Perth County Fire

[gary123]

It looks like the dispatch has migrated.

I have noticed the paging format has changed a bit. When Stratford was dispatching you got the page tones followed by the dispatch information all in one key up. With Owen Sound I am seeing the page out tones followed by a dekey then a 5-10 second delay then a rekey containing the dispatch call.

This is a real pain for anyone using a Minitor in Scan Mode or automatic reset. You will need to reset the pager to Muted delay N = 10 seconds.

I just monitored another page out. This delay was over 20 seconds. I am expecting to hear that many of the firefighters will need to reset their hardware to hear the details.

 

[sirsmiley]

It looks like the dispatch has migrated.

I have noticed the paging format has changed a bit. When Stratford was dispatching you got the page tones followed by the dispatch information all in one key up. With Owen Sound I am seeing the page out tones followed by a dekey then a 5-10 second delay then a rekey containing the dispatch call.

This is a real pain for anyone using a minitor in scan mode. You will need to reset the pager to Muted delay N = 10 seconds.

The reason for that delay is they paged all the halls at once as a stacked page sequentially on the system as a single page through the shared system. Normal pages I doubt would be like that. I have a pager and it stays open until I hit reset so it's not affected

 

[gary123]

I have been monitoring over the last couple of hours as weather related calls are being dispatched. The delay between tones and dispatch information has got better. Its averaging 8 or so seconds. I will be touching base with some firefighters and see how or if this is affecting their operations.

This double key up may be from the way the console is programmed at Owen Sound. Research continues.

 

[CDTbolt10033]

Looks like Owen Sound is doing some testing this morning with the paging system. So far, North Perth and Perth East had their tests.

 

[gary123]

I have been monitoring the tests. The delay between page out and call is a lot better. The issue is not the signal quality, it's how the pagers are responding to it. Most pagers are set for either a automatic reset (best for scanning multiple frequencies) or an 3-5 second delay before resetting. This is ideal for most volunteers as the pager goes back into page mode without needing manual intervention.

I am not connected with or do any service on the Perth Fire system. It is not my place to contact anyone officially about this. My sole interest is for this or any system to work efficiently and reliably. The solution is Owen Sound needs to page out and immediately voice out preferably on the same key down or within 3 seconds. The only other option is for all the pagers in the county to be reprogrammed to manual reset. As a test I have my pager (Minitor VI) configured to 30 seconds before reset and I am now getting all of the pages and 90% of the voice messages. The down side is that this creates a 45 or more second hole before my pager resumes scanning.

Having a 30 second-ish window before hearing the call or having your pager reset while waiting to see what the call is about is a pain. I am confident that this teething issue can be corrected.

I replayed the test page outs. The delay between page and voice is now averaging 5 -6 seconds.

 

[CDTbolt10033]

I noticed the wiki only has St. Marys Fire tones so here is my list of tones for Perth County.
Also, I'm not 100% sure but it seems pager testing has moved to Wednesdays at 1800 hours for all of Perth County?

St. Marys	600.9	634.5
Sebringville	399.8	321.7
Milverton	399.8	358.6
Atwood	321.7	600.9
Listowel		349 (Long B tone)
Shakespeare	445.7	339.6
Mitchell	349	330.5
Monkton	1122.5	1153.4

 

[sirsmiley]

I think that's when they do training at the firehalls for the most part.

 

[CDTbolt10033]

Also, I believe the frequencies for Perth County Fire are:

PCMA Disp / Tac 1 - 154.680 with a PL/CTCSS of 107.2
PCMA Tac 2 - 158.430 with a PL/CTCSS of 107.2
and I think 410.1125 is a UHF link of PCMA Disp / Tac 1?

As far as I know/hear there is no St. Marys specific frequency as shown on the database for Perth County page.

 

[Gymbag]

Also, I believe the frequencies for Perth County Fire are:

PCMA Disp / Tac 1 - 154.680 with a PL/CTCSS of 107.2
PCMA Tac 2 - 158.430 with a PL/CTCSS of 107.2
and I think 410.1125 is a UHF link of PCMA Disp / Tac 1?

As far as I know/hear there is no St. Marys specific frequency as shown on the database for Perth County page.

To the best of my knowledge there never has been a specific frequency for St Mary’s

 

[gary123]

St Marys uses the county frequencies.

 

[CDTbolt10033]

Call for Shakespeare and Milverton and they are having issues with Tac 2 echoing and doing funny stuff so they are using Tac 1.

 

[gary123]

Duplicated repeater access. They are hitting both the Shakespeare and another Perth FD local repeater. I think the call was near the top of their response area.

 

[sirsmiley]

Two truck repeaters were most likely turned on, one from each fire department. It was not a system issue or else they'd have same issue if switching to TAC1.