Direct 16 traffic
Hi gmclam,
You incident was dispatched at 0701 to the Safeway Meat Department at 3320 Arden Way. Structure assignment: Bat 7, BC7, BC5, ENGINE 106, TRUCK 106, ENGINE 110, MEDIC 110, ENGINE 105, HAZMAT 109, METRO AC. 24 OPS, 24 SAFETY. Ops on A7. B7 established Watt command and units positioned at the rear and side of the structure investigating reports of light smoke and evacuations. At 0708 Interior Group transmitted brocken and B7 advised to move to Direct-16. It has been my experience that they move to Dir16 as radios operating on the Fcom TG's can't penitrate heavy concrete structures. This seemed to be the case. I've never heard comms on Dir16. I've heard that it's a digital channel. Someone gave me a freq of 868.9875. I've not been near enough to an incident where this channel has been used to hear for sure, but I seem to remember, Some months ago when fire responded to a call at Sac Bee, that the freq hung up my BC246 like digital transmissions do. My BCD396 couldn't decode it either. But , as I say, I've not been close enough to do some snooping. There was a call at Sears/Arden where they went to Dir16 as Interior checked out smoke from an elevator this was done for the above reason. I kinda gave up, but still have the question in the back of my mind. Hope this helps. I also believe that there are other threads that have touched on this question.