Navy Southeast Region Fire Dispatch

Recently I noticed that NQX (Boca Chica Naval Air Station-Key West) fire department units responding to daily radio checks from "Regional Dispatch".

Further investigation reveals that the Navy's Regional Dispatch Center in Jacksonville, Florida began an upgrade to their dispatch center in 2012 that continues through 2013 and beyond. The RDC currently dispatches for six installations including NAS Boca Chica/Key West, NAS Jacksonville, NS Mayport, Naval Support Activity Panama City, Naval Construction Battalion Center Gulfport, and NAS Meridian.

The downside to this is that instead of hiding out in rinky-dink Key West and only hearing calls for the island, you get to hear fire and rescue calls for the Navy's whole southeast region, so it makes the NQX system a whole lot busier even though I'm only monitoring the fire and important talkgroups on that trunked system.

From monitoring the networked talkgroup I have determined the following unit number series in use:
200 - Mayport
500 - Meridian
900 - Key West

I'm tracking what I hear on one of the many Radio Reference wiki pages for this system.

Dolphin Cycling Challenge This Weekend

Link to official Dolphin Cycling Challenge event web site.

This weekend, November 3 and 4, 2012, sees the Dolphin Cycling Challenge ride through Broward County. It's actually a tri-county event with rides starting in Dade County at Joe Robbie/Pro Player/Dolphins/Dolphin/Land Shark/Sun Life/Trainwreck Stadium and City Place in West Palm Beach. Shorter rides start in downtown Fort Lauderdale at Huizenga Park and run along I-595 or State Road 84, I can't tell which from the maps.

The largest impact will be the bicyclists along A1A through Fort Lauderdale which is still being cleaned up from the passage of Hurricane Sandy. The wind-whipped ocean washed tons of sand onto Atlantic Blvd which the city public works crews shoved into giant temporary dunes to block further intrusion. This left A1A impassable during the annual Boat Show and 1 narrow lane was opened southbound only yesterday. I assume that vehicular traffic will be totally blocked to allow the bicyclists to use the one or two available lanes that are not swamped with sand.

I will likely open up Bote's Mixer Board to the police special event talkgroups used to coordinate this bike ride so you will hear more than just the usual fire radio traffic.

USCG digital channels added to Key West scanner feed

I finally got off my duff and added a block of about 45 digital channels used by the United States Coast Guard. I was reminded to do this by hearing activity on them over my mobile scanner yesterday during an emergency visit to Key West.

I don't know how often they're used, but it should provide an additional aspect on radio activity in Key West.

I just had to reboot the feed computer because RadioFeed had crashed, most likely because I was handling the computer yesterday doing some maintenance. If you just leave things alone they keep running along just fine.

So now I'm going to enjoy the morning with a Cuban American from Cuban Coffee Queen and sit back to listen to my feed.

Enjoy!

Changes to Deerfield, BSO district 5

Deerfield Beach fire has surrendered and joined Broward County. Their fire fighters were sworn in Friday morning and now operate off Broward fire Dispatch 2 talkgroup, along with every other department already on there. They use the same tactical and car-to-car channels as everybody else on Dispatch 2. No word yet on what will become of their little trunked system, but at last report even Deerfield lifeguards were rumored to be moving over to Event 4 or Event 5 on the Broward system, which would leave the old Deerfield system devoid of users.

On the police side, Broward Sheriff's Office district 5 serving the unincorporated wild, wild west of Fort Lauderdale will move to BSO channel 7A to join Oakland Park and Lauderdale Lakes cops already there. Expect traffic on that channel to double as there is no end to the crime and punishment in district 5.

You might recall that it used to be districts 5 and 12 together on channel 6A before the great refarming a year or so ago. It looks like we couldn't stand the prosperity.

Key West and NQX

Bote's Southernmost Feed is focused on the Boca Chica Naval Air Station today to discover the purposes for the unknown talkgroups that I have logged thus far.

I'll probably open it back up to the usual scan list tonight or tomorrow, depending on how much traffic the Navy base gives us.

