Onslow

[BryanTheRed]

I completely agree with you. I know the old VHF channel for EMS and Rescue was a repeated channel. I also remember when there were pagers and tones for each medic truck. I really dont care for the ASTRO system they have put in place it goes down a least 4 times a year but yet they want to completely shut down the VHF system.....there was a lot of speculation the reasoning for moving to 800 was to do away with the volunteers, there have been several comments about if the funding was avalible for personel there would be no more volunteers in the county.

 

[whitehelmet1202]

Right, the old EMS dispatch channel was 151.235 and was a repeater. That is now the Tac 8 repeater for county fire units.

Back when I was running in Onslow the Medic units were on 151.235 and the VRS units were still on 155.280. About a year or so after that they started dispatching all EMS on 151.235, then did away with the tones for the Medic trucks. I know the 151.235 channel is patched into Events 1 during bigger incidents and such, as I listen to both the VHF and 800 sides.

I have no idea why Onslow County even has an ASTRO system, since they don't have enough use or enough of an infrastructure in place to justify it. Their TRS leaves a little bit to be desired as well. They are sharing the system with the city, and the city owns 4 channels of the system and the county owns the other 5. They system would be great if they actually used it like it was designed, but from what I've heard the city FD units have problems inisde various buildings in the city. Not to mention the signal requirements for an ASTRO system to function properly. WIth analog, static comes into play when in a fringe area, but a digital signal garbles up almost completely, and I can't stand the audio characteristics of an ASTRO system running IMBE in digital mode. Sounds too much like a cheap radio station playing bootlegged music to me, or something very similar.

In a place as large as Onslow County, a TRS would only work correctly with remote receiver sites all over the county, which the TRS is licensed for, but the sites are not up and running.

I remember a few years ago when Coastal Electronics installed the repeater on the fire net and Central called 700 for a radio check. The exchange went something like this:

Central Fire: "Holly RIdge 700, Central Fire.."
700: "Go ahead Central.."
Central Fire: "This is a radio check, how do you copy this station?"
700: "More louad and clear than it has EVER been in THIS county.."
Central Fire" "10..pause..4 700, Thank you KCP538.."

I remember that conversation still to this day. The older systems were nowhere near good enough, and the conventional systems are better than have ever been. Now if they could only get the TRS up and running with the remote sites, that would be nice. Then I could probably monitor the system from the house here, since I am less than 10 miles from the Folkstone site (Us highway 17 & folkstone rd in the JOEMC substation).

Pender County has talked about going to 800, but I think it would be a big mistake. With VIPER coming in, it would help, but the VIPER site is supposed to be on the eastern side of the county, leaving the central and western areas without coverage. The VHF system for FIre & EMS and the UHF system for the Sheriff's Department is ok at best, but still has loads of coverage issues.

The Sheriff's system has a central repeater with 3 other remote receiver sites. One on the Topsail Fire Tower, Ward's Corner Fire Tower and the Water Tower in Burgaw. They use voting receivers for site selection and beam the signals to the main repeater on Stag Park Dr using 900 MHz links.

The Fire & EMS system uses a single stand alone repeater on the tower on Stag Park Dr. You can use a portable most of the time, but nowhere near the 90/90 rule. At times I think I am the only person in the county that has a portable that can actually talk to the repeater, as well as the only person that has a true 110 watt VHF mobile radio (you need lots of power down here in this major RF black hole).

Well, what do you expect when you have County Commissioners that don't really know what emergency services needs. The Emergency Services Director in Onslow has been quoted as "hating volunteer departments". With a majority of fire department and EMS providers in the county being volunteer, that is something you don't need. Perhaps some things need to be made public. Once the public becomes aware of such things and makes their concerns known to their "elected" leaders, things have the ability to change overnight. Trust me, I have seen it first hand many many times in both Pender and Onslow Counties, even back home....

Take care..

Jeff
Surf City, NC

 

[BryanTheRed]

Yup I agree, I know Nine Mile is also another black hole for RF, cells too you can forget sending a call from there unless its a roaming call. I think we could have done without the ASTRO as well a huge waste of money, that could have drastically improved the conventional system, and could have made it great but whatever. I dont think Mr. Thompson will get his wish either, the volunteers have really been showing there true colors here lately with the few exceptions. BTW have you heard the sucttle but about a squad being closed down?? Very intresting! PM me I'll give you the details!

 

[BryanTheRed]

Ok another ?? so where can I fond Onslow County FIre and Rescue Paging tones?

 

[Robbyboy]

I know someone who might have the tone sequences, but what would you need them for? I know there are several programs that can decode the tone sequence and give you the Hz readings. One of the new Unidens (BC396T I think) that once you have that information, you can actially use the scanner like a pager...

Cheers

Ok another ?? so where can I fond Onslow County FIre and Rescue Paging tones?

 

[BryanTheRed]

just something I would like to have I have a list of all the VHF frequencies in the county I like to have a database to refer to, I am also getting a pager reprogrammed and the person I have programming it does not have the tones I need!

 

[CCHLLM]

The misunderstanding of what VIPER is continues. VIPER sites are state sites and state supplemented sites, and can be state sites alone, local sites with additional state infrastructure, or they can be state sites with additional local infrastructure. Your county can put up as many additional sites as it needs or wants, providing there are funds for it. The 800 mHz interops initiative funds aren't just for VIPER, they can be had for any municipality or county who needs to bring its radio systems up to standards, and can include any number of systems. Some of the money is matching funding, some is full funding, and some has to be entirely local funding.