www.jeffcowv.com

Jefferson County WV Fire/Rescue/EMS & Police Scanner Feeds

You can listen to my scanner audio using one of the following sources:

Broadcastify by Radio Reference

You can access Broadcastify audio at Broadcastify.com, or by using one of the many smart-phone apps available for listening to scanner audio (I recommend Scanner Radio by Gordon Edwards). My feeds are labeled Jefferson County Fire, Rescue, and EMS* and Jefferson County Police Dispatch. Note that there may be a delay of up to 2 minutes in the audio using Broadcastify.

Zello

Zello is a "walkie-talkie" app that can be used to broadcast and receive various forms of audio, including scanner audio. It can be run from a computer or a smart-phone. Once installed and set up, my channels are called:

JeffCoWV JeffFire

JeffCoWV JeffLaw

JeffCoWV JeffTAC

There is hardly any delay in the audio, and you can easily listen to multiple channels at once. Unlike scanners, in the event that there is audio on multiple channels at the same time, Zello plays back audio