Morton Co Rural Fire Depts

[BisManRadio]

Hey guys I keep hearing informational pages going out on 155.3100 when they do the pager test at 6pm. Anyways they are saying to bring in their portable radios and pagers so they can be reprogrammed and not to use the old radios and pagers after May 2nd.

Anyone know what the new frequencies will be or if it will be a different mode (digital) on the same frequencies? Anyone know?

 

[NDRADIONUT]

Maybe Narrow FM ??

 

[BisManRadio]

Maybe Narrow FM ??

I was thinking thats probably what its going to be or at least for the voice paging part of it.

I havent heard any digital voice traffic testing anything either.

 

[BisManRadio]

Well guys now Im hearing P25 digital on these rural fire/ems frequencies now and they are 100% encrypted too. This is really stupid!

 

[ASTRO2001]

you took the words right out of my mouth. one question how are they going to page them out beacuse there is no digital pager unless they do it like mandan analog page then to digitial talk? It is going to be funny with small department use this digital radio system with they don't use it everyday. The other thing is if they loss the encryption key in the radio your screwed they can't use it haha

 

[BisManRadio]

Mandan FD has gone back to analog for all voice comms. They've only been this way for a couple of months now. Not sure why they switched back to analog but I cant imagine it'll last long due to all the perceived paranoia in this area.

Not sure how Morton County rural depts will be paged out I havent really heard yet, But Ill find out soon. My guess will be narrowband FM but well see for sure.

 

[ASTRO2001]

They must have been in a fire and could not talk back I seen that happened Orlando Fire had digital problems and switch back to analog and have not went back maybe they see the danger of digital on fire ground and dispatch. I dumb they would be paged on analog to the call then to digital for comm to dispatch

 

[NDRADIONUT]

Who is the wing nut out there who wants all the encryption ??

 

[BisManRadio]

Bismarck seems to me to be very secretive in pretty much anything the PD does. Still operating like the good old boys club. Encryption in this area will not be ending anytime soon as the Fire Dept and Ambulance service will also be going encrypted real soon.

There was some minutes of a meeting published online from a meeting a while back (a few years) with the different public safety heads for both Bismarck and Mandan and the reasoning they had for encryption was to be able to talk more freely with each other.

I have heard some stories about the PD saying some inappropriate words describing some people over their radio but good luck trying to validate that. Let me also say the Communications Director in Bismarck was a proponnet to make it law to not release any 911 calls to anyone including media at least from the article I saw from the Tribune. This law was just passed a few months ago in the latest ND legislative session. They placed a few exceptions to it but not much.

All it is to protect them in case they mess up. Also to be able to decide on what information is made available to the media and the public. This last sentence was told to me by an employee of one of the local encrypted agencies. Of course after some incident the Police Chief or some other city official will give some information to the media but it may have been changed to reflect the stance of the city.

I do know the state pen will also be going to encrypted when they switch over to P25 or at least thats what Ive been told by someone in the know.
Im sure soon maybe end of the year the public works depts will also be encrypted as well. The citys in this area are soo secretive they more than likely dont want anyone to know what street will be cleaned next.

I didnt mean to get on a rant about encryption. I do support its use in some public safety and security uses but not for its rampant use like it is here.

 

[BisManRadio]

Update

Morton County is now doing all county fire and ems paging on 154.7550

Now after the page I have heard analog comms JUST the dispatch side trying to contact which ever
department they were paging to confirm page, etc. It is in simplex After that all digital comms on the other frequency.
I think they are using analog just for paging.

Ill keep a look out and try to program all freqs licensed to them to make sure Im not missing a new repeater output frequency.
But this new paging frequency is listed as the input to the sheriff dispatch repeater. So time to do some focused listening here to get things sorted out and Ill note any new changes as soon as I can find them.

 

[NDRADIONUT]

You could have a lot of fun with them using freedom of information requests !!

 

[BisManRadio]

You could have a lot of fun with them using freedom of information requests !!

It would be fun. Id bet they would charge alot of money for their troubles though or fight hard to not comply with the request.

 

[BisManRadio]

Good News UPDATE

Alright I have now confirmed Morton County Rural Fire Depts and EMS agencys are paged out now on the old sheriff dispatch channel of 155.625. A new pl tone of 162.2 is used for both paging and for dispatch operations. So they are analog for dispatch and paging. (for the time being)

It appears all Sheriff Operations/Dispatch have moved to the former County Rural fire channel of 155.3100 P25 and Encrypted.

So they just moved everything around but it made it seem like the FD/EMS units went p25 and encrypted.

But keep in mind though that this "new" channel the county FD/EMS went to was using p25 mode when the sheriff was on it and was encrypted so I will continue to monitor and update if they go to digital and encrypt.