The COII at the far end of the room is working the "Black" channel;
the frequencies are color-coded throughout the Department. If you want to
see what I mean by that, click here.
The Black Radio covers all of Monterey County, and is handled by two separate CHP Area Offices:
Monterey and King City. They share the channel and are separated by enough geography to make it
hard for units in one Area to hear units in the other Area.
The map hanging down next to the console shows the area of coverage, plus beat assignments, tow zones for
our rotation tow system, as well as some other super-secret, arcane information. (not really; it's
just too hard to explain right here...)
Evan Platt took this particular photo standing behind the "Green Radio" dispatcher.
The Green Radio covers all of Santa Cruz County,
San Benito County and southern Santa Clara County. This radio position handles the Santa Cruz Area and the
Hollister-Gilroy Area -- plus the Gilroy Inspection Facility (commonly known as the Scales).
Again, the different CHP Areas on the same channel often don't hear the units from the other Area.....it makes for some
interesting coordination of communications!
This is a view similar to what can be seen from the Communications Supervisors' office. The service desks are
visible through the window and when I'm sitting at my desk, I can see most of the Radio Room. There are speakers in the office
to monitor both Radio positions, if necessary.
Our radio consoles have one disadvantage: they don't support radio and
telephone functions through the same head-set; a hand-set is necessary
to use the phone at the Radios.
(Service desk positions are strongly encouraged to use head-sets
and NOT the hand-set, to reduce neck and shoulder strain from cradling the hand-set.)
Although the Center is equipped with adjustable key-board trays, it's not
using a CAD system, so the dispatchers have to use the
desk top in front of them for a writing surface. Although
they constantly use a key-board to access a variety of computer
data-bases, it's not convenient to set the key-board on the adjustable tray
and keep pushing it away and pulling it out again to use it.
I purchased a digital camera not too long ago, so I'll be changing the images
on these pages as I take more pictures. (Eventually someone's going to wrestle it
away from me and take some of ME, I'm sure. We'll see if I post any of THOSE here.)