I am in Birmingham, Al we have a new radio system, second system in about five years. We have the ability to communicate via radio with all other city depts. but are not allowed. I work for the fire dept. and it would be very useful to talk directly to other agencies on the same scene, but can't. How do your depts. address this, are you able, and do you?

I'm on a VFD in SE Wyoming.

We are going to a brand spanking new wyolink digital trunked statewide system. (Project-25 trunking system full operational in 07) that will allow anybody with a radio to talk to anybody they need to statewide.

Thus if I'm all the way acroos the state in Yellowstone with my issued VFD hand held (officers are issued take home radios) I can talk to any local LEO/Fire/EMS agency/unit.

Right now on my old BK I can talk to the SO and the ambulance, but just monitor all the other freqs except for a state wide mutual aid freq.

However, our command unit's radios and Chief Officers have coms with just about everybody except the local paid fire department as they went to a trunked 800mg system that nobody else has.

Hey B'ham whats up?
I'm over in Anniston and we are on a Motorola 800dig. Trunking system. The feds pay for due to the chemical stock pile at the Depot. All of us (Fire/LEO/EMS) are on the system. Most have handheld all trucks or cars are on and all we have to do is dial up the other agency. It seems to work well with a few dead spots, but ALL systems are gonna have a few of those.

800 trunked as well.  We have talk groups for:
- Fire common, every fire radio in the county has it
- Law-Fire, every PD and FD radio has it.  We use it frequently as our PD runs as first responders with us
- Citywide, every radio in the city has it.  During snow storms the PD commander will talk directly with the streets supervisor
- 7 Event channels, every radio in the county has them.  We use them during events or large incidents

Additionally our dispatchers can tie a channel of ours to a channel of the county north of us, or to one on the Air Force base, or a dozen or so other radio channels.

We go through a regional dispatch center.  The center has seperate towers for police and fire.  We dont have the fire freq. in our cruiser radios, but we have the towns FD channel where they do some day dispatching.  We have our own seperate PD channel too which they have.  So we can communicate and we do often whereas they sometimes get PD complaints come in through the FD.

We also are in close communication with town about 10 miles away and have their fire / police channel.  There fire and police go through the same regional dispatch as we do.

Our radios have the capability to talk to the B"ham police, they  are on the same system, we have probably 100+ channel capability, but FD doesn't talk to PD on their channels or vice versa. The city has never allowed it, Seems like a waste, and post 911, having an IC channel, where all agencies could talk direct ,only makes sense. There is a saying around here. " We are rapidly advancing  into the 1970's".  Anniston, is Chief  Carrol still up there as FD chief? or was it Bo Lewis? if so what do you think? you can email me directly, if it is neg. comments. LOL!