Madison County NY question

[barnball]

not sure if anyone can answer this question for me or not but here goes...just recently getting into scanning, mainly police/sheriff and EMS/Volunteer fire deptartments. I live right on the border of Madison and Oeida Counties, and so have both counties programmed into my scanner, but I noticed madison county only has a countywide Fire dispatch channel, while most of the Vol. deptartments in onieda county have their own channels....through other places i have looked online i was able to find a freq for the hamilton vol fire dept, and it is active, but can find nothing else, either on RR or elsewhere, for any other vol. fire depts.....do they all share the same countywide frequency, or is it something less obvuios.....in semi related news just got back into the area and may get this question answered as once i get settled in i plan on jioning the madison (village of, not county) vol fire dept, but thats besides the piont thanks in advance for any help

 

[barnball]

so was this a really retarded noob question or does noone know the answer? lol

 

[Spec]

Try this site. Maybe it will answer a few of your questions.

http://nf2g.com/scannist/ny_onei/County Public Safety.html

http://nf2g.com/scannist/ny_madi/County Public Safety.html

 

[studgeman]

As a rule of thumb, never expect anyone else to set up radio systems like oneida county.

But to answer your question, what you see is what you get. Departments (except city of Oneida) do not have their own channels in Madison County.

 

[barnball]

k thanks

 

[tnf]

what freq did you find for hamilton fd? in the future, expect madison county to go to uhf like onieda county, but hopefully it is implemented better. madison county has licenses for 4 uhf channels, and they are set up 5 hz apart for a repeater set up. so far, hamilton, cazenovia, and a bunch of other department have switched to UHF portables on the fireground. probably what you are seeing is the UHF channel for hamilton...they have it set up as a crossband repeater, that is the county dispatch goes out to that uhf channel and vice versa. also, uhf's building penetration is about a million times better than low band's.... hamilton has to have a tone decoder and coder (a tone repeater basically) so the students at colgate that are members of the department can get toned out...apparently in most of the colgate buildings it is impossible to get low band...theoretically, uhf would fix this.

basically why the low band sucks in madison county right now is because if you are standing next to one tower, say mutton hill, and you try to talk on a portable or mobile, but some of your transmission is very weakly picked up on another tower, the console at the communication center is full of static from the weak signal and then you are trying to talk over that. in chenago county, they have a system that automatically picks the tower with the strongest transmission to eliminate this problem.

 

[barnball]

for Hamilton i've been picking up on 453.5750, but after actually listening to it, sounds like you're correct, it's simply a repeater for county fire and EMS...and yea, a lot of HVFD is Colgate students, so makes sense

 

[Quickcall]

what freq did you find for hamilton fd? in the future, expect madison county to go to uhf like onieda county, but hopefully it is implemented better. madison county has licenses for 4 uhf channels, and they are set up 5 hz apart for a repeater set up. so far, hamilton, cazenovia, and a bunch of other department have switched to UHF portables on the fireground. probably what you are seeing is the UHF channel for hamilton...they have it set up as a crossband repeater, that is the county dispatch goes out to that uhf channel and vice versa. also, uhf's building penetration is about a million times better than low band's.... hamilton has to have a tone decoder and coder (a tone repeater basically) so the students at colgate that are members of the department can get toned out...apparently in most of the colgate buildings it is impossible to get low band...theoretically, uhf would fix this.

basically why the low band sucks in madison county right now is because if you are standing next to one tower, say mutton hill, and you try to talk on a portable or mobile, but some of your transmission is very weakly picked up on another tower, the console at the communication center is full of static from the weak signal and then you are trying to talk over that. in chenago county, they have a system that automatically picks the tower with the strongest transmission to eliminate this problem.

Yes, we have a few villages here in chenango county that are doing that with a crossband repeater. Th

 

[Quickcall]

Actually I find madison county to have a confusing dispatch system. I also find it strange how the village of Earlville fire is dispatched by both Madison county and Chenango county on different freqs. Some firefighters carry 2 pagers, one for each county.

 

[studgeman]

Time to clear up a couple of things.

