When is it necessary to have Duty Officer and Local Fire Paging channels programmed into your scanner for listening? I want to know if I can save space on my scanner by deleting all of the fire and duty officer paging channels, and I want to know if it's necessary to keep those only as a hobbyist.
On Programming Fire Channels
- Thread starter Pr999
- Start date
How many channels are we talking here? What make & model scanner(s)? Are these conventional channels or talkgroups on a trunked radio system? If we're talking just a few channels then no, it wouldn't make much of a difference space-wise on a present-day scanner
Your scanner(s), your call
It all depends what you want to listen to, I don't think anyone here can read your mind and tell you whether you will want to listen to them. That said, personally, I do not listen to any paging channels, but that is just me because I'm not interested in them.
My county has about 17 duty officer channels and 18 paging channels, all trunked. On my 325p2 and 996p2. I was asking it as a general question since I learned a long time ago that they get patched with one of the main dispatching channels. I just wanted to know if it gave me anymore information by listening to single paging channels.
How are they utilized? Do(es) your agency(ies) of interest only operate on certain ones / the same ones for every incident? If so, keep those ones programmed in and remove the rest. Will you gain a significant amount of space? No
They don't seem to be independently utilized if that's what you're asking. They are all connected to one of the dispatch region channels. 🤷♂️
I guess you are Allegan Co.and the fire is on the state's TRS linked below
Looking at the database each paging channel Dispatches a different areas. You could just enter paging channels for the areas you wish to receive.
Looking at the database each paging channel Dispatches a different areas. You could just enter paging channels for the areas you wish to receive.
Well, one more question that I should've asked is: are these channels nessary while travelling (that's the main reason for the thread)
Traveling where, everywhere within your county? Again, you need to familiarize yourself with who utilizes what channels to determine for yourself what's best to keep in YOUR scanner
When in doubt leave it in, but we can't make suggestions unless we know the agency/system where you are traveling, and all your threads all have missing or changing information. Good luck, I can't help any more.
You will only find out by listening if the duty officer channels have traffic on them independent of the dispatch channels. Is this system programmed into both of your scanners? If so, why not run one with the duty officer channels included and the other without them? Listen to both during a working fire or other incident and you'll likely have your answer. Or, ask the question in the regional monitoring forum for your state, as others on this thread have suggested.
Like others here, I would choose the conservative approach - better to have them programmed in than not.
In my neck of the woods, FD is dispatched by pager most of the time. If I only listened to the voice channels, I'd have no idea where they are off to when I see them flying down the boulevard.
A neighboring city is dispatch via CAD printer. The first sign of a fire run is on the police channel when they say "be advised fire is being dispatched to ...".
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