Watch out later this week for Hurricane Irene as she might pay a visit to the Keys or southeast Florida. Either way I'm sure all 3 of my feeds will be hopping as public safety officials prepare for a tropical system.

Pompano Beach fire moves to Wild Feed

Owing to the overwhelming popularity of Bote's Wild Feed, Pompano Beach Fire dispatch has moved operations to Broward County fire Dispatch 5 which is served by the Wild Feed. No longer will you hear Pompano fire on Bote's Mixer Board, only Fort Lauderdale fire as well as the lifeguards for both those cities (as long as I can stand it, anyway).

Pompano fire will mix it up with the other Broward fire departments on their existing 3 tactical talkgroups, plus the 12-zone talkgroups for mutual aid interoperability when needed.

Additionally, Lighthouse Point, Sea Ranch Lakes, and Lauderdale by the Sea fire departments will join Pompano Beach fire officially on 1 August, 2011 at 06:00 since they all abut each other in the northeast corner of the county.

The law enforcement agencies for all those jurisdictions will consolidate their operations on a handful of talkgroups on the Broward County system as well. I have no plans to carry their police traffic, just making note of it to document it.

More info as it arrives. I will post the updated channel lineup on my personal web site About Bote's feeds, clickable in the pane to the right.

NAS Key West added

I have added the Naval Air Station Key West trunked system to the Southernmost Feed. Several times while visiting Key West I have seen the Naval fire department running a call and wondering where they were going. Now this adds the missing piece to the puzzle.

The NAS police and other talkgroups are carried on the system, so if they get too chatty I might disable them and keep the fire channel. We shall see about that.

Mixer Board BOLO announcements

For some time I have had a talkgroup that I thought was used only when Fort Lauderdale police would make broadcast announcements to all 3 districts. I recently discovered that was not what it is used for and revamped the setup on the Mixer Board feed.

The Mixer Board still has Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach fire talkgroups in it, but I set up another "system" in the scanner that only listens to the special multi-select talkgroups that are used only when they make these broadcast announcements. You will hear alerts of incidents like stabbings, shootings, police chases, severe weather announcements, and so forth.

These are ONLY ANNOUNCEMENTS. They are infrequent. They are brief. This will not be general police traffic, just alerts to get the attention of all on-duty officers, then they state at the end which district is handling the incident so you can go tune in. In our case my Wild Feed has all 3 FtL police districts on it so you can listen to that for more police action. Many times the police incident you just heard will be followed by the EMS or fire call which also comes right out on the Mixer Board, so it's a hand-in-glove fit.

I also added these same multi-select talkgroups to the Wild Feed, but since that scans police traffic already it can be tied up on, say BSO Oakland Park, during the announcement so you miss it.

If the announcements get to be too much of an annoyance I will change things, but let's see how things work out for now.

Key West air radio gone

I locked out the aircraft comms group on the Southernmost Feed. It was talking just a bit too much and most of the traffic was the same: routing via Boca Chica departure, then BAITZ, then CARNU, then direct blah, blah, blah. Sometimes some interesting stuff, but not enough to have it stopping there instead of real interesting stuff on police or fire channels.

We still have Key West police and fire, Monroe County, FLA police and fire, and most marine channels (when they're not being totally obnoxious, that is).

Spring Break cops in Ft Lauderdale

Bote's Wild Feed will be streaming Fort Lauderdale police scanner action for the remainder of March in honor of all the bullet-heads who come down for Spring Break madness.

I should have done this sooner since we are yet 2 weeks into Spring Break, but there's only one of me to go around.

I'll post here when the Wild Feed switches back to Broward County's gripping fire radio action.

Spring Break mode over

It's about time to wrap up my exclusive coverage of Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale.

I have locked out FtL police district 2 once again since the bar district downtown is back to normal and the common thugs in the wild, wild west of Fort Lauderdale are more trouble to listen to than they are worth.

Also, I will be opening up Broward County fire North and South dispatch channels, allowing us to hear all the fire calls that are handled by Broward's E.C.C..

