What Cities or Counties use Simplex Fireground in ADDITION to a trunk system

[krokus]

It's considered "best practice" to operate within an IDLH environment on simplex analog.

In our situation, an onsite mobile radio, on I-TACx in talk-around mode, penetrates a large commercial structure better than a signal from the repeater site.

I have been training our personnel to have interior ops on one of the I-TACs, using an apparatus radio to communicate with interior crews, and a handheld is used to communicate with dispatch.

 

[evfd1625]

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St Clair county IL uses a simplex P25 channel for fire ground, as the dispatchers do not want the county fire dispatch TG tied up with fire ground operations. But they do monitor the scene of action channels as they are called. The county I live in now uses the Indiana Safe T system and uses trunked tactical channels for fire ground. Frequently our portables will go "out of range"inside. I've made the argument to use the 8Tac 91d channel as our fire ground, but this goes nowhere.

 

[krokus]

Frequently our portables will go "out of range"inside. I've made the argument to use the 8Tac 91d channel as our fire ground, but this goes nowhere.

Have the decisions makers actually walked around, inside the buildings, while trying to maintain communucations with someone outside the building? That is what we did, and the answer was obvious. (I carried a handheld on the analong simplex 800MHz, while one of the captains was utilizing both the digital and analog trunked systems. Our chief was in his command vehicle, and was who we were talking to.)

 

[902]

Why is that important? Having the traffic recorded is the only reason I can think of, and the radio traffic that dispatch would hear could be totally different than what is being heard on the scene.

It is part of the IC's job to relay needed information and requests, along with maintaining radio discipline. If I were IC, I would not want an outside party stepping onto my radio assignment, which is mine to manage.

Right. The last thing I would want as an IC is someone attempting to manage the operation from dispatch (or have an "uber IC" that directed from a detached remote location), although I would absolutely require a conduit between my incident and dispatch for additional resources. I've seen some field deployable assets have logging recorders, and having a recording of scene traffic would be invaluable if things had to be pieced together afterwards, but that's really it. At least in my opinion.

As for NYC, (where's Frank?) I believe their fieldcom vehicles have logging recorders for the various frequencies used onscene. At least they did the last time I was in one (a while ago).

Where I am now, FG and tactical operations are done on analog trunked talkgroups. I very rarely hear noisy signals on it. They have capability to drop to conventional repeaterized on the ICALL/ITACs, but they do not use simplex.

 

[zerg901]

Hartford County CT Fire Departments - Scan New England Wiki

It says here that Hartford CT FD has 857.2625 for tactical

 

[zerg901]

Worcester County Fire Departments - Scan New England Wiki

go all the way to the bottom

Worcester Mass FD has 859.4875 PL 131.8 for Conventional Talkaround

 

[MTS2000des]

apparently my county, Cobb county, GA is now using simplex for firegrounds. This was a recent (within the last month) change. I am not sure of the exact frequency, but they use 700/800MHz XTS5000 radios, but recent monitoring of structure fires revealed this recent practice. The county fire and emergency services operate on a Motorola Astro 25 V7.xx simulcast trunked radio system. Calls are dispatched via voice over the system along with a Motorola FAS4000 altering system at stations and on their MDTs.

Until recently, all fireground traffic was on separate trunked talkgroups, now they assign a trunked talkgroup but the IC's use it to relay information to radio, and IC use the simplex FIRE TAC for crews working interiors. Not sure if it is a digital or analog mode.

 

[gmclam]

What does trunking have to do with it?

What Cities or Counties use Simplex Fireground in ADDITION to a trunk system?

Are they monitored by their dispatcher? Can the dispatcher talk back to them?

These seem like separate issues. What difference does it make if the main system is trunked, repeated or simplex; if a dispatcher monitors it? For example a call on a Cal Fire frequency (simplex repeated) may move fireground to a simplex channel. That channel may or may not be monitored by a dispatcher. But my piont here is that the original dispatch channel is NOT part of a trunked system. Why would it matter if it is?

 

[rescue161]

I'm not certain if this still holds true, but when I lived in Beaufort, SC, they used 856.4375 for their talk around frequency. It was simplex only. 856.4375 was assigned many different talk around channels and each channel used a different CTCSS or DCS tone. Examples were:

Channel 18 - Fripp Island Fire Ground
Channel 21 - Lady's Island Fire Ground
Channel 140 - Sheriff's Talk Around
Channel 141 - Beaufort PD Talk Around

and so on. I have the complete list here from the late 1990s, but I cannot find the list of tones that were used to seperate the users on that frequency.

As a side note, we worked hand in hand with the Port Royal police and they thought that their "Channel 142" was a secure channel. It was true that it couldn't be scanned by the trunk-tracking scanners of the day (BC235) in trunking mode, but if they were within range, you could pick them up on 856.4375.

