Chaos703
Member
Dave, in my experience, with the type of "stand alone" patrol work that the rural troopers do, there is very rarely a need for units to communicate across significant distances so the lack of capabilities isn't much of an issue. A good friend of mine is a lieutenant in Troop M. He says they use the county SO radios for car-to-car as much or more than their OHP radios because there are so many dead spots when the conditions are poor.
I would answer your question this way: On the rare event that conditions are just right, units could conceivably communicate across an entire troop via the OHP network — if they're lucky. But the need to do so is as rare as the conditions that would allow it. More likely they would 10-5 through dispatch or (because of how massively more productive and responsive private industry is than government) they would probably just bust out the cell phone. And finally, where the state's much maligned (although I think it's pretty cool) ancient low-band system can't be accessed, there is always the local SO's and PD's frequencies troopers can depend on.
I would answer your question this way: On the rare event that conditions are just right, units could conceivably communicate across an entire troop via the OHP network — if they're lucky. But the need to do so is as rare as the conditions that would allow it. More likely they would 10-5 through dispatch or (because of how massively more productive and responsive private industry is than government) they would probably just bust out the cell phone. And finally, where the state's much maligned (although I think it's pretty cool) ancient low-band system can't be accessed, there is always the local SO's and PD's frequencies troopers can depend on.
