Monroe County Systems Status

[Ezra]

So I've noticed that in Monroe County several of the P25 sites are down like Islamorada and Layton. Also all the UHF Fire simulcast seems dead as as well.

I can still hear all traffic on the other sites like North Key Largo, Tavernier, etc and when in Islamorada there is good coverage from North Key Largo, Tavernier.

So you can still monitor the keys just fine like before, but it seems every other site is dead and the adjacent sites do offer adequate coverage..

So are they trimming back on budget and thinking they don't need every site, or the UHF system anymore? Or is this a maintenance/temporary outage?

 

[Bote]

On Wednesday late morning Key West fire was testing some paging tones that were new to my ear. I don't know if there's any connection between these events, but some changes must be brewing.

If I had to guess I'd say that they are preparing to upgrade their trunked radio system, which is probably bad news for scanner hobbyists as Florida considers its citizens to be a threat to gummint, so they will likely go encrypted. Time will tell.

 

[Bote]

Also all the UHF Fire simulcast seems dead as as well.

I confirmed this week that all Monroe County, Florida UHF fire repeaters have been permanently removed from service. The old tone-based alert monitors have been retired, replaced with Unication G5 pagers on some 700/800MHz data channel, possibly off the county trunked system.