Even when I lived in Grand Forks County 20 years ago, I always found the County Fire system a complete nightmare to monitor. Manvel used to be on 800, Thompson, Reynolds, and Emerado were on UHF. Northwood and Larimore were on County West. Gilby was on County East. I know that Thompson had a pl of 88.5 and Emerado had a pl of 103.5 if i remember correctly. Never sure about Reynolds. Took me a while to figure out that the uhf units were dispatched from 451.05 (going by memory here) which always came in strong, and was repeated on 453.9 which was I assume the local repeater for each town, and the portables were 458.9. At least now they will all be on the same page.
Actually not that complicated, most of the rural fire departments (Thompson, Reynolds, Emerado, Larimore, Niagra) were on 453.9 (repeater in each town), 451.05 being the link to the PSAP...exceptions being Manvel, Gilby, and a couple of others, some being on 155.040.
Grand Forks City stuff made a rapid move to 800MHz after the tower containing all their repeaters and bases collapsed about the year 2000 and Stones moved them (and east GF county) to their existing commercial trunked system (I'm guessing beginning of the cheap cell phone era left them with lots of radios in stock and declining commercial subscribers).
The GFPD and GFFD and GFSO hated that analog 800 MHz trunked system (had lots of portable radio holes) and moved back to all VHF in the mid 2000s, but went all P25. I'm guessing SIRN 2020 came with perfect timing for radio refresh in GF city and County, hence why they were one of the first in ND to make a full move. Not sure if all the rural fire departments have made the full move, or of there are still patch reliance in some areas..why I'm asking to see if anyone has additional insight
