Summit County 33.86MHz

[SonicWX]

Hi. I created this account to ask about Summit County's old low-band fire channel (33.86MHz), since there is little to no info online. What type of two-tone paging (Motorola QCI, QCII, Plectron) was used back then by the various municipalities, including Green, New Franklin, Clinton, Coventry, Norton, Twinsburg, etc? And when was around the time that municipalities started to move to VHF high, UHF, and Trunked? I did look at the FCC licenses and a couple of them expired in the early 2000's, and some expired in the 2010's. But still not sure and I hope it can be answered on this thread.

 

[wa8pyr]

Most likely, tone paging was a mix of manufacturers. Back when fire departments mostly did their own paging, they generally went with what was cheapest at the moment. Thus, you found one agency using QC1, another using QC2, and still another using Plectron.

Here in Central Ohio, Franklin County had a mix of QC2 and Plectron, while Licking County had a mix of all three. Other counties used QC2 exclusively, some Plectron.

 

[Kaf602]

Most of the North end of the county started to transition to UHF 420 in the early to mid 90's. Twinsburg was on their own freq. since I started listening in the 80's, which was 45.56. I know the 33.86 was still used for paging until the late 90's / early 2000's. Hudson did a noon pager test that set off their fire siren momentarily.

 

[N8WCP]

As Kaf602 pointed out, the northern communities moved to 420, about the same time Akron, SCSO, Cuyahoga Falls, Bath, and Green stood up 800 analog trunked systems. When the County and Akron merged their systems to create a countywide system, all 31 communities began transitioning to the county system. The system was upgraded to P25 and in 2018 connected to MARCS as a tier 4 partner. Cuyahoga Falls still uses their 800 analog trunk system for public works but the other 800 analog trunk systems have been shut down.

 

[W8UU]

Here in Central Ohio, Franklin County had a mix of QC2 and Plectron, while Licking County had a mix of all three. Other counties used QC2 exclusively, some Plectron.

When I moved to the Columbus area in 1988, I was stunned at how many of the 33 MHz low band fire frequencies were in use. 33.86 MHz was the party line, with dozens of fire departments in seven or eight Central Ohio counties sharing the frequency. Dublin, Mifflin Township, Sharon Township, Grove City, Clinton Township, and several others had moved primary dispatching off of '86' to other 33 MHz channels. And everyone in Franklin County monitored Columbus Fire on 154.31 MHz for CORES automatic response. It was wild to hear Columbus, Upper Arlington, Grandview Heights, and Clinton Township dispatch the same fire call at the same time over different frequencies.

When skip started rolling, you'd hear fire departments from all across the country lighting up the 33 MHz fire frequencies. It was awesome to hear the old school Plectron alerting systems with the Fast Duotone signaling and the trailing beeps or sweep siren sound, or the Motorola QC1 "Emergency!" tones -- before every dispatch console and desktop tone encoder could duplicate it. Occasionally, you'd hear a self-dispatched rural fire department broadcasting a fire call with the town's air raid (fire) siren audible in the background.

For some reason, hearing a fire department or EMS agency being alerted on MARCS just doesn't bring the same smile to my face.

Great memories!

 

[wa8pyr]

When I moved to the Columbus area in 1988, I was stunned at how many of the 33 MHz low band fire frequencies were in use. 33.86 MHz was the party line, with dozens of fire departments in seven or eight Central Ohio counties sharing the frequency. Dublin, Mifflin Township, Sharon Township, Grove City, Clinton Township, and several others had moved primary dispatching off of '86' to other 33 MHz channels. And everyone in Franklin County monitored Columbus Fire on 154.31 MHz for CORES automatic response. It was wild to hear Columbus, Upper Arlington, Grandview Heights, and Clinton Township dispatch the same fire call at the same time over different frequencies.

When skip started rolling, you'd hear fire departments from all across the country lighting up the 33 MHz fire frequencies. It was awesome to hear the old school Plectron alerting systems with the Fast Duotone signaling and the trailing beeps or sweep siren sound, or the Motorola QC1 "Emergency!" tones -- before every dispatch console and desktop tone encoder could duplicate it. Occasionally, you'd hear a self-dispatched rural fire department broadcasting a fire call with the town's air raid (fire) siren audible in the background.

For some reason, hearing a fire department or EMS agency being alerted on MARCS just doesn't bring the same smile to my face.

Great memories!

There was and is no Dublin Fire Department (the city would probably get an even more swelled head if there was). Back in the day it was split between Perry Twp and Washington Twp in Franklin County, Concord Twp in Delaware County, and Jerome Twp in Union County; the City of Dublin elected in the late 90s to make Washington Twp coextensive with the city, so Washington took over fire and EMS for the whole city. Perry FD shut down and merged with Washington in 2000 due to the loss of tax revenue.

