Kansas Public Safety
Kansas Highway Patrol - May 2000 - moving from radios at 44Mhz to a 800Mhz radio system. KHP Dispatch centers are being closed and regionalized. (see below)
List of All Kansas FDs with Links to Those Online
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December 2000 Info on the Statewide 800Mhz Radio System (NOT TRUNKED)
Kansas started to install a 800 mhz conventional system statewide about 8 to 10 years ago [approx 1990]. It is in use in the eastern and central 2/3 of the state. I am in the West region and they are about 50% complete here. In my Troop, the system is about 90% complete with just 2 towers not yet complete.
This is a all motorola system. At each 450' tower sight there are 3 conventioal repeaters, Highway Patrol, Kansas Dept of Transportation and EMS. The KHP has a HT and Mobile for each member. KDOT has issued only a HT for each member and I think will be intsalling some craddle type amp and antenna converters but they plan on having coverage to where you have HT coverage from anywhere. The radios are alphs tagged for the channel selection with the County tht the tower is in, the county number and the troop or district name. The radios are programmed by troop or district. KHP radios have a bank for each troop, Capital police, you local KDOT district, Mutual aid. There is a talk around channel for each troop which is shared with kdot just using a different dpl.
I can tell you that after using our old 44 mhz system that this is system works great. For the most part KS is pretty flat and the range on these repeaters is unbelievable. Even car to car comms range is pretty good out in the open, in town is not quite as good. Our old low band system we used vhf ht extenders and they didnt work very good and were not reliable. Alot of our low band tower equipment was vintage 70's and was not in good condition. Some of our old towers were beginning to rust through.
They are using trunked systems in the Wichita, KC and Topeka metro areas. There has been talk about trunking statewide along with MDT's but would cost too much. There is AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location) in the Topeka, KC area which they want to expand statewide as along with this 800 upgrade they are taking all dispatch offices out of the outlying troops and moving to Salina as a cental dispatch. This is about 80% complete. This would help keep track of units for the central dispatcher.
Thats about it for Kansas. They say this project has to be complete by July 1 2001 as our low band license expires at that time and there will be no extentions. Towers are costing about $230.000 each and there about 15 in my troop alone. Radios run $2000 for the HT and $3000 for the mobile.
Posting it is fine with me. About the (what we call) extenders. The reason they didnt work very well was trying to keep the levels set right so the low band mobile radio would key the vhf transmitter that would transmit to the ht. There is a level that can be adjusted so that real weak signals didn't key the the extender all the time and drive you nuts. This also worked the other way and wouldnt key the extender at all and the dispatcher would be calling for you while you were out of the car and you never heard her. Also the audio quality was terrible.
I dont know how many times the dispatcher would tell me I was unreadable cause the audio was garbled and unreadable. I think alot of this had to do with the old low band equipment and the maintenance of that equipment. Say for instance you were talking on your ht. It is repeated by the car to the nearest low band tower then my 72 mhz and some 450 mhz though a couple hops and then through microwave to the dispatcher. By the time it is repeated this many times the audio get degraded pretty bad. I kinda wonder if these extender units were sent out to the field before they were perfected. All I know for sure is I didnt rely on them very much.
The audio quality of the new 800 radios is unbelievable compared to the lowband stuff.
I know there has been some horror stories about 800 but it is a dramatic impovement over our current system. Its nice to have mobile to mobile coverage of 80 miles+ compared to 15 miles simplex coverage. I better stop I could bable on about this stuff for along time. Thanks....Oh yea, about the range issue of the ht. There are no foot chases out here, thats what cars and flir aircraft are for
Alittle more info
Thats right Peter, When we switch to all 800 we will not have any extenders anymore. In fact the Dept of Transpotation will operate off of ht only - with some docking stations in some trucks. Right now we have about three 800Mhz repeaters on the air that we can use for car to car, and the DOT has been using them alot with the recent snow we have had - and from what I am hearing they are doing great with the ht only thing. As more repeater sites come on line it will be even better.
Your also right on the local dispatch. There is not alot of changes in this area as there are not alot of frequencies in rural america. About 3 to 4 frequencies per county and about the same per city. There is only 1 trunked/kenwood government system in all of western ks and that is in Garden City/Finney County. And it is public utilities only. All other PS stuff is on vhf/uhf except the state going to 800.
On Sat, 30 Dec 2000 13:12:51 -0500 (EST) [email protected] (PZ) writes: 10-4 on no foot chases. IIRC you told me that KS Highway Patrol have 800Mhz portables -
Each antenna site has 5 repeaters - 1 KHP + 1 KDOT + 1 EMS + 2 spare/car to car - attempting to find money to Smart trunk sites - might create North and South statewide systems
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Oct 99 Info from Dec 00 kcscanner list
KS/MO Scanner Radio Group WebSite: http://drsm0ke.net ===============================================
Scanner Sites
http://drsm0ke.net/scanner/ - Kansas City Area (that is sm0ke spelled with a zero in it - not an oh)
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Butler County
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Radio Freqs - 05Aug00 from FCC info + my notebook
Abbreviations -
FPD is Fire Protection District - M is "mobile only" channel - R is repeaterized channel - HT is "portable only" channel - B is "base" only channel - PD is Police Dept - FD is Fire Dept - DPW is Dept of Public Works - EMS is Emergency Medical Service (ambulances)
Notes - all UHF channels are repeaterized unless otherwise denoted - 155.82 might be a emergency paging channel - County 911 might use multiple channels to dispatch fire and EMS calls - all of the County 911 repeater sites are diffferent for each channel - EMS has the 463Mhz Med channels - 39.24 was probably the old countywide police channel for all law enforcement agencies - circa 1980, most of the FDs had seperate channels at 39Mhz
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El Dorado - per City website - 05Aug00 - PD runs 911CC with 1 super + 4 comms officers - FD is combo and cover El Dorado City + El Dorado Twp + half of another Twp
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Douglas County
www.ljworld.com has a live police scanner online using Quicktime - Lawrence Journal (Oct 2000) - also try www.ljworld.com/specials/scanner (28Dec00)
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Johnson County
Triage codes are supposed to be used on all EMS calls. They aren't normally used on fire calls unless someone is injured or ill.