EDIT:
I just saw that this system is no longer used. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[exkalibur]

Toronto Fire does, to a degree. They have fireground channels in their radios which are used to link back to the trunk system.

The portables transmit on 800MHz simplex to a repeater in a nearby district chief's truck (one goes to pretty much every call) which is then repeated out via UHF. The UHF "Fireground" repeaters are then patched (at the console) to the 800MHz talkgroup.

This allows crews working on the fire side to talk simplex with everyone else, but still have their comms transmitted over the assigned talkgroup, and vice versa. It works pretty well.

 

[zerg901]

http://forums.radioreference.com/no...3107-nc-700-mhz-direct-freqs.html#post1775511 - North Carolina is adding 700 Mhz simplex channels to all of their VIPER (statewide TRS) radios. IIRC Raleigh FD uses VIPER.

I think that Washington State has some 800 Mhz simplex freqs for statewide use. Maybe Oregon also. So maybe Seattle FD and Portland FD use them.

 

[a1emt]

The suburban departments in Milwaukee County, WI use a set of 800 MHz simplex frequencies for fireground communications. These frequencies are actually designated statewide for this purpose through our mutual aid system, the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS). Dispatching and other operations are carried out on the County's Smartnet 800 trunked system.

The fireground simplex frequencies are labeled 8TACRED, 8TACWHITE, and 8TACBLUE to mirror the MABAS naming convention also used for the VHF common fireground frequencies. All of the county suburbs have Mobex crossband repeaters which can link the 800 MHz simplex frequencies to their counterpart in VHF which allows local interop at the scene with departments running only VHF gear.

The system has worked great for fireground operations as far as in-building penetration, clear audio and interoperability...but the dispatch centers cannot monitor and it must be recorded by some means at the incident command post.

Recenty, the City of Milwaukee FD has migrated to an 800 MHz OPensky radio system and utilizes vehicular repeaters to run fireground operations on that trunked system.

Jim

 

[KF4ZTO]

Fairfax County FD has simplex channels available to them, in addition to a slew of 800MHz interoperability frequencies.

Richmond City uses a similar system, in addition to the ITAC/ICALL channels.

The IC is usually assigned a tac channel by dispatch and that is monitored by dispatch.

 

[radioman2001]

Getting back to FDNY, true they use simplex for fire ops, but you can occasionally hear them being rebroadcast over the 480 DOITT trunked systems on Events 4 and 5, as well as the 800 system.(Some pretty heavy conversations and they are not censored) I suspect its more for management then anything else, there have been other discussions about this before.

 

[zerg901]

http://forums.radioreference.com/ar...-mesa-fd-fireground-ch2-dead.html#post1778128

Mesa Arizona FD uses a Mobile Command System with 6 freqs at 700 Mhz. I dont know if simplex is an option in that system or not.

 

[zerg901]

Fulton County, Georgia (GA) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

Atlanta Georgia Police have a TalkAround channel. I bet the FD has a Talkaround channel also.

 

[tbendick]

Here at FDNY we have audio recorders in every battalion vehicle.
Aides carry two radios its more important for a ff in an idlh to have a good setup, then caring if someone needs two radios outside. Also all those big trucks can talk to the dispatcher if needed.

When testing from inside the building to the chief outside in some cases nothing might work. This shouldn't be a reason to say that we should trunking then.
In trunking if you don't get the tower nobody gets you. However in simplex if you can't talk outside, someone inside in another location may pickup and then relay a mayday call.

I am a nyc ff I deal with 100 story buildings and large underground subway stations. We do have building repeaters at some locations, we use these for command communication between chiefs. Tactical fire attack is on simplex.

 

[KB7MIB]

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Mesa, AZ has both the Topaz RWC as their primary system for FD/PD/et al, and the PD has a mobile command vehicle with a 2nd, seperate tactical system that the FD may or may not have use of. It's unclear if the VHF conventional system is still in use.

 

[zerg901]

District of Columbia , District of Columbia (DC) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

Washington DC FD has 2 simplex freqs (RINS is the Regional Interops system IIRC)

I seem to recall that every one of their fire trucks got mobile repeaters (MO3) at one point. Can anyone confirm that?

 

[Alarms50]

Westchester County, NY utilizes an analog UHF Trunked System, with analog simplex for fireground operations. Approximately 50% of the FD's in the County utilize the Trunked System Westchester County UHF Trunked System Trunking System, Westchester County, New York - Scanner Frequencies as their primary response communications system. Once on scene FD's have access to analog simplex frequencies http://emergencyservices.westchestergov.com/images/stories/pdfs/communications/UHFplan.pdf for fireground operations. Approximately 25% of the remaining FD's use their own legacy simplex frequencies for response and fireground use. The remaining approximate 25% utilize the County legacy LowBand frequency for response with UHF Fireground once on scene. Each FD establishes it's own policies, so the above procedures are not followed 100% of the time.