I can still list from memory what nearly everybody in Franklin County was using when I started dispatching in 1986. If I get mixed up I can always refer to "the book" if I can find it; somewhere around here I still have my Franklin County Fire Chief's Association "physical assets" book from the late 80s, which listed fire station locations, all apparatus, staffing, radio frequencies and paging tones.

Grandview Heights - 153.980, later moved to conventional 800 MHz (dispatching was in-house as the dispatcher was in the firehouse)
Clinton Twp - 33.96, went over to being dispatched by Columbus FD
Upper Arlington - 460.575 with DTMF station alerting
Norwich Twp - 33.86, pretty sure they were using Plectron
Washington Twp - 33.80, Plectron tones
Perry Twp - 33.80, later 154.205, Plectron tones (910 A / 992 B) - old Motorola CentraCom I consoles until the early 90s, then Zetron.
Sharon Twp (now Worthington) - 33.76, later 154.160. In-house and OTA, no tones. Dispatching merged with Westerville on 154.160 for several years, using OTA and direct PA lines to the stations. Old GE consoles (although a much smaller installation) like the ones in this pic https://forums.radioreference.com/t...ld-g-e-dispatch-consoles.237497/#post-2070612
Westerville - 154.160, don't recall what tones they were originally using, if any.
Plain Twp - 33.86, QC2
Mifflin Twp - 33.10, QC2 (had a CentraCom I setup similar to Perry's before they shut down their radio room)
Jefferson Twp - 155.745, in-house paging
Whitehall - 33.92, QC2
Truro Twp - 33.92, QC2
Hamilton Twp - 33.86, QC2
Madison Twp - 33.86 and Plectron... I think
Franklin Twp - 46.42 and Plectron... I think
Jackson Twp, Pleasant Twp - 33.84, QC2
Prairie Twp - 33.86, QC2

I never understood why Franklin Twp went with 46 MHz, when their surrounding agencies were on 33 MHz, and the radios of the era (1960s-70s) wouldn't do both 33 and 46 MHz in one package. IIRC the ranges were 30-37, 37-44, and 44-50. There were plenty of 33 MHz frequencies they could have chosen from.

And going around the horn:
Delaware County - 33.86 primary, 33.82 secondary (we had those in our consoles, had a lot of fun listening to LAFD Valley Band dispatch skip in on 33.82)
Licking County - 33.86 primary, mix of QC1 and QC2. IIRC, the QC1 tones were for the sirens, and QC2 for the pagers.
Fairfield County - 33.86 primary, later UHF
Pickaway County - 33.86 primary, 33.94 secondary
Madison County - 33.86 primary, later 159.330
Union County - 154.250 primary

Law was a blast, too. Back in the day we dispatched for Shawnee Hills PD on 39.62, and had 39.58 (the Ohio low-band law interop channel) in our consoles; 39.62 was PL protected, but we could hear half the state yammering away on 39.58. We also had an RX-only base station for LEERN (154.935) in the console which was fun listening as well; we could hear OSP posts over about half the state, and mobiles for about 10 miles in any direction.

Ah, the good 'ol days. I'm glad I can still remember all that, but I agree; hearing the paging tones on trunked and/or digital radio systems just doesn't do it for me, but fortunately we still have some of the adjacent counties doing alerting on conventional analog channels.

I'm tempted to get my old 33.86 Plectron out of the garage and see if anyone is still using 33.86 around here. I've been seriously tempted to fire up one of my old VHF radios on a VHF frequency, run it into a dummy load at low power, and rebroadcast my scanner output, just to get the feel of the old days. Lot of work, though...

 

[W8UU]

There was and is no Dublin Fire Department (the city would probably get an even more swelled head if there was).

Yup. If there was a Dublin Fire Department, you'd find green and silver fire apparatus with a six foot shamrock on the side. And probably gold plated. I knew about Washington and Perry splitting the city for fire protection but forgot about Concord and Jerome as Dublin grew into four counties.

Lots of great memories there. I remember the old GE console at the original Station 101 (I think it was an old gas station) in Worthington. Carrier squelch 33.76 MHz where you heard all the taxicab companies from Central America when skip started rolling.

Mifflin Fire used 33.52 MHz. I think 33.10 was the township road department.

Clinton Township had a female dispatcher that talked faster than anyone I've ever heard on the air. It was a hundred-mile-an-hour rapid fire string of information, almost like an auctioneer, and you could understand her clearly once you synced your brain with her cadence. Clinton used those Fast Duotone Plectron tones and inserted the siren alert tag tone in between repeating the call on initial dispatch -- which was a Columbus thing.

