Richmond Co. SO - 1970

[gman4661]

General Electric vs. Motorola. The GE mobiles were used well into 1980's, maybe even longer. Seemed to be good radios. The old freqs were 460.175 and 460.250. Repeaters were located on Barton Chapel Rd. and the WBBQ tower in North Augusta. The was was a 460.500 cross-band repeater for GA Intrastate 154.905 on top of University Hospital. RCSO Ch. 2 was probably the clearest audio I ever heard.

 

[MTS2000des]

Interesting how systems "grew up". Atlanta PD moved to UHF around that time, though maintained VHF for detective radio with a hard patch. That system remained up and in use until 1994, when the migration to Smartnet II in time for the 1996 Olympics. Fulton county had an 800MHz presence since 1986 when our Marshal's office went to Privacy Plus with a 5 channel system, and the "race" was on. Always interesting to learn the history of our systems.

 

[gman4661]

Augusta PD went to UHF at about the same time with two channels. 100% Motorola as far as I know. The audio quality was never as good as the Richmond Co. system. Much later, some APD supervisors and detectives also had very nice VHF mobiles, Motorola Micor of course. The VHF radios were very rarely used. Interesting note: the VHF radios had red mics as opposed the usual white ones, apparently to differentiate the two radios.

There was zero operability between Richmond Co. SO and Augusta PD until the middle 1990's. The city purchased an AVL system from Motorola which never worked properly. As I understand it, they gave the AVL system back to Motorola in exchange for a bunch of high-end portables that were also programmed with the RCSO channels.

The traffic guys on motors were not issued portables. The rationalization was that in the event of an accident or fall, the portable could be damaged.