Everything seemed to work well yesterday, no radio issues. Supposedly they're coming to reprogram the rest of our radios on Friday. I was able to listen on my portable all the way to around Exit 104 on I-75 today without problem, it was still coming in pretty good but I lost the control channel. I'm not sure about the timing issue on the Sadieville tower but they way I understand that it works is that some, but not all, of the talkgroups are setup to be broadcast out on both towers. I know for certain that EMS, GPD, and SCSO are all broadcast across both towers. There really is no need for GPD to be broadcast on the Sadieville tower but they insist on it. Our radios must be manually switched from the Georgetown to Sadieville site, and people sometimes forget to switch their portables. They can program them to automatically switch, but the way it was explained to me is that without installing the $100k switch in dispatch, if any of the mobiles or portables are set to automatically select the strongest signal, there is a chance you can get in an area that has about the same coverage and the radio will switch back and forth while not allowing you to transmit. It's a safety issue so they really don't want to do it. They can also setup a software switch in dispatch but if for some reason the system crashed or got reset, it would be lost and have to be setup again. They need to just breakdown and buy the hardware switch. S.O. hates it because if they are in a pursuit or something and jump out of their vehicle, they have to manually switch over to the other site right in the middle of everything.
One other thing of interest is that when they do a multiple-agency dispatch, each talkgroup is assigned its own frequency instead of every talkgroup listening in on the same frequency. So when they put out an amber alert, all frequencies are usually tied up and if you try to transmit on an unused talkgroup you'll be put in queue.