Franklin Township on 46.56 MHz was also a mystery to me, although by the time I moved to Columbus in '88, I'm pretty sure Stations 192 and 193 were fully dispatched by Columbus. I remember seeing the low band antennas on Franklin apparatus but only heard township road workers on there occasionally when I listened.

I think Madison, Hamilton, and Violet Townships were also dispatched by Columbus by the early 1990s.

39.62 MHz was a law enforcement party line in southeast Ohio. You had Vinton, Meigs, Gallia, Jackson, and Lawrence County Sheriff's Offices using "62" along with city departments in McArthur, Hamden, Zaleski, Pomeroy, Middleport, Rutland, Syracuse, Gallipolis, Rio Grande, Crown City, Proctorville, Chesapeake, South Point, Coal Grove, Hanging Rock, Oak Hill, Wellston, Coalton, and Jackson. The ODNR game wardens, watercraft officers, park rangers, forest rangers, and the regional State Fire Marshal investigators also had radios on those frequencies. Most of the village police departments were part time, but that's still a lot of communication.

For a scanner listener it was great. Two frequencies (the sheriff's offices ran semi-duplex mobile to base on 39.26 MHz in addition to 39.62 MHz) and you literally heard and knew everything that was going on all around you. And if the one officer on duty in Wellston needed help, McArthur, Vinton County, Jackson County, Hamden, Coalton, and Jackson heard it in real time and headed that way.

We had statewide interoperability. It was called LOW BAND.

 

[wa8pyr]

Yup. If there was a Dublin Fire Department, you'd find green and silver fire apparatus with a six foot shamrock on the side.

When they first painted their police cars green and silver, they were laughingly called "turtles" and the patrol guys didn't like it much. We dispatched Dublin PD prior to the summer of '89 and saw them frequently when they brought drunks over to bond out (we also served as their "Traffic Violations Bureau"). Their east district guys would come in to use the can in the radio room all the time.

17 Precinct guys from Columbus PD came in a lot, too. We used to have a lot of fun pranking them; they had a feature called "recall" which was a G-Star signal sent by the dispatcher that would cause the light bar to light up and turn slowly, as a visual indication that the dispatcher was trying to get hold of them. While the CPD guy was in the can, one of us would run out to their cruiser and turn on the light bar; when they came out we'd tell them their recall was going off. They would run out to the car, belatedly realize they were being pranked, and come back in cussing at us. We weren't cruel enough to knock on the bathroom door and tell them that, though; it's pretty mean to interrupt someone's bathroom break that way.

Lots of great memories there. I remember the old GE console at the original Station 101 (I think it was an old gas station) in Worthington. Carrier squelch 33.76 MHz where you heard all the taxicab companies from Central America when skip started rolling.

That's why Sharon eventually put PL on 33.76 (I think 131.8, which was the standard PL for Franklin County). By the time I worked there part-time in the early 90s we didn't have to listen to rapid-fire Spanish all the time. When I was at Perry, one of the guys up at Delaware County and I used to drive second-trick dispatcher "Bubba" at Sharon Twp nuts by going "EH?" back and forth on 154.280 from time to time. Drove Bubba up the wall.

Mifflin Fire used 33.52 MHz. I think 33.10 was the township road department.

Clinton Township had a female dispatcher that talked faster than anyone I've ever heard on the air. It was a hundred-mile-an-hour rapid fire string of information, almost like an auctioneer, and you could understand her clearly once you synced your brain with her cadence. Clinton used those Fast Duotone Plectron tones and inserted the siren alert tag tone in between repeating the call on initial dispatch -- which was a Columbus thing.

That's right on Mifflin FD. I always got those mixed up.

Boy do I remember that dispatcher. I think her nickname was "Large Marge." Nice lady, talked to her many times on the phone, but boy could she talk fast. Drove their guys nuts. Clinton closed their radio room in the early 90s; fire dispatching went to CFD, police to the SO. Mifflin did the same, except all their dispatching went to the SO (the SO dispatchers hated doing fire/EMS). I was surprised they didn't merge dispatching with Gahanna PD.

Columbus FD never used Plectron or QC tones, though, just the standard console alert tones. When they were in the old City Hall alarm office it was a steady tone for fire runs, nothing for EMS runs, and a series of beeps (done manually by the dispatcher) for a cancel. When they moved to Station 1 with CentraCom II consoles, they graduated to the standard Motorola console tones (steady tone for fire, warble tone for EMS, beep tone for cancel). Being a die-hard Motorola city, they still use those today on their current consoles.

