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Radio Operations?
Our department has recently implemented a new radio operations policy, where we change to one of our three operations channel upon arrival at a scene. This is to keep our main channel, that is used for dispatching, free from clutter in case of multiple calls. For example, we are dispatched on Fire Main and upon arriving at the scene we switch to Fire Ground 1. Some of our people don't like this change and say it is confusing. I don't have a problem with it and think it works just fine. One of our neighboring departments use the same type of radio policy. However, they have 10 more stations, 10 times as many people and 8 operations channels. Does anyone else use a similar radio policy and how easy is it for your people to use?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Nelson on
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We have 4 stations within our city, which share 2 com channels, if we have a lot of chatter on those or the scene requires mut. aid, we can switch to what we call the TAC channel, which is only radio to radio, it does not go to the repeater. It has it's pros and cons.
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Permalink Reply by Cassie on
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That sounds approx. like what we use and it works great in my opinion. All the channels in the county, fire, ems, search & rescue, police are designated by names (a lot of which are colors... not sure why...).
Dispatch is on Fire North. All responding engines acknowledge the page on Fire North. The command officer responding also acknowledges the page on Fire North and specifies which channels will be used for operations/check-in. There are 3 operations bands that all fire, ems, and police have and are set aside for mutual aid type calls: County Fire 1, 2, and 3.
If an incident is very small and won't involve other agencies, a dept may opt to use their department's channel and will state such on Fire North. My dept. uses Ruby repeater or Rae Tac. Search & Rescue uses Purple or SAR Repeater.
For large incidents where there is too much traffic for one operations channel, certain sections (ie. water operations, etc.) will get moved to a different open channel.
It keeps Fire North fairly clutter-free, allows relatively easy communication between all agencies (multiple fire depts, ems, police), and to me, is not that confusing.
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Permalink Reply by Patrick on
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That is pretty much standard procedure for our deparment. Only our fire ground channel is called the TAC Channel. Of course there is some department's that don't know how to use TAC channel's and makes it impossible for dispatch to dispatch any other calls.
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Permalink Reply by J.M.Mariano Almeida on
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Hi, here in Portugal we use a radio operations policy in all types of scenes that envolves more than two fire cars, this policy its to avoid the caos in the comunications, and separate the teams in sectors give them a diferent channel wich they respond to the sector chief, and the sector chief to fire chief in an other channel, that avoids that the rescue team stays in clear conditions of radio, and the combat team have the same clearness. We use that pyramid of comunications on every scenes, the channel its givem to the fire departments for the main comunication centre, when we whent out to a incident we know wicht radio channel we have to work, in the incident. But we still can use the main channel but only the chief in the fire can use it, for more backup or to give status. the distribution of channel gows as the scene grows and the means in the operations theatre needs to.For me it's not confuse.
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Permalink Reply by Dustin J. Millis on
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We work under one main channel that county dispatches off of... All the dept's in the county are dispatched off of this channel and can use it to talk back and forth to dispatch with no problem. The dispatch center also has 8 "TAC channels" that can be assigned to any dept upon request for use on a larger incident. Mainly fires, MVA's, CO's, etc... While enroute to one of those incident's IC simply ask's county dispatch for a TAC channel to which they then assign us one. All FF's switch to that channel when arriving on scene. That channel only transmits for approx. two miles. So... if there was ever such a high demand that we needed more then 8 TAC channels, one dept. on the south end of the county could easily use the same channel as a dept. on the north end without any problems.
As far as guys not switching over to the proper channel or being confused... its not really an issue. Of course there are sometimes when a guy forgets what TAC channel we were assigned but for the most part, the officer requests the channel while enroute, and at that time, all FF's in the rig switch their radios on and turn them to that channel.
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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Looks like most of us use the simple one command/multiple fireground channel type of operation. For some of us anything less would make life imposible at a busy time. Stephen is in the same 'Region' as I am, and has said what we do, I would only add that the Region has 59 Brigades in it so fireground channels, which are not on repeater, have to be used! Yes there are times when the repeater main channel is very quiet and could be considered available, but it isn't! Then there are times when the use of a non-repeater channel just doesn't work and we have to ask permission to use the 'main', but that is uncommon.
Firesqwasher? I think your confused people are just against change, I fail to see how such a simple system can be considered confusing!
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Permalink Reply by Jay Nicholson on
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It's not rocket science. Dispatch assigns 'tac' channels when dispatched. It was about a 30 minute training class.
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Permalink Reply by Fire Capt. 1304 on
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With our current system only about three of the departments in the county have a seperate channel for operations. We always switch to our fireground channel when we arrive on scene and have had no problem. With the new 800 mghz radio system the county is putting in there are approx.10 fire ground channels and everybodys radios will be programed exactly the same to make it easier to use them.
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Permalink Reply by Ken Swain on
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We have several channels to use, and dispatch assigns a frequency for the call. Wildland fires are usually switched over to VHF frequencies, so that BLM, USFS, and other agencies in the area have common frequencies. We are dispatched initially on Reno Fire's 800 mHz system which has 12 different channels to utilize, most named by color. Dispatch is done on Reno Red, and swithched over if it is a larger incident, usually to Reno Gold.Like I said, wildland is usually switched to Truckee Meadows main, or to one of the repeaters (Peavine, Virginia Peak), or to State fire White, which all the VHF radios have programmed in. Our vehicles are equipped with both 800 mHz and VHF radios, so we can go either way. We also have other agencies progarmmed in on the VHF, like BLM, USFS, Carson City FD, etc.
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Permalink Reply by Jonathan on
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We have a dispatch channel that is mainly used for dispatching and some general talking between officers and dispatch, 3 fireground channels, and then about 3-4other channels used for various reasons that in the event of multiple calls can be used if the first 3 fireground channels are used. Dispatch will tell us which channel to goto, with multiple alarms they keep track of which call is on which channel. It works great for us.
-Logue
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Permalink Reply by blair4630 on
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EMS, fire, and police all have there own dispatch frequencies, plus the one city in our county has a seperate channel for dispatching city police and city fire, so total of 5 dispatch channels keeps things pretty quiet.
Once dispatched on county fire (dispatch), all units attached to the incident are given an ops channel. It is assigned based on your area of the county, based on repeater tower locations. So basically, unless you are mutual aid to another agency in another area of the county, you use the same channel all the time, and so do the departments around you. We have (again in reference to the county georaphy) central fire, north, south, east, and west. It works pretty well. If there is a mayday or evacuation signal from the chief, besides the air horns, at the OIC's requset, the fire dispatcher will come over the ops channel and issue the OIC's order.
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Permalink Reply by Trainer on
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We have state wide channels and guidelines; for the most part each dept has a dispatch feq after that there are 2 MA channels and six low power opps, red main, white support and/or ems, blue water supply/aerial opps, black, gold and gray are special team opps, hazmat, USAR, ect. I think we all need to realize that IC and opps has to have 2 radios. I take issue with repeaters on fire ground channels, never ever...well OK I'll give you the wild land thing where working large geographic area, but that's it.
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