SA Firefighter

Only thing in my experience that cleared the traffic in my SAMFS days was the air horn on our LUP (fleet 166).......might have been a "little" truck but it made a BIG noise!

Quote from: Ferret on December 28, 2010, 04:48:59 AM
Has a main line and a back up line to reduce problems with telstra faults

Except when the exchange fails and the "backup" cellular coverage comes from the same exchange as happened to us recently in the middle of the night! The public didn't realise but for a few hours they couldn't even ring 000....bit scary!

They have reprogrammed SOME of it - up to this call they where still telling CFS to use TG194 for jobs in the old MFS area!

Yup - the spirit of Station 56 lives on!

Cheers Darius - I'll give them a ring.
The Alpha works quite well here tapped into my discone antenna that runs my GRN scanner - it just needs the right info programmed into it for my group.

Can anyone on here help with programming an AlphaII off air decoder?
Where I work the GRN pagers dont work and hence I dont get any pages which is a bit of an issue as one of the main day time crew!

The 3 of us that came across from Burra MFS to CFS got issued nice new Apollos last week - thought the beep tones where quite loud enough and when combined with the vibrate mode gained plenty of attention.

Then we started getting pages for Victor Habour Ops as well.....woops! Back they go!
They had a dig around the cupboard and we now have old Samsungs till they get our Apollo's sorted.

Yet to get a firm idea of the Apollos sensitivity compare to the Samsung or my old SAMFS XStream pager - i dont think its quite as good as the XStream.

Keen to get a few calls while I'm at work to see how the Apollo does as SAMFS had to issue me with an Alpha II terminal so I could get reliable paging.

Quote from: bajdas on October 20, 2010, 08:20:09 AM
Will be interesting how fast the new channels will begin to be used now that the 80 channel UHF CB frequencies have been released. This comes into effect Jan 1.

Unsure if some of the older radios will cause interference on the new channels.

Sorry for the long post but for the information of others:

IMPORTANT INFORMATION CONCERNING UHF CB RADIO
Overview
The use of a UHF CB transceiver is governed by a class licence as prescribed by the Australian
Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Currently, all UHF CB radios operate within an
allocated frequency band that is divided into 40 channels, with each channel spaced 25 kHz apart.
These radios are commonly known as 'wide band' radios.
Due to advances in technology it has now become economically viable to design and build radios
that operate in a narrower bandwidth and hence use less spectrum. These radios are known as
'narrow band' radios and operate with a channel spacing of just 12.5 kHz. By using 12.5 kHz
channel spacing instead of 25 kHz, the 40 channel allocation can be expanded to 80 channels,
doubling the channel capacity and relieving congestion in the UHF CB band.
The ACMA has recently released a proposal to allow the use of narrow band equipment in the
UHF CB band. To minimise interference to current wide band repeater and telemetry services,
the proposal recommends that narrow band radios be introduced in two stages over a 5 year
period.
Stage one proposes that from January 2011, narrow band radios will be allowed to operate using
60 of the 80 channels in the newly revised UHF CB band. However, narrow band transmissions
will not be allowed on current repeater channels 1 – 8, 31 – 38 and Telemetry channels 22 and
23. This will minimise interference to these wide band services during the transition to narrow
band technology.
Stage two will take effect after January 2016 when all 80 channels will become available for
narrow band transmissions.
What this means to the user;

- Current 40 channel wide band radiso will continue to work on the orginal channel frequencies and will operate effectively past 2016

- Current 40 channel UHF CB Radios will NOT become obsolete and will continue to operate on the original 40 channels, however they will not be able to converse on the newer channels 41-80.

Further info www.acma.gov.au

Gotta love the old Acco!
Petrol V8, Allison auto gearbox with the VW powered Godiva pump on the back - we still had that truck (sorry - "appliance") when I joined in 96!!

Quote from: safireservice on October 04, 2010, 07:03:04 PM
04-10-10 17:26:09 RESPOND:, PRIMARY ALARM, I1: FIP MAIN ENT FOYER WORMALD, BURRA HOSPITAL, COMMERCIAL ST, BURRA *CFSRES: - MFS Burra Response
Ghosts?

ROMTEK hasn't been moved from old SAMFS station - waiting for new ASE's to be installed in monitored premises - so alarms still come up as MFS!

Correct Darren - but - my bet is we would have been on the chopping block anyway based on current information. Fortunately we have had a great working relationship with the local CFS for some time so the decision was made to actually retire from SAMFS and swap teams - so really we made the decision for them as SAMFS then had a station without a crew.

It was a tough decision to make - after it being such a part of your life for 15 years - but as you said with current avenues for recruitment exhausted and all local services struggling at times to get recruits from an ever decreasing and aging pool we made the decision together to do what we did.

Congrats to the local CFS brigade for making our transition as smooth as it has been - they have gone out of their way to welcome us to our new "family".

Closure of other stations may not go so easily..........

Probably 3 more actually.........

Rainer  - CFS have gained the gazetted town area of Burra

Cheers - looking forward to it! :-D

There are many reasons behind the recruiting issues - but generally the requirements and commitment was too much for many people who did show interest which was unfortunate. I've enjoyed my years with SAMFS and dont regret a minute of it. I also look forward to many years with the Burra CFS!