Happy Narrow Band Eve!

Just a few hours 'till we fall off the fiscal cliff and hit the narrow band deadline. Monrovia PD finally switched over last Friday, and now I am waiting for the mutual aid fiasco to begin.

The states "White" frequencies switched over to the nationally standardized V-Fire nomenclature a few years ago. White 2 became VFire 22, White 3 became VFire 23, and starting January 1st, the last holdout, White 1 will narrow band and become VFire 21. I have a feeling LA County fire will still refer to their VHF radios as their "White" radio even there will no longer be any "White" channels.

I have heard many local police agencies still use the "CLEMARS" nomenclature when post narrowbanding the label should now be CA LAW1. So I wonder, have they not narrowbanded their CLEMARS freqs, or did they keep the old CLEMARS label on their narrow band channels? Either way I'm guessing there is going to be some confusion and over deviation in 2013.

Have a great one and don't forget your spare battery!

APCO making new standards!

 

The APCO Standard for Public Safety Communications Common Incident Types for Data Exchange is out, it's a list of terms to help 911 call centers, dispatch centers, first responders, etc. pass incident info between each other more efficiently.

Read the document at apcointl.org