San Clemente

[mike619]

I was wondering if anyone knows the zone ORCFA is in in San Clemente for example you got 5B dsp and zones like 1,4 etc and what are they dispatched on for san clemente and what talkgroups do they use for responding to calls in san clemente?

 

[Markb]

San Clemente is mainly Zone 5, with 5-B being the dispatch talkgroup, 5-E being the primary Tac TG, 5-F for wildland and 5-N for structure fires or other potentially significant incidents.

 

[monitor142]

One other item to note now that I'm listening to a working commercial structure fire in San Clemente is their talkgroups are on the Countywide Cell down there. While OC is a SmartZone system, they heavily restrict which talkgroups roam so leave the vast majority of your OCFA talkgroups on the Countywide Cell.

The exceptions are:
Laguna Fire 5G on the Laguna Cell, 5H is both the Laguna and South Cell
Santa Ana and Costa Mesa on the South Cell (3A-3E)
Metro Net North cities use 2N for structures which is on the North Cell

Hope this helps you with your monitoring.

-M142

 

[pepsima1]

Orange County Communication Upgrades

Are there any rumors out there on when Orange County will be upgrading their trunking system and what system they might go to? Their system must be about 20 to 25 years old now. Just curious... I know their police talkgroups are all encrypted, just wondering about Fire.

Thanks for any news.

 

[CommLt]

Are there any rumors out there on when Orange County will be upgrading their trunking system and what system they might go to? Their system must be about 20 to 25 years old now. Just curious... I know their police talkgroups are all encrypted, just wondering about Fire.

Thanks for any news.

Can't remember when we switched over but at least 25 years ago. The new system will be 800MHz Motorola P25. Phase one was completed last April but I don't think any cutover will occur for a while. I will check with my little birdies.

 

[CommLt]

One other item to note now that I'm listening to a working commercial structure fire in San Clemente is their talkgroups are on the Countywide Cell down there. While OC is a SmartZone system, they heavily restrict which talkgroups roam so leave the vast majority of your OCFA talkgroups on the Countywide Cell.

The exceptions are:
Laguna Fire 5G on the Laguna Cell, 5H is both the Laguna and South Cell
Santa Ana and Costa Mesa on the South Cell (3A-3E)
Metro Net North cities use 2N for structures which is on the North Cell

Hope this helps you with your monitoring.

-M142

The other talk group you may want to listen to is 10F. Coverage on the countywide system is very poor south of the city limit and we use the Catalina repeater for incidents down by the checkpoint.

Just as a point of clarification since there is frequently confusion, OCFA covers the unincorporated areas and 22 contract cities. None of those listed in the exceptions above are part of OCFA (at least not yet). Those TG specifically for OCFA are all on the countywide cells.

 

[Mikek]

Can't remember when we switched over but at least 25 years ago. The new system will be 800MHz Motorola P25...

Not to split hairs - but the current P25 system became operational in 1999 when PF&RD moved over. All of the fire agencies were moved from their original Type I system by January of 2000, and police after that...

 

[monitor142]

Mike, not to "split" your split hairs even more but OC is not a true P25 system by standards. It is a proprietary Motorola Type II SZ 3.0 system that uses both analog and P25 CAI digital modulation. An easy way to remember is if it was a true P25 system there would be no analog talkgroups.

-M142

 

[CommLt]

All I remember is, although fire is still analog, we have come a long way since I was in the Command Center and we were lo band simplex.