[Scan-DC] DC Fire trunked radio failure

[edtobias at comcast.net]

That's probably because the DC FEMS folks operate on the same 800mHz trunked system as all of the surrounding counties. So, DC FEMS simply patched their 3 dead talk-groups into 3 Montgomery talk groups (71-C, 71-D and 71-E) that were unused. The DC units in the field only had to switch to those TGs. Of course, the transmitters and receivers for the Montgomery TGs are in Montgomery County, so there were signal-strength problems in DC. That's why DC also tried to use one of Arlington's unused talk-groups, (which would use antennas with better line-of-sight to downtown DC). I don't know if this was ever accomplished. 

MPDC, on the other hand, operates its trunked system on its old 450 mHz frequencies. So, the police radios couldn't use the TGs of the 800 mHz suburban systems the way the fire radios could. It was MPDC that was really bailed out by the distribution of the radios from the NCR cache. 

Ed 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Cathy Drzyzgula" <cathy at drzyzgula.org> 
To: scan-dc at mailman.qth.net 
Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 9:10:08 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: Re: [Scan-DC] DC Fire trunked radio failure 

Sounds like things worked better on the Fire/EMS side than on the police 
side: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/30/AR2010033003 
767.html