I dedicated a BCD325P2 and a SDS200 for Simsbury’s annual FD Christmas parade last Saturday using the latest RR download. My intention was to determine if the PD was using their primary dispatch frequency as both a conventional analogue system and a P25 digital system (and if they were using the townwide channel which I believe is still a conventional analogue system). As they have listed both PD dispatch analogue and digital as sharing the same frequency, I doubted they were attempting to transmit on both simultaneously, an I was correct. I found the PD’s digital mode as the active channel, the analogue channel was silent.
(The FD Christmas parade is an annual event where they decorate the fire apparatus with strings of Christmas lights and invite surrounding towns to do the same with their apparatus and attend the festivities. It makes for quite a light show, a parade that lasted for about 45 minutes! They barricade the main drag thru the center of town [Ct. Route 10] and use it as the parade route. This year, out of a preponderance of caution, they used town highway dump trucks, with the snow plows attached and loaded with sand as barricades, due to recent nationwide reports of deranged individuals who have managed to go around or drove through simple sawhorse barricades and mowed down parade participants, causing me to think they planned the event with much forethought. Kudos to the parade committee… somebody had their thinking caps on! It may have been overkill, but better safe than sorry.)
