Question on FMARS and PMARS for Radio Scanner

[Jeff (Premo)]

I am working on putting several scanners online here and am pretty much just used to listening to the local trunked system for St. Mary's and PAX NAS.

I was wondering it is was worth programming in the PMARS and FMARS frequencies or not. I think they can and do patch each through the St. Mary's Trunked system on an as needed basis but I was wondering if these freqs were active in this area when they are not being patched through the trunked system.

I know the MSP still use conventional, non-trunked freqs. And I should be able to pick up some of those with my roof mounted antenna.

And I also understand that St. Mary's has the 10 Talk Around Freqs but I am under the impression these are not going through the Trunked System. That being the case I have not had much luck receiving them in the past from my house although I have had decent luck while mobile.

Also are there any other conventional Public Safety related frequencies I should consider programming?

[stump jumper]

FMARS is fire channels to tie St Marys to Calvert an or to Charles or to both.
The PMARS is the police side to perform the same service. These channels are idle till needed. Maryland State Police in St Marys use the trunked channels in St Marys but when they leave the county they use the low band through the state. Also when troopers come into St Marys they use the low band system which is patched to the trunked system. There is 10 channels in the trunked system one of these channels is used for the control channel. The control channel is interfaced with a computer system to set prioritys and select the channel to be the operating channel for a message. These channels are not dedicated to any group.

[Jeff (Premo)]

Originally Posted by stump jumper

FMARS is fire channels to tie St Marys to Calvert an or to Charles or to both.
The PMARS is the police side to perform the same service. These channels are idle till needed. Maryland State Police in St Marys use the trunked channels in St Marys but when they leave the county they use the low band through the state. Also when troopers come into St Marys they use the low band system which is patched to the trunked system. There is 10 channels in the trunked system one of these channels is used for the control channel. The control channel is interfaced with a computer system to set prioritys and select the channel to be the operating channel for a message. These channels are not dedicated to any group.

I had a little familiarity with these but your post sheds a little more light more them. Thank You very much.

For the FMARS I tend to hear that alot when the dispatchers forget and leave the patch up. We hear an awful lot from Baltimore and Howard Counties when they do that. Took me a while to figure out what was going on. Kept dragging my map book out looking for streets I never heard of.

Kind of sounds like all of these are worth plugging in to a scanner. For the purposes of an online feed I 'may' not keep the banks unlocked though but I guess it would be smart to at least program them though.

For the T/A channels, with regard to the one being used as a control freq. Do you know if they change the control channel freq on a regular basis or do they they just leave it on the same freq all the time. I ask because if I were to put this up on an online scanner I would not want it to lock up on the control freq each time they change it.