History

St. Pete had the first .8GHz system up and running in the county.  The PD
was placed on Fleet 1, while FD was placed on Fleet 2.  Eventually when the
County placed their system into operation, dispatching was moved (for SPFD
purposes) from SPPD HQ, to the County Courthouse.  SPFD continued to utilize
the St. Pete radio tower, on their Fleet 2.  Dispatch was dispatching calls
on both County Fleet 1 and City Fleet 2,in the simulcast mode so it didn't
really matter where you were listening, you got the call.

All of this was well and good except that it was a little bit of a
duplication of means.  Since both the St. Pete PD and FD were using the same
system, traffic was high, but the one thing that beat and abused the system
more than anything else was the fact that every single call that came out on
1A, was simulcast on St. Pete's 2A.  This was placing additional wear on the
transmitter tubes.  The better solution was to move SPFD over to the County
system entirely, since every time a St. Pete unit went "a little north,"
they'd use the county system anyway and it beat the hell out of changing
from Fleet to Fleet for different calls.

Some time later, ALL SPFD operations were switched over to County Fleet 1,
allowing a more seamless use of the system for all it's users.

A few years ago, the City of St. Petersburg entered into an agreement with the
County to maintain their (St. Pete's) tower site.  Both the St. Pete system
and the County system reside in the same block house under the same tower.
I haven't listened there in a while but I'm pretty sure that dispatch no
longer simulcasts 1A on St. Pete's 2A.


Jon Pearl  W4ABC