All calls are toned out on our Channel 1 - 154.250 mhz. In rare cases the tone may be simulcast on another frequency, but this is usually done only for exercises. After the call is toned out, the radio traffic for the call moves to another channel while the Channel 1 dispatcher manages available resources and prepares for the next dispatch. Routine calls go to Channel 2, larger calls go to one of the tac channels.
Our consoles are wired to automatically switch back to Channel 1 before a tone goes out. It takes work to even send out a tone on another channel - you have to simulcast on 1 at the same time to make it work.
-----Original Message-----
JO CO Fire/EMS while scanning the JO CO fire/ems freq's recently I heard EMS units reporting "patient contact made triage code yellow". Also heard this coding used by Fire units a few minutes after arriving at a fire call. What's this all about? Also, Thurs. 2/15 they toned out calls on 2 different freq's. Is this normal or equipment problems? Can you guys explain? Things have sure "evolved" since the late 70's when I was with Med-Act!
February 2001
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Updated - 5Aug00 - Butler Co Info - 09Oct00 - Lawrence live scanner - 30Oct00 - drsmoke - 10Dec00 - DOT 800 freqs - 28Dec00 - statewide 800 info + ljworld update - 30Dec00 - KHP old extenders - 07Jan01 - little more info on 800 in W KS - 09Feb01 - each 800 site has 5 repeaters - added "tml" to final tag - 15Feb01 - Johnson Co Fire Radio
Memory Lane - was someone netcasting Johnson County police and fire freqs ????? - yes - see www.shoutcast.com for Lenexa feed and ?1 other
The good Dr. Sm0ke had an early christmas present he was kind enough to share. Today i was greeted with a nice surprize from a friendly KDOT man in an orange and black truck.
Radio info:
Trunked: none installed was at factory default. (in other words not used)
Conventional: Lots!! the spelling is how it was spelled on the display.
Zone 1: DOT 4 � FREQ � dcs
1...Buffalo...868.4000 732
2...Paola.....866.9625 662
3...Parker....866.1750 503
4...Xenia.....868.1750 263
5...Mineral...868.5875 306
6...Independ..867.2000 131
7...Sedan.....866.1750 244
8...Severy....866.9625 172
9...Virgil....866.1000 205
10..Wavrly 4..867.6000 047
11..DOT T/A...868.8375 565
Zone 2: DOT 1
1...Troy.......866.9625 244
2...Horton.....866.1750 466
3...Corning....868.5875 565
4...Rapids.....866.1000 732
5...Wamego.....867.2000 311
6...Eskridge...868.1750 114
7...Emporia....868.5875 073
8...Wavrly 1...876.2000 047
9...Lawrence...868.4000 263
10..Bonner.....868.1750 205
11..Olathe.....866.1000 172
12..DOT T/A....855.9625 565
Zone 3: DOT 5
1...Hutch......868.1750 031
2...Newton.....868.4000 165
3...Edorado....868.1750 043
4...Winfield...868.5875 023
5...Wellngton..867.2000 223
6...Wichita....866.1000 032
7...MedLodge...866.9625 071
8...Coldwatr...866.1000 245
9...Kinsley....867.2000 072
10..Pratt......868.5875 052
11..LaCrosse...868.1750 054
12..GreatBnd...866.1000 152
13..Lyons......866.1750 026
14..DOT T/A....855.9625 565
unit ids
eg: 4310 � 4 =zone 4, 3=dist # 3, 10=unit #
if it ends in a 0 it is a supervisor at least that is how i recall
Now we have all the KDOT snow freqs! and of course we now can tune in on those road crews while they chitchat when they have us backed up for 5 miles waiting for the pilot car!!.
County Sheriff - 460.475 - 460.175 - 39.24
County 911 - 460.075 - 460.575 - 453.65 - 453.55 - 155.82B
County DPW - 37.98
County Engineering - 453.60
County EMS - 460.525
County Emerg Mgmt - 153.875M
County Schools - 158.805
Eldorado FD - 453.95 - 154.98R
El Dorado PD - 460.40 - 155.085
El Dorado - 153.74M - 155.82
Cassoday FPD4 - 154.01M
Rosalia FPD5 - 154.205 - 453.075
Towanda FD - ?460.575
Towanda - 453.075 - 39.18
Potwin - 39.50
Rose Hill FD - 453.80 - 39.50 - 46.14
Rose Hill - ?453.55 - 154.995R
Augusta FD - 46.14
Augusta Safety - 453.225 - 453.325
Augusta PD - 45.46 - 39.24
Augusta - 45.20 - 45.28M
Whitewater - 158.745
Latham FPD6 - 460.60
Douglas - 39.58 - 453.9875HT - 458.9875HT - ?460.475
Benton FPD7 - 460.625
Benton - 39.90
Andover FPD1 - 46.14 - 453.65 - 453.25
Andover - 37.26 - 453.775
Andover PD - 154.995R - 460.15 - 460.35M
Leon FPD9 - 460.55
Leon - 453.8875HT - 458.8875HT