Franklin Township on 46.56 MHz was also a mystery to me, although by the time I moved to Columbus in '88, I'm pretty sure Stations 192 and 193 were fully dispatched by Columbus. I remember seeing the low band antennas on Franklin apparatus but only heard township road workers on there occasionally when I listened.

I think Madison, Hamilton, and Violet Townships were also dispatched by Columbus by the early 1990s.

Those smaller agencies all moved over to being dispatched by CFD in the early 90s around the time Columbus went to their 800 MHz trunked system. The old VHF system (three repeaters with three talkarounds) just wouldn't have supported the extra traffic. The last few years of CFD being on VHF actually worked pretty well in Central Ohio; CFD had ruggedized black portable radios (pretty sure Motorola MX) with at least 8 channel capacity, while the suburbs on low band had VHF vehicle repeaters, and a mix of portables with their vehicle repeater channel, 154.280 and CFD in them. Mutual aid was a snap.

Columbus Fire had:
154.310 / 153.770 - Channel 1 (dispatch and EMS ops)
154.310 simplex - Channel 2 (talkaround)
154.400 / 153.890 - Channel 3 (command/fireground)
154.400 simplex - Channel 4 (fireground)
154.340 / 153.860? - Channel 5 (fireground/EMS ops command) - not sure on that input
154.340 simplex - Channel 6 (fireground/EMS ops)
154.280 simplex - Channel 7 (mutual aid)

154.400 was a blast. Chillicothe FD had a real barn-burner of a repeater on that frequency, which could be heard throughout Franklin County; in the days before PL-capable scanners, you had to put up with Chillicothe FD as well as Columbus FD on 154.400, or you locked it out.

We had statewide interoperability. It was called LOW BAND.

And if you were on high band, it was 154.935 (LEERN) or 155.370 (Intercity). Intercity was mostly between dispatch centers; used to hear warrants getting verified by radio all the time (free, as opposed to long distance phone calls). And like fire, mutual aid was a snap.

Nowadays there are so many channels the folks on the street can't keep it all straight; the dispatchers have to tell them what channel to go to, and usually how to get there in the radio. We used to joke that Columbus Fire had it set up so that each firehouse had a dedicated talkgroup for "cat in tree" runs. It's gotten much worse since then; heaven forbid that Columbus should find out there's a new portable radio with 2000 channel capacity on the market; they'll buy them and figure out a way to fill them all up.

Of course, we're outrageously off topic now. Sorry about that....

 

[W8UU]

Boy do I remember that dispatcher. I think her nickname was "Large Marge." Nice lady, talked to her many times on the phone, but boy could she talk fast. Drove their guys nuts.

Of course, we're outrageously off topic now. Sorry about that....

Large Marge.

Yep. That was her. Wonderful lady, and honestly a very competent dispatcher. Clinton Township's police/fire/EMS radio room on Cleveland Avenue was a broom closet with radio equipment, telephones, alarm panels, and some early (by today's standards) computer terminals.

The old Navy expression about "not enough room to swing a cat" certainly applied here.

<Plectron Tones> ... "Attention Engine 62 with Columbus ... 1800 Cannon Drive on the Ohio State University campus ... Morrill Tower, 15th floor, on a fire alarm. <Plectron Siren> Engine 62 ... 1800 Cannon Drive, 15th floor on a fire alarm ... upgraded to smoke in the building ... you're getting Ladder 71 replacing Ladder 13 ... 1800 Cannon Drive, 15th floor on smoke in the building ... they're evacuating now ... KQK-542".

Say that in 15 seconds or less and make it understandable and that was Marge.

If you listened closely, you could tell Marge was listening to Columbus Fire dispatch the assignment on 154.31 at the same time she was broadcasting the initial alarm on the Clinton Fire frequency and providing real time updates from the CFD dispatcher. If you had three or four scanners, it was amazing to hear all those fire frequencies blow up at the same time broadcasting the automatic response assignment.

Columbus and Central Ohio absolutely set the standard on how this was supposed to work.

Great memories.

I'm done. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

 

[SonicWX]

Most of the North end of the county started to transition to UHF 420 in the early to mid 90's. Twinsburg was on their own freq. since I started listening in the 80's, which was 45.56. I know the 33.86 was still used for paging until the late 90's / early 2000's. Hudson did a noon pager test that set off their fire siren momentarily.

Did Twinsburg and Reminderville use Plectron tones? I know they have a Plectron tone generator on display at the Twinsburg Historical Society, but just want to confirm sense I wasn't around back then.

 

[Kaf602]

Yes. When I started listening neither department had any staffing and came from home. Twinsburg did some weird thing when the first guy got to the station, they would say "station 3 in service" and then take over dispatch duties. EMS units were squads 3 and 4. I never understood the station 3 thing when they only had one station until years later.