Warren Township (Somerset County) Reception Difficulties

[KC2ZHY]

Today, as I was attempting to monitor a fire in Warren Township, I realized my scanner was NOT picking up ANYTHING. I went back through my audio logs and it turns out since late September, interceptions of Warren FD's dispatch frequency (470.625MHz) have been completely absent with the exception of a few bursts of static getting through. HOWEVER, Warren EMS, which is hosted off the same tower @ 7 Geiger Ln, has still been breaking squelch.

Has anyone else had this problem? I am only 6 miles from the antenna, so I find this extremely odd and am considering that there may be something wrong with their antenna...

Thanks!

 

[mdragon]

I'm a lot further away, but I had just been thinking the other night I didn't remember hearing a fire tone out or any FD traffic in some number of weeks or months. My reception has never been great here, but usually at least on the 3rd floor of the house I would pick them up with decent regularity.

I've been picking up PD and EMS regularly during the period I've not heard FD traffic. I was considering posting myself wondering if they'd moved to a different Freq or the County dispatch or something else might have changed.

 

[KC2ZHY]

I actually did some investigating... drove around Warren for a bit. It is definitely still the same frequency, but even within the township limits, there is something very wrong with it... Additionally, the EMS freq is frequently transmitting a humming / buzzing sound. Probably got hit by lightning one-too-many times and now it's FUBAR, but maybe they don't even realize it yet.

 

[abrasowski]

Warren's system is very interesting.
On the PD channel, before they had the additional receiver sites put in (one is on the high school), and still to this day I hear there are coverage issues in town. However- driving up the parkway from the shore (exit 120) I can hear them crystal clear?! ...funny how radio wave propagate.

The mountains in that town are a killer for UHF signals. I wonder if that has anything to do with you not receiving the FD transmissions

 

[mdragon]

I did seem to pick up some key ups on the FD frequency yesterday. Nothing with voice, or anything beyond a second or two. The ability to pick them up definitely dropped off about 2 months ago now, so either they changed something on purpose, or something has broken recently.

 

[KC2ZHY]

Same here. Recently, I've been able to pick up FD traffic again from time to time; didn't change anything with my scanner or antenna, so they must of done some changes on their end to fix it.

 

[mdragon]

Picked up the FD nightly test tonight for the first time in several months. Had the scanner in one of the better locations for receiving that direction, but definitely was first time in a long time I'd even heard a peep. FD single was about 1 bar weaker than the EMS test that followed, but I'd say something has definitely been fixed up on the FD side.