Yes madison county uses Low-Band to UHF cross band repeaters on fireground. They are a gigantic 5 watts (should be 2) if that. They are licesned for use around all of madison county, and the repeaters are in the cooridnators vehicles as well as some of the chiefs/deputy chiefs.

Madison County will most likley be transitioning to a new UHF system in the comming years, there should be no problem implimenting it properly based on the money allocated and the comittment from the administration involved.

Oneida County is not UHF (not sure where that came from) but that is where Ondandaga is in the process of going to.

Why does Earlville carry two pagers? Becasue they cant program both VHF-Lows into one pager perhaps? Minitor IIs in most cases will take two crystals, which would elimiate the need for two pagers. It is quite common for departments on county borders to be toned by multiple dispatches (thinking outloud, West Lyden, Cleveland, North Bay, Bridgwater, Brookfield). These are sometimes primary dispatches or first line mutual aid.

 

[tnf]

Earlville is a semi-unique case...half is in the Madison county side, with SOMAC as an ambulance and Hamilton as mutual aid...On the chenago county side, it is sherburne Ambulance and Sherburne for mutual aid. Depending on where the 911 call comes in depends on which county dispatches it...you can hear earlville (KQS681) often ask Madison county fire control (KED629) to activate their madison county pagers for a call in chenago. I also believe that they have to call out on both counties when they respond to a call, which could get tedious. Why do they have two pagers? could be funding, or just a system that has worked for a while...minitor 2's are still basically the best pager considering sensitivity and all the battery problems the m5's have been having...why fix it if it isn't broke?

I think departments like bridgeport, westwinfield, and even bridgewater share a similar situation.

 

[studgeman]

As a someone not-so-famous once said. Exactly!

 

[Quickcall]

Earlville is a semi-unique case...half is in the Madison county side, with SOMAC as an ambulance and Hamilton as mutual aid...On the chenago county side, it is sherburne Ambulance and Sherburne for mutual aid. Depending on where the 911 call comes in depends on which county dispatches it...you can hear earlville (KQS681) often ask Madison county fire control (KED629) to activate their madison county pagers for a call in chenago. I also believe that they have to call out on both counties when they respond to a call, which could get tedious. Why do they have two pagers? could be funding, or just a system that has worked for a while...minitor 2's are still basically the best pager considering sensitivity and all the battery problems the m5's have been having...why fix it if it isn't broke?

I think departments like bridgeport, westwinfield, and even bridgewater share a similar situation.

Some carry two minitors simply because they dont have a two channel pager. I cannot figure out how they determine who is dispatched and why. Its a very tricky situation. Ill ask the earlville chief tomorrow morning.

 

[tnf]

it depends on which county they are in...north of the light, hamilton for mutual aid and somac for ambulance, and south of the light sherburne for m/a and sherburne for ambulance...I also think some of their district is actually covered by smyrna ambulance also.

 

[EMD70]

The only pagers that are activated in Earlville from the Madison County side are the few that remain from the old Poolville Fire Dept, which was incorporated into an all Earville Dept several years back. Before this, the only dispatching capability that Mad. Co. had for Earlville, was to activate the station siren. A majority of members have pagers that activate from Chenengo County, thats why the dual communications and inter county communication between 911 centers.

 

[AuntEnvy]

speaking of which...

not sure if anyone can answer this question for me or not but here goes...just recently getting into scanning, mainly police/sheriff and EMS/Volunteer fire deptartments. I live right on the border of Madison and Oeida Counties, and so have both counties programmed into my scanner, but I noticed madison county only has a countywide Fire dispatch channel, while most of the Vol. deptartments in onieda county have their own channels....through other places i have looked online i was able to find a freq for the hamilton vol fire dept, and it is active, but can find nothing else, either on RR or elsewhere, for any other vol. fire depts.....do they all share the same countywide frequency, or is it something less obvuios.....in semi related news just got back into the area and may get this question answered as once i get settled in i plan on jioning the madison (village of, not county) vol fire dept, but thats besides the piont thanks in advance for any help

check out my new thread on Madison...kind of weird and or appropriate seeing as I just read this post this morning!