BILL'S NOVA SCOTIA RADIO SITE

FIRE DEPARTMENTS IN THE ANNAPOLIS VALLEY AND SOUTHWEST SHORE OF NOVA SCOTIA

Last updated April 25, 2011, with thanks to Nick, Doug and many others previously.

This page covers the area of Nova Scotia west of Hants County and Halifax Regional Municipality and therefore includes all departments located within thein following counties:   Kings, Annapolis and Digby.   The West Hants area that is often thought of as being part of the Annapolis Valley is described in the Hants County page.  Yarmouth County is included in the South Shore page.

The fire departments in this region do not use any coordinated system with integrated frequency usage as is used in Hants and Colchester counties; however as in other areas there is mutual aid using the standard 153.83 MHz mutual aid frequency, and some departments have the frequencies of adjacent departments in their radios.  Most likely the departments would use the NS provincial IMRS repeater system which has the following sites in the  region: 

Some departments use IMRS as the primary means of communications or for paging.   For more information on the NS IMRS fire grid, click here.

In addition to any other frequencies listed here, all fire departments in Nova Scotia are thought to be capable of operating on the TMR (NS Trunked Mobile Radio System) with at least one or two seeded radios.   In general TMR, if used at all,  is used for administrative liaison with other departments, for use in inter-agency mutual aid situations, for MFR liaison with ambulance dispatch, and for backup contact with their own dispatch service.    For the most part these communications are on standard talk groups but some departments are known to have their own private use talk groups that are thought to be used in contact with their dispatch service or for communications between the holders of the TMR radios.   In this region only the DND department at CFB Greenwood is thought to use the TMR for actual operations.  Known "private" talk groups are indicated with the appropriate departments.

Paging :

Paging in this part  of Nova Scotia is almost entirely carried out by third party providers.   In Anapolis and Kings as well as parts of Lunenburg Counties, this is Valley Dispatch in Kentville.   In much of Digby County it is Digby Emergency Dispatch.  In Yarmouth County it is Yarmouth Control.   In Lunenburg, Queens and Shelburne it is mostly provided by Scotia Business Centre in Bridgewater.   Dispatch providers are indicated in the chart.

Paging and communications from and to the paging providers is done via different methods:

• Phone line dial-up to activate pager.  This is indicated on the charts as DUE (Dial up encoder)

• Direct VHF on-air via repeater, i.e. dispatch is like any other unit working through the repeater.  Dispatch ctr is close enough for direct access.

• Indirect on-air repeater and/or pager access, i.e. there is an intervening VHF or UHF link.  See below.

Links:

Annapolis Valley: There is a Valley Dispatch UHF link on 454.1375/459.1375 at Canaan Mtn, with various tones used to connect to individual VHF transmitters.
Yarmouth County area:  

In the following charts simplex frequencies are indicated by "Sx" whereas repeaters are shown with two frequencies beginning with the repeater output, followed by the input. 

1. KINGS COUNTY

The systems indicated to have repeaters have a direct radio connection with Valley Dispatch in Kentville as well as from their own units. Some of these departments may still use the IMRS repeater at Garland on 151.985 MHz, particularly in mutual aid situations.