What to listen to with UV-5R in GA?

[bc151]

I used to turn on my BF at 4 am every morning and listen to heroes react to some tragic stuff every day. It helped me understand how quickly your life can change and that helps me deal with life and keep things in perspective.
I do not watch TV and do not care about social media.

Are there any good frequencies left?
What else is there to listen to other than weather?
Thank you for hosting this forum.

 

[jaspence]

Most public services have moved to much higher frequencies and digital rather than plain FM signals. Add on the encryption that some use, and that easy to hear FM we all could receive are history. There is no inexpensive way to listen today on your own radio. You might try one of the scanner apps on a cell phone or tablet. The transmissions may be delayed, but you will still know what is happening.

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

Are there any good frequencies left?
What else is there to listen to other than weather?

Welcome to the RR forums. "Good frequencies" mean different things to different people. "Active frequencies" are another thing. Go ahead and peruse the RRDB. Focus on the "Mode" column and you should be able to bring anything in ID'ed as "FM" or "FMN", that is it. Your UV-5R will do you no good for trunked radio systems, P25, DMR, NXDN, etc. Please give your county & city when you can so we can get eyes on the database to identify what a monitorable for you, identify potential pitfalls which may hinder your scanning experience and make an informed scanner recommendation for you.

 

[MTS2000des]

Nothing in metro Atlanta, except a few analog ham repeaters, and kiddie talkies on FRS, GMRS, etc. Everything listenable here requires a digital capable scanner that does TDMA, and one with an I/Q front end for simulcast if you want to actually enjoy it.

A few outlying counties like Pickens are still currently on analog VHF. That is most likely to change in the near future. Paulding county SO simulcasts on their old VHF analog frequency of 155.43. That too, will soon end.

 

[1268]

Nothing in metro Atlanta, except a few analog ham repeaters, and kiddie talkies on FRS, GMRS, etc. Everything listenable here requires a digital capable scanner that does TDMA, and one with an I/Q front end for simulcast if you want to actually enjoy it.

A few outlying counties like Pickens are still currently on analog VHF. That is most likely to change in the near future. Paulding county SO simulcasts on their old VHF analog frequency of 155.43. That too, will soon en

With the capability of Moto P25 and others to do two-tone paging it kind of took the wind out of the analog VHF/UHF paging market. Within 5-10 years I doubt we see any of that left except in fringe parts of the state.

 

[dlwtrunked]

With the capability of Moto P25 and others to do two-tone paging it kind of took the wind out of the analog VHF/UHF paging market. Within 5-10 years I doubt we see any of that left except in fringe parts of the state.

Most paging moved to 900 MHz (929-930 MHz) years ago and much (mostly regional medical) remains there.

 

[MTS2000des]

With the capability of Moto P25 and others to do two-tone paging it kind of took the wind out of the analog VHF/UHF paging market. Within 5-10 years I doubt we see any of that left except in fringe parts of the state.

Not to mention, most agencies use CAD based paging solutions (in our case, I implemented Page Gate to our OSSI CAD back in 2018) to automatically send alerts of calls to responders, command staff, specialized groups such as SWAT, Drone support, etc, directly to cellphones. No need to waste airtime or resources paging out with fire tones.

All our fire station alerting is via IP, so you hear nothing over the air, except a 1000hz tone (which dispatchers generate from a drop down on their MCC7500s), then the call audio.

We will soon be implementing text to speech, once time and resources allow, to lighten the load on our fire main dispatch position.

 

[1268]

Most paging moved to 900 MHz (929-930 MHz) years ago and much (mostly regional medical) remains there.

Not that kind of paging... this is voice paging for fire/EMS calls rather than text and data though there are places using Aplha paging to dispatch.

 

[DanRollman]

We will soon be implementing text to speech, once time and resources allow, to lighten the load on our fire main dispatch position.

Good to hear. It's a great resource and a way to allow dispatchers to focus on more important tasks than reading the words on a screen aloud. Their job is so much more than that, especially the parts that require human intellect.

Which system are you going to? Any idea which one DeKalb recently implemented? I know of Phoenix G2 and several others, but don't know how to tell them apart by listening.

Are there any other "large" agencies in Georgia using this sort of system yet?

 

[MTS2000des]

Which system are you going to? Any idea which one DeKalb recently implemented? I know of Phoenix G2 and several others, but don't know how to tell them apart by listening.

Are there any other "large" agencies in Georgia using this sort of system yet?

We're using Mach Alert, it has a native speech engine powered by Locution. The biggest hurdle and expense is the CAD interface, we're a Central Square One Solution CAD customer. I was the one who implemented and built our current CAD in 2018. At the time, the CAD interface wasn't purchased. The radio side requires an interface to get Mach Alert to play nice. It was like $18 grand for an ST to go into the core and do some configuration.

Coweta uses the same CAD but a different FSA. If you listen to their fire, you'll hear it. We just got a CAD to CAD up with Coweta last month, which really helps with calls in Palmetto and Chat Hills which are partially inside Coweta.

 

[dlwtrunked]

Not that kind of paging... this is voice paging for fire/EMS calls rather than text and data though there are places using Aplha paging to dispatch.

The post I replied to did not make that clear.