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Looking for a Vhf Base Radio Donation for Ham Radio Station For Small Vol. FD
Hello All,
My Name Is Rod Gross. I Am a Vol. Firefighter/Communications Guy, For Howe Vol. Fire Dept. We Are A Small Town FD Located about 50 mile's north of Dallas, Tx.
I am a Amateur Radio Operator aka "ham". I Have Presented a Plan to my Dept. to Revamp
Our Dispatch Desk. All We Have is a 25 watt Mobile, And a 1/4 wave ant, for dispatch.
This works fine, Until we loose power or if our repeater goes Down, which it does! then we Have to resort to Our County Fire Channel, that we are dispatched on. Or go Radio to Radio,
as you know this doesn't go very far!!
They Are on Board to Let me Setup Better Dispatch Station, But we Have A limited Amount
of Money in our Equipment fund, And with Older Apparatus, we Are Dipping into it Alot.
The Member's Love My Idea.... But We Cant Afford to Buy New Communication's Radios.
So I Am Asking Around to See if I Could Get A Couple of VHF BASE Radio's Donated, If Possible? I Have Gotten A Base Antenna And Feedline Donated, Which Was a great Help!
If you Have Anything like this you would like to Donate, We can Provide a Tax Write off, as we are a Non Profit Org. Howevfd.org
I Can be Reached by email at..... hvfd22@gmail.com Thank You! And Stay Safe!
Sincerely,
Rod Gross
My Name Is Rod Gross. I Am a Vol. Firefighter/Communications Guy, For Howe Vol. Fire Dept. We Are A Small Town FD Located about 50 mile's north of Dallas, Tx.
I am a Amateur Radio Operator aka "ham". I Have Presented a Plan to my Dept. to Revamp
Our Dispatch Desk. All We Have is a 25 watt Mobile, And a 1/4 wave ant, for dispatch.
This works fine, Until we loose power or if our repeater goes Down, which it does! then we Have to resort to Our County Fire Channel, that we are dispatched on. Or go Radio to Radio,
as you know this doesn't go very far!!
They Are on Board to Let me Setup Better Dispatch Station, But we Have A limited Amount
of Money in our Equipment fund, And with Older Apparatus, we Are Dipping into it Alot.
The Member's Love My Idea.... But We Cant Afford to Buy New Communication's Radios.
So I Am Asking Around to See if I Could Get A Couple of VHF BASE Radio's Donated, If Possible? I Have Gotten A Base Antenna And Feedline Donated, Which Was a great Help!
If you Have Anything like this you would like to Donate, We can Provide a Tax Write off, as we are a Non Profit Org. Howevfd.org
I Can be Reached by email at..... hvfd22@gmail.com Thank You! And Stay Safe!
Sincerely,
Rod Gross
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by DUST on
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Let me see if we have any lying aroundm at one time we did after we went to 800s...I'll send you an email.
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Permalink Reply by Rescue601 on
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I am slightly confused. How is utilizing a VHF base radio going to work better then using the fire channel with the current mobile? Additionally where does the ham radio part come into play?
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Permalink Reply by Rod on
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Ok, Let me Add Or Clarify myself a little. To be honest I didn't want to make a long post. So I will Tell you why I want a "Fixed Station" aka "base radio". The Main reason is Most Have a built in power supply, More Power for Direct Communications which we use Alot! Like the Forestry Channel's.
Our Fire channel 155.925 Grayson Co. Fire ch. Is Used as A Dipatch Channel for 13 Vol. Fd's in our county, Also we don't have a Dedicated dispatcher for Fire Op's. So we Use it to check in Route, On scene Etc. The County Has 2 Dispatcher's on at a time, And We Have a pretty Large County, So It Can be Pretty Busy. We Alway's go to Direct When On Scene Whenever Possible to keep Radio Traffic to A minimum For the dispather's on the fire Channel. I Know it doesn't sound like it works But It does... We " all the vol. Dept's" Have A System And we are Glad to have the channel, as it is pretty new to us.
We use to use the county channel for all Op's, And It just got to be to much, and after 9/11, It was Funded by a Homeland Security Grant to Add the Fire Channel, in 2005.
Anyway on to your other question. Utilizing Ham Radio! In My Opinion if you do not know Anything about your local Ham Radio Operater's And What they Do? You Need to Find Out! When All Else Fail's
HAM RADIO WORKS!! We Provide Emergency Communication's During Disaster's When You Don't Have Cell Phone's Or Repeater's Because of Power Outages/ Interoperabillty Issue's, And Emergency Traffic That Cannot be Handled by Local Agency's During A disaster. Most Think there Ready for it! But when It Fail's We are Ready And Trained to Respond for Communictions. That's What we do!
You Need to be Involved with your local Amatueur Radio Group! Thats why We are putting in a Ham Radio Station In Our dept. We Have a Liasion Ham Radio Station At Our North End of the county at A City Fire dept. And I Have Set it Up where Our Dept, Is going to be the South liasion.
What this create's is a Exellent Network between Our County Emergency Operations Center "EOC"
And Our Ham Radio Guy's Out in the field, For Storm Spotting And disaster Relief. We Use it Alot!
We Helped out during The Katrina And Rita Hurricane Disaster's By Providing Communications to Evacuating Relief which was Setup in our County, At Several Locations. This would not have Worked Without Ham Radio! As there wasn't Any Communications Going in Or Out, Due to the hurricane's Knocking out all Native Communications. Imagine What Your Dept Could do without Communications? Our County Is Pro-Active With this As they Have used us Several time's for Communications They could not Handle. Plus It isn't going to Tie up A Fire Person, From Responding, Ham Radio Is ALL VOLUNTEER, and you will find plenty of them to cover the station. we operate under A.R.E.S. Amateur Radio Emergeny Service, And R.A.C.E.S. Radio Amatuer Civil Emergeny Service, Which you have to be FBI background checked for to be able to Work with Military And Government Agencie's to pass Traffic for them.
I will Get off the Soapbox now! If You Don't Know Anything about Amateur Radio? FIND OUT!!!
Sincerely,
Rod Gross
kd5hqf 73's "that means Take Care and Be Safe"
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Thanks for the additional information, as I actually hold a General ticket hence why I was asking about the Ham involvement in the dispatch center. Unfortunately I have seen some departments take amateur radio transceivers and mod them to work in the public vhf space. Additionally its 73 and not 73's and it means Best Regards. :) I am a member of ARES, RACES, as well as a member of NAVY MARS.
In my county in southern MS we actually have a primary 800 system, a standby 800 repeater, and then we would activate ARES to assist with traffic handling.
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Ok, Thanks for your Input, I am Not Going to get in a War of Knowledge.... I am Simply Saying We Are Trying to upgrade our Dispatch Desk. I would Never Mod a Ham Radio to do Public Service , I Know Amateur Equip. Isn't Type Accepted for this.
I wish Our County Had A backup, But So far we don't. Hence The Use Of Ham Radio Operator's And The Reason Why We are Going to Have an Amateur Station In our Dept.
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