[Scan-DC] Montgomery County Trunked

[Eric C. Carlson]

I was in town for the holiday and had the opportunity to briefly check out
one of the new 800 MHz portable radios for Montgomery County.  I didn't have
more than a couple minutes to scroll through the channels and view the alpha
tags.  This info might be helpful to anyone trying to identify talkgroups in
the future.

The radio I saw was configured for a sheriff's department command officer.
Each police district had a dispatch channel as well as a talkgroup for each
Special Assignment Team.  I think I also saw a tactical/alternate channel
for each district.  The radio had all the city police dispatch talkgroups,
as well as fire/rescue dispatch talkgroups for such agencies as Carroll,
Howard, and DC in addition to Montgomery.  The sheriff's department has
talkgroups for each of its units (fugitive, domestic violence, civil,
courtroom security, etc.) as well as a command channel.  Also included are
the ICALL/ITAC/COG/PMARS repeaters and Montgomery County's interagency
talkgroups.

The alpha tags are highly abbreviated (most with only 3-5 letters) so it was
difficult for me to identify them quickly.  The radio's zones are letters
and the channels are numbers, e.g., channel A1 (the opposite of the
fire/rescue radio zones and channels, e.g., channel 1A).  The radios' zones
and channels are highly customized by agency and the user's job function.

Some of the more interesting talkgroups included (all adjacent to each
other) "NIHXP" which I assume is a crosspatch to the NIH trunk, "FED" (your
guess is as good as mine), and "WMATA" which I assume is a patch to either
161.385 and/or the new WMATA trunk.  There also appeared to be two "Help
Desk" talkgroups, which I guess are there to let the radio users get help
using their radios or MDTs.

I also found it amusing to see an MDT running Windows 98 (yes, 98), complete
with the ScanDisk blue screen on start-up.

-Eric