[FedCom] Remote Dial Up of Federal LMR Nets?

[Chris Parris]

Years ago, before cell phones, I recall hearing incoming phone patches on
several federal systems, although I'm a little foggy on which ones. The one
I do remember clearly was the BATF in Brownsville, Texas on their 165.2875
MHz repeater in the early 1980's. They used it for both incoming and
outgoing calls, and I think the incoming calls only worked after hours. The
reason I'll never forget this one is that one night the BATF was assisting a
local police agency on a warrant, and a local police officer was shot by the
suspect. The BATF agent called his home after the shooting to let his wife
know he was OK, but he broke down in tears on the air, and of course she
started crying, too. It was one of those things that you sometimes hear that
you will never forget...

In more recent years, the VA Police in the Portland / Vancouver area had a
dial in phone patch to their main dispatch channel on 168.0 MHz. People who
needed a VA police officer would call the number and you would hear the
incoming ringing, the officer would push a digit on his DTMF key pad and
answer the call. However a few years ago, they moved off of their VHF
repeater to a talk group on the Portland public safety 800 MHz trunked
system - and they took their dial in system with them. You can still hear
the same thing on their 800 MHz talk group as we used to hear on the 168.0
MHz repeater.

- Chris

 --
Chris Parris
Fed Files Columnist
Monitoring Times Magazine
chrisparris at monitoringtimes.com
http://www.monitoringtimes.com
http://mt-fedfiles.blogspot.com/


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu>
To: "Discussion of Federal Government Communications"
<fedcom at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 5:53 PM
Subject: RE: [FedCom] Remote Dial Up of Federal LMR Nets?


Both the FCC and INS (now ICE) in Kansas City had this capability, although
I never heard it used.  What would happen from time to time was that the
repeater would come up and you'd hear the "brrrrrrrrrrt" of the phone
ringing.  Nobody ever answered.

Bob, w0nxn