - Discussion Thread

[ofd8001]

Does anyone have an idea of what this department or agency would be based on this name?

" LC_DEPT of CCSi"

That tag is 15 characters long. I do not know of any "Official" tags that are longer than 12 characters.

Also the naming convention tends to be, when not obvious, "Agency then Channel Name". For example "SWM 400" would mean "Solid Waste Management 400".

The only exception would be something like "LM FIRE 5" found in a Bullitt or Oldham radio which means "Louisville Metro Fire 5".

So I am dubious of this being a valid talkgroup name.

 

[Charlie1068]

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up who uses the MetroSafe node it will be down until next weekend due to hardware issues

 

[Remington12G]

Thanks for the update. I've asked moderators to make this a sticky thread as we seem to have quite the activity and so we don't need to create 12 more threads this year about MetroSafe.

 

[ColonelMike]

In reference to the TDMA question, I know there are several agencies (including the one I work for now), who get radios from MetroSafe by agreement for some reason or another. We all have XTS2500 radios as we get the hand-me-downs and there is no upgrades in sight for us to my knowledge.

 

[Charlie1068]

The node will be back up later this afternoon I also plan to add a 3rd RTL-SDR dongle to help add more traffic and be used as redundancy just in case I have an issue like this happen again. I also plan to experiment with LMPD dispatch to see if my equipment can handle it

 

[Charlie1068]

Node is online. However, I am having some receive issues with one of my antennas there might be some decoding issue on some calls. I am working to fix it

 

[Charlie1068]

Another protest is underway in Downtown Louisville all traffic is encrypted on talk group 79 some traffic related to the protest can be heard on POLICE 3 (1st and 2nd Divison's) and JCSO 1

 

[KI5IRE]

Has anyone found an automated dispatch/station alerting talkgroup for either Louisville FD or Jefferson County Fire on MetroSafe? Or perhaps even a conventional frequency?

A friend of mine said he was outside of an LMFD station and said he heard an automated dispatch going over the station speakers like we have here in Fort Worth, TX. Anyone ever heard this before?

 

[Charlie1068]

As of right now I’ve not seen any TG it’s all done by people toning out the units how long was this ago? JCFD uses 152.0075 as a tone out channel but it also uses an actual dispatcher

 

[KI5IRE]

As of right now I’ve seen any TG it’s all done by people toning out the units how long was this ago?

Within the past few days. I have not witnessed it for myself, but he says he heard something that sounded similar to the Locution here.

 

[Charlie1068]

Interesting it’s possible they are testing it. I’ve been looking at logs on the call node and I haven’t heard any automated dispatch yet. Do you remember what day it was he heard it

 

[Charlie1068]

It’s possible they are on conventional for example Cinci uses both a dispatcher and an automated dispatch on separate TG’s

 

[Charlie1068]

I did some digging and Louisville FD does have a frequency for 2 tones the license is KII319, but I'm not sure if it's in use

 

[ofd8001]

Lets see if this helps. . .

There are two varieties of fire services in Jefferson County, the urban which is Louisville Fire and the suburban which is Jefferson County fire districts. Jefferson County fire districts use a tone and voice alerting system on the frequency noted above. It is mostly two tone, but the have two long tones, which are all call tones. One is for everyone, the other for chief officers.

In the older days, Louisville Fire did some form of tone alerting to their fire stations, called a "sleep watch". It was on 460.625, their channel 4 under the KII319 license.

When the MetroSafe radio system was implemented, Louisville Fire went to some form of station alerting. I'm not sure if it is internet or intranet based. Supposedly this is a little more "heart friendly" to firefighters.

They will send out a 1,000 HZ tone, called a "sputnik" to tell companies a call is about to come in, which is done on Fire 1 typically. If companies are in quarters, then that alerting system is used, though it sounds like the audio part of the alerting is also broadcast on Fire 4. If companies are not in quarters, they are contacted on the radio and given the nature and location of the call.

Just listening to some recordings from earlier this evening I believe the dispatcher on the alerting end is still a real person.

 

[Charlie1068]

Thank you for the information. I wonder if MetroSafe has any plans to add automated dispatch to the system. Both tone out channels are sending calls from actual dispatchers as of this evening.

 

[ofd8001]

Interesting question. Before I retired in 2013 I asked the MetroSafe director if they had any sales pitches on automated dispatch. They did, but nothing of great interest.

Part of me wants to say fire people tend to be set in their ways and the differences in the two operations (urban/suburban). Two different CAD systems were used back then and still may be. As long as fire folks are coming from home, not as much as in the past, but still happens, tone and voice paging will continue on the suburban side. Of course I'm well out of the loop and they could be ready to announce a change tomorrow.

 

[Charlie1068]

I just came back home to the metro for a few days and I noticed that a lot of the Dispatcher ID’s have changed. They used to be 3xx now they are coming up as 4xx. Both JCSO 1 and 4 used to be something like 5000310 now they are just 5xx. Oldham county is also 5xx. The only TG’s not affected seem to be Bullitt County and the dispatcher on Louisville FD alert channel which is still 3xx as of this post.

 

[ColonelMike]

I just came back home to the metro for a few days and I noticed that a lot of the Dispatcher ID’s have changed. They used to be 3xx now they are coming up as 4xx. Both JCSO 1 and 4 used to be something like 5000310 now they are just 5xx. Oldham county is also 5xx. The only TG’s not affected seem to be Bullitt County and the dispatcher on Louisville FD alert channel which is still 3xx as of this post.

Not sure why the change on JCSO and Oldham but MetroSafe has temporarily moved their employees to the backup center due to some small non radio related maintenance issues (and other issues currently going on downtown maybe) so the 400 numbers are only temporary. Not sure how long the temporary move is for.

 

[ofd8001]

I believe JCSO might have installed new consoles.

 

[alky1234]

I believe JCSO might have installed new consoles.

I think you might be right 😉