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Delco dispatch radio3/7/2024 Delco severely needs an upgrade to their public safety LMR radio system. Truitt should be thanked for his many many many many years of service to Delaware County, PA.but it's time for a change. The tt's went right over the air on the normal UHF police channel. The police dispatch console had a tt pad and the 4 digit police car number was used to activate the box. The Bramco tt decoder was used to either beep the police car horn or activate a red light on the decoder box, to alert the officer that the dispatcher was calling him or her, if they were not answering their radio. I remember that turning on the scrambling and saying the word "yen" would result the word "one" on the unscrambled side. As the years went by, departments replaced their heavily used GE pro's and the scramblers were never reinstalled. The scramblers were hardly ever used, and in situations that I remember, it was mainly to tell an officer that one of our regular callers (that owned a scanner) called in about something. The single police console had 2 identical scrambler boxes - one for the receive side and one for the transmit side. The scrambler box had 2 knobs, A thru E and 1 thru 5, so different variations of the voice inversion could be chosen. The majority of the police vehicles had GE pro, 4 channel scanning radios installed, along with a Bramco touch-tone decoder box and a Mieco Inc scrambler box. On the subject of scrambling from years ago, I thought I'd throw in a story too.Īround 1974, Dauphin County added fire channels to low band and moved from a single channel police frequency (45.42) to a 5 channel UHF system. They only dispatched about 6 pr so companies back then like rural Concordville, Lenni Heights, etc those where the days when Chester FD use to sound the air horns for box numbers for some of the old city VFD's and on a clear night you could hear them. I Remember when the DELCO Fire Board was in the second floor of the courthouse back in 69 I believe Linky Hartz a ham from Morton was one of the first dispatchers. So there burger order was safe with me LOL I don't recall if they ever used it again? I suspect not too may BFO builders back in 68 or so. and course their voices would sound like Donald Duck later when I build a BFO and showed a friend of mine Fran Doyle who was a police officer in Ridley Township how I could decode their scrambled comms they were pretty excited that their scrambler system did not work in my case of reception but back then most of the time it was used to order lunch for the dispatchers or something silly and not for real sensitive communications. I remember Springfield Township PD had a similar system which at that time in 1968 or so was basically a simple BFO but the police thought it was really cool because they could say over the radio go to "scramble". I remember the Ridley Township Police Department installed as they called them "scramblers" in their Mororola Mcom series radios a small box above the control head with basically a switch and a indication light. When I was a kid back in about 66 and started scanning with my first how are crafters civic patrol high band receiver it was a tube receiver and also was a volunteer firefighter in Ridley Township with the Holmes fire company.
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