BILL'S NOVA SCOTIA RADIO SITE

FIRE DEPARTMENTS IN HANTS COUNTY, NOVA SCOTIA

Last updated September 20, 2011

Information on this page comes from various sources but notably Stephen, Nick and Richard.   Special thanks to Stephen for the map below.

The geographical area known as Hants County actually encompasses four municipalities:   the Town of Hantsport, the Town of Windsor, the rural municipality of West Hants, and the rural municipality of East Hants.      There is no overall municipal organization taking in all of Hants County.      Towns in Nova Scotia generally provide their own fire services directly while rural municipalities depend on volunteer departments who own and operate their own equipment.

It is most convenient to describe East and West Hants separately.   The two towns lie within the boundaries of West Hants and therefore will be dealt with in the West Hants section.

East Hants includes a rural and exurban area with no incorporated towns.    Much of the population is concentrated in the far eastern part of the municipality, near the boundary with Colchester County.   There is a significantly populated area remote from the rest of the municipality in the Mount Uniacke area.   That population area borders the Sackville area of HRM and on the north side, the Windsor area in West Hants.    Similarly there is another population centre at Enfield which is an area that straddles the Halifax/East Hants boundary just north of the Halifax airport. Essentially the fire services in East Hants are divided into those that are part of a unified cooperative group that I call for convenience the East Hants Unified System, and the two departments that are not.

1. Mount Uniacke and Enfield Fire Departments

Mount Uniacke and Enfield do not lie adjacent to each other and have no mutual connection but they have similarities.  Both are dispatched by the HRM  IES dispatch centre located in Dartmouth on the HRFES VHF page system and for operations use the 800 MHz Nova Scotia Trunked Mobile Radio System (TMR).     

Mount Uniacke is paged on 154.415 MHz on a pager located in Middle Sackville.   There is apparently an echo transmitter (Store and Forward) on the same frequency located closer to Mount Uniacke.  This transmitter is not listed in TAFL but can be heard repeating the pages following a few seconds delay.

Enfield is paged on 154.28 MHz from a transmitter located in Shubenacadie.  

In going into operation both departments then switch to the R (rural bank) TMR channels of the Halifax Fire and Emergency Service and are in constant contact with the HRM dispatch centre.   Mt. Uniacke units are numbered in the 300 range.     Enfield units are usually referred to as "Enfield _______ " such as "Enfield Rescue". 

It should be expected that both of these departments would retain VHF radios for use in mutual aid with the surrounding departments in Hants County.

2. East Hants Unified System    REVISED SYSTEM COMING INTO EFFECT LATE SEPTEMBER 2011.

Based on an analysis of TAFL and on tests heard in September it appears that the new system will have a principal paging and communications site at Barr Settlement, with secondary sites at Walton, Noel and Maitland.

PAGING:

When fully in place it is expected that all departments will be paged on 153.77 MHz.    This is the former "East Hants Repeater" with an input of 158.805 MHz.   Up until now this repeater was the principal communications channel for all or most of the East Hants departments, supplemented by a set of Ops channels (Fireground tactical) as listed below.    It appears that this repeater will now be principally only for pages, but it might be expected to be retained in radios as a backup repeater.   Valley Dispatch will access the repeater using the regular  158.805 MHz input, presumably using a beam antenna in Kentville.

While the main paging transmitter is located at Barr Settlement there are also 153.77 transmitters indicated for the three subsidiary sites, and it appears that these will be either simultaneous transmissions at all four sites, or some type of store and forward system.   Time will tell if for example a page for Noel will be transmitted on just the Noel transmitter, or on all at the same time, or on Barr first then on just Noel, or Barr first then on all three of the subsidiary sites.  

The paging system being replaced is as follows:

• Elmsdale/Lantz'Milford/Shubenacadie paged on the East Hants repeater 153.77 via direct radio input from Kentville.
• Rawdon/Nine Mile River/Gore paged on 155.835 thought to be DAPT. 
• Maitland paged on the Nuttby Mtn NSIMRS fire repeater 152.03, thought to be via direct radio input from Kentville.
• Noel paged on 152.015 private frequency DAPT (frequency unconfirmed) 
• Kennetcook paged on 154.265 private frequency DAPT (frequency unconfirmed) 

COMMUNICATIONS:

Primary level of communications:

There are four repeaters in place.   It is unclear as to whether these will be simulcast or selectively operated.

Barr Settlement              154.460 rptr output (160.035 input from mobiles)
Walton                              152.84 (158.415)
Noel                                  152.135 (157.71)
Maitland                           152.195 (157.755) 

Tones, if any, are not indicated.

Note that 154.46 is not a valid frequency in the US system and therefore in some scanners you might be unable to enter it exactly.  For  example. on my PRO-97 this frequency converts to 154.45625.  It will not accept 154.46 exactly.   Nevertheless it ought to work okay as it is only off by a small amount.  

TAFL indicates that Valley will listen to the Barr Settlement repeater on a dedicated link frequency on 142.125 MHz, and transmit to it on 138.135 MHz.    As you can see this means that Valley does not use the normal input and output of the repeater.   It is unknown why Valley cannot or will not use the regular input and output to and from Kentville. 

It is further speculated, due to the lack of links in TAFL to the other sites that the other three repeaters are accessed via the Barr repeater.    For example the Walton repeater could have a dual input, one being the 158.415 for the mobiles in the area, but could also use the 154.46 output of Barr as another input.   Similarly Barr could use the 152.84 output of Walton as another input, additional to the normal 160.035 and Valley 138.135.   This is speculation, as there could instead be other ways to link the various repeaters, such as microwave, landline, UHF (400) or perhaps even other VHF frequencies not yet listed in TAFL.

Secondary level of communications:

At this time it is unknown what will happen with the existing lineup of frequencies in East Hants radios.   For the moment I am showing the chart as it was, but of course the four new repeaters listed above will have to be accommodated in the radios. 

East Hants Radio Channel Line-up as it was prior to introduction of new repeaters in September 2011

* Channel numbers might not be utilized.

IDENTIFICATION OF UNITS/CALL SIGNS:

* Note that prefix 11 is reserved for Enfield's use when operating with the East Hants system, though it might not actually use it.
** Walton is thought to be associated with the unified system but apparently operates independently on 154.68 MHz.   When it becomes
more integrated with the advent of the further revised system it is surmised that it will use the prefix 13.

B. West Hants

This description is basic, with no information available on channel lineups in radios.   It is thought that, other than mutual aid arrangements, the four departments are separate in that there is no integrated radio system as is now found in East Hants.    Radios may include frequencies for adjacent departments, including those outside West Hants; however it is assumed that all units are able to use the standard NS mutual aid frequency and as well the Nova Scotia Fire Grid repeater at Willow Hill  (151.745 output, 154.07 input, 82.5 CTCSS).  Note that the Summerville and Brooklyn frequencies are included in the East Hants radios for dedicated mutual aid.

Dispatch for all four departments is via Valley Dispatch, on the frequencies listed.    It is assumed that Valley Dispatch has direct radio input to the Windsor, Brooklyn and Hantsport repeaters for paging and communications, without the need for link frequencies.  Most likely dial-up paging is used for Summerville on its simplex frequency.