MARITIMES SCANNING SITE

Thank you to Stephen for his observations and to two firefighters in the Truro area.

This page contains incomplete information and as well information that is subject to verification. Your additions and corrections based on actual observation are requested!

The fire departments in Colchester are independent entities but they work very closely together. As of 2009 there is a unified paging and communications system based on a set of repeaters owned by the Municipality of Colchester County, which does not include the Town of Truro. All of these repeaters operate on 152.525 MHz, with an input of 158.1. DCS (digital tones) are used, with a different tone for each site. Departments are paged out by Valley Communications in Kentville, and generally operations will continue on the 152.525 frequency, but backup ops frequencies are available to all or most departments. Each department also has a frequency or frequency pair available for its own use.

Information below excludes the Town of Truro unless it is specifically mentioned. Truro can and does operate in mutual aid with the county departments but is dispatched separately (by the town police dopartment) and uses a different frequency (155.61 MHz).

Several of the departments now use a standardized unit call sign system with a station prefix number followed by these suffix numbers listed below. This appears to be the same system as used in the nearby East Hants systems and perhaps is also in wider use in Nova Scotia.

00   Station base radio
01   Chief
02   Deputy Chief
03   Assistant Deputy Chief
04 to 10    Other officers
11 to 19    Pumpers
21 to 29    Tankers
31 to 39    Rescue and Utility
41 to 49    Pumper-Tankers

As an example, 501 would be Debert's Chief, and 521 would be its first tanker

In the chart below it can be seen that the prefix order is basically alphabetical, similar to Stephen's map numbers, but however with some variations which occur for as yet unknown reasons.

Department	Map #	Private Frequency (Channel 2 on radios)*	Unit Numbering System
Bass River	1	154.25	Standardized system with Prefix 1
Bible Hill	2	154.40 output/158.325 input	Standardized system with Prefix 2
Brookfield	3	153.905	Standardized system with Prefix 3
Cobequid & District	4	152.705 output/158.28 input	Standardized system with Prefix 8
Debert	5	154.10****	Standardized system with Prefix 5
Economy	6	155.55	unknown
Five Islands	7	155.52	unknown
Great Village	8	154.22	unknown
Hilden	9	153.935	unknown
North River	10	154.295	Standardized system with Prefix 4
Onslow-Belmont	11	153.92	Prefix 9 may be assigned but uses old style truck numbering, e.g. Truck 1, 2, etc
Salmon River	12	155.25***	unknown
Stewiacke	13	153.785	Standardized system with Prefix 17
Tatamagouche	14	154.80	unknown
Truro [not part of the unified system]	15	155.61 primary, 159.15 secondary**	Prefix 15 may be assigned but uses old style truck numbering, e.g. Truck 1, 2, etc
Upper Stewiacke	16	153.44	Standardized system with Prefix 19
Valley-Kemptown	17	154.77 output/153.545 input	unknown

* Frequency information on this chart must be considered somewhat conjectural as it is based partly on TAFL listings which are known to be misleading or sometimes incorrect, and partly on more accurate but incomplete information from local firefighters. Further information is requested from those who have definitive information.

** 159.15 is the former Truro Police repeater output, unused by them since a migration to the TMR.

**** 154.10 has been submitted as being the Debert department frequency but has also been submitted as the Special Hazards Unit frequency. It is unlikely to be the frequency for both, and therefore further input is requested.

This is a set of seven repeaters all operating on the one frequency that are owned by the County on behalf of the fire departments. The repeater output doubles as the county-wide paging frequency. Note that the town of Truro is not part of Colchester County and its department operates separately; however mutual aid arrangements are in place.

Site Name	Location	DCS	Stations Paged*
Bass River	Birch Hill	071**	Bass River, Great Village
Brookfield	Fire Station	074	Brookfield
Harmony	Old RCMP site	073	North River, Bible Hill, Valley-Kemptown, Hazards Unit, Salmon River, Debert
Londonderry (or Lynn Mtn, see below)		051**	Speculation: Economy, Five Islands
Colchester North	Nuttby Mtn	065	Tatamagouche, HIlden
Shubenacadie	NSIMRS site	174	Stewiacke?
Upper Stewiacke	Stewart Hill	072	Upper Stewiacke

* requires verification and not all stations are listed. Observations by SEF indicate that this list may vary, in that stations may be paged on different sites.

