Schenectady County on Colonie channel

[DaveNF2G]

As locals know, Schenectady County has the ability to page border companies over Colonie's VHF paging channel (154.385). Their signal is often loud and scratchy. Newer scanners provide a way to block these transmissions.

Schenectady County uses 110.9 Hz CTCSS on Colonie's channel. Colonie is carrier squelch (no tone). If you have a scanner with the capability, you can exclude 110.9 on this channel and your scanner will block out the out-of-county stuff.

It also appears that Colonie's dispatchers cannot hear Schenectady County because they dispatch calls right over SC's pages.

 

[Thunderknight]

The only department I’ve ever heard dual paged is Stanford Heights. They actually have a district that is in both towns. Colonie pages them on .385. If the UCC pages them, it goes out on the Schenectady County UHF and then repages them on .385. I believe this is an automated store and forward type setup, as it starts about 10 seconds after the UCC page starts and it’s the same content, just the audio is more distorted. My assumption is the store and forward equipment/transmitter is at the fire house.

Perhaps the FD members only carry VHF pagers so they needed a solution to deal with each county they are dispatched by being on different bands. (Of course, now that both counties share an 800 trunked system, responses occur on the same system now…different talk groups).

 

[DaveNF2G]

It's a 30-second store-and-forward. Audio quality is really bad on VHF and on the old UHF channels that are strapped to the trunked system. Everybody knows it, but as they plan to shut them all down eventually, there is no incentive to fix anything.

Also, Verdoy would need to obtain/provide trunked pagers, such as Unication, in order to be paged directly by Schenectady County if they discontinue VHF paging.

 

[thisissparta789789]

I have an answer(?) for this.

Stanford Heights has an in-house store-and-forward system that was built in the 1990s by a firefighter of the department. Prior to then, Niskayuna Police (who dispatched them and the other two fire departments in Niskayuna before 2014) and (to a lesser extent) Rotterdam Police would essentially send out tones that only triggered the siren, meaning that their firefighters would have to respond to the station to get information on the call unless they had a scanner with them.

I do not have the technical details, but the system is triggered by the Schenectady County tones. These tones automatically trigger the siren (if it’s not past a certain time since they’ve since shut it off at night) and start the recording process. About ten to thirty seconds later, the transmitter at the firehouse sends out the Colonie tones over their paging frequency and then plays back the message from Schenectady County. Colonie PD dispatchers can hear these, but since the system is automated, there is nothing they can do. This system has only had some slight changes since it was built. Because both Colonie and Schenectady County have retained their pre-trunk/digital paging channels on VHF/UHF, no major changes had to be made when Schenectady County went to a trunk radio system.

Stanford Heights is the only multi-county department in Schenectady County that does this. Pine Grove is dispatched by the UCC for all calls, including in the Guilderland part of their fire district, with Guilderland PD calling the UCC by phone first. Esperance is dispatched by Schoharie County for all calls, with the UCC calling Schoharie County by phone for any calls in the Duanesburg part of their fire protection district. Burtonsville is in the same boat, but with the UCC calling Montgomery County. Confusingly, until recently, whenever Burtonsville got a medical call in the Duanesburg part of their district, the UCC would have to make two phone calls: First to Montgomery County to send Burtonsville Fire first responders, and then to Schoharie County to send Esperance Fire Rescue Squad. Now, as of January, Duanesburg Volunteer Ambulance Corps serves the entire town, although Esperance and Burtonsville still do first response EMS for all calls in their respective districts, and Esperance still does BLS transport in Schoharie County.

 

[DaveNF2G]

I have an answer(?) for this.

Yikes! Thanks for the details.