Note that there are many jurisdictions that handle their own dispatching in Broward County, such as Pompano Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Coral Springs, Margate, Deerfield Beach, and on and on. Apparently they operate in isolation which has bitten them in the butt before. Don't get sick or injured in Broward County.

Stay tuned for another big announcement coming tomorrow.

Mixer Board tags, talkgroups trimmed

I received my Acoustic Research Infinite Radio 200 today. Once I got it programmed, cycled the power to get it to do something useful, I found that it receives my streaming scanner feeds just fine. It has great audio, by the way.

It also shows the channel tags as the scanner receives them, rather than as they are played 60-120 seconds later out the radio's speaker. While there is nothing I can do about that, I can trim the length of the alpha tags so that they don't need scroll so much on the 18-character display screen.

Also, since this is Spring Break month here in Fort Lauderdale and the FtL cops have special details for Spring Breakers, I am locking out some of the chatty talkgroups that are not directly of interest. These include Broward Fire South and North dispatch talkgroups, which cover Davie, Hallandale, and other jurisdictions outside the area of focus for now. On the other hand, I have added Fort Lauderdale police district 2 which covers the popular downtown nightlife district along SW 2nd Street on either side of the FEC tracks. I will change things back next month after the dust settles.

It just keeps getting better and better, don't it?!

McLean Relay Station up full time

Bote's McLean Relay Station is up full time with channel tags to serve you better. Please avail yourself of the links on the left. They most likely will bring up the Shoutcast server status page if you just click on them.

If you want to listen outright, just copy the link contents and paste into your favorite player, including WinAmp (preferred), iTunes, VLC (VideoLAN), or Windows Media Player (no channel tags).

The systems monitored include (and are usually limited to):

0 - The Federal District of Columbia fire trunked radio system
1 - Arlington County, Virginia public safety digital trunked system, fire
(1) - Arlington County, Virginia public safety analog trunked system (catch all)
3 - MWAA (Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority) DCA and IAD trunked system, fire
4 - Fairfax County, Virginia public safety trunked system, fire
7 - Montgomery County, Maryland public safety trunked system, fire

At my option I might open up or deactivate certain groups as needed since I have remote control capability of this scanner. With the upcoming presidential inauguration fun and games I'm sure this capability will come in very handy. :-)

Because this feed monitors several trunked systems that employ duplicate talkgroup ids you might see DC fire on the channel tags when MWAA fire is talking. That's the way it goes. If you refer to the Council of Governments handy-dandy numbering chart above you can tell who you are hearing: the jurisdiction numbers are prefixed onto the unit numbers, so engine 705 is former Kensington (Montgomery) engine 5-1 and tower 401 is former McLean (Fairfax County) tower 1. Also, the damned channel tags don't seem to keep up when the scanner is rapidly stopping on different channels so you can't always believe what you read on the Internet.

More will be posted here as warranted.

Boca Box lineup change

A small change to the system lineup on Bote's Boca Box: Deerfield Beach fire is out, Boynton Beach public safety is in.

The indoor antenna simply can not hear Deerfield Beach's system very well, so I'll try it with Boynton Beach fire and see how it goes.

So now the lineup is:
Boca Raton public safety
Delray Beach public safety
Boynton Beach public safety
[ maybe FEC railway if there is something to hear, but lots of computer noise and poor reception make this unlikely ]

At least I have the 3 digital public safety trunked systems in there, so those of you who don't have digital scanners can partake.

Enjoy!

Boca Box lineup

I'm liking the marine reception on the Boca Box feed, so I will leave that group active for a while to see how it is during the week. There was some humorous stuff during the past week that piqued my interest.

I have locked out the police traffic as it is not the purpose of this feed and is far too active for my wishes. The cops made good test traffic to see how the feed was working early on, but now we will only hear from the police if there is a large incident involving them.

So the lineup is now marine simplex channels in the Boca Raton area, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, and Deerfield Beach fire departments, and FEC and CSX railroads in the Boca area.

Because I have remote control capability I sometimes focus on one of these, particularly FEC in the late afternoon as the action heats up and passes right by the Boca receiver.

Enjoy!