** All seven DCS readouts have all been detected but there remains some uncertainty regarding which site has 071 and which has 051.. The other five are confirmed as correct.

There is reportedly another site located at Lynn Mountain at the far western end of the county, and presumably serving Economy and Five Islands; however there is no listing of this in TAFL. Further information is requested from listeners and users. The Londonderry site is listed in TAFL but there is no obvious use unless it might be operating in tandem with the Birch Hill site. Another possibility is that the site listed for Londonderry is actually now the Lynn Mtn site.

DCS Usage

DCS (Digital Code Squelch) has been detected on 152.525 MHz transmissions in this system. Due to the uncertainty in knowing which particular site is being heard it has been difficult to relate the particular codes to a particular transmitter, although most are settled. The scanner listener most likely would disregard the DCS and listen for all the 152.525 transmitters. It might be however that a listener would wish to hear only one site and therefore the DCS could be entered into the scanner for that purpose.

It is hard to know why the system has the differentiating DCS codes. It has been said that the pager units will receive pages from any of the sites subject to receiving the proper audible tone, or if operated in open mode. The two-way radios will apparently operate on 152.525 only on the "local" repeater site, based on the particular DCS code. There must be some advantage in this, but it does mean that the radios are not readily usable in other parts of the county, without selecting another repeater, and this is not known to be possible, i.e. I have not been advised that there is a control on the radio to do so. More information is required on the use of DCS in this system. One user report states that while only one site can be keyed up per tone, that the sites are hard linked so that in effect keying up the local repeater brings all of them up, and therefore all traffic other than pages will be heard on all repeaters.

Departments that are part of the unified system, i.e. all but Truro, are paged by Valley Dispatch on 152.525 MHz. Valley Dispatch sends the page through the most appropriate site or tower. In some cases it may be that it goes out over more than one transmitter. It is thought that pagers can receive pages from any active transmitter, but of course they activated only with the tones assigned to the particular department. Note that the page frequency doubles as a two-way frequency and pages are acknowledged on this frequency or possibly via the TMR. Generally acknowledgment or pages are on 152.525 and then operations commence on 152.525 and often continue to the conclusion of the incident if it is not unusually severe and if the frequency is not needed for other calls. When necessary, operations move to other frequencies as listed in the channel line-up chart shown below. Scanner listeners in the immediate area should have all frequencies entered and monitored. Those from farther away will likely only be able to hear the repeater frequencies and therefore could dispense with the simplex ops frequencies.

New comments March 2010: A search of TAFL has led to the following linking information:

Valley Dispatch link Kentville to Birch Hill on 140.685 (Birch Hill to Kentville on 143.49)

From this it appears that Valley communicates via radio (beam antenna?) through Birch Hill to Harmony which looks to be the central site. So that lets say a page has to go out on the Nuttby (Colchester North) tower, the signal would go from Kentville to Birch Hill to Harmony to Nuttby, routed probably via tones. This is guesswork and any comments are invited.

Truro Fire Department is separately paged, by the town police department and due to being a career (non-volunteer) department it is not known if the actual pages are by radio or by landline. Information is requested from readers.

Channel	Frequency	Xmt frequency or simplex	Usage	Comment
1	152.525	158.10	Dispatch and initial ops	DCS tone may vary by dept. 152.525 is also the primary paging frequency.
2	varies by dept	varies	Dept ("private")channel	see list above
3	153.83	simplex	Mutual aid	Use with non Colchester depts
4	152.03	154.19	Nuttby Mtn fire grid rptr	152.03 is also available in simplex (talkaround) mode
5	150.275	simplex	Ops 1
6	150.575	simplex	Ops 2
7	150.665	simplex	Ops 3
8	150.38	simplex	Ops 4
9	154.77	simplex	Ops 5	These frequencies are also thought to be in use as outputs of separate department repeater channels. See separate list.
10	152.705	simplex	Ops 6
11	154.40	simplex	Ops 7
12	155.61	simplex	Truro Fire Dept	Mutual Aid with Truro*
13	159.15	simplex	Truro Fire Dept secondary	Mutual Aid with Truro*
14	154.10	simplex	HAZMAT	Special Hazardous Response Unit

Nuttby 152.03 remains available in 2009 and could be used for mutual aid with non-Colchester departments, but this provincial frequency must be considered more and more to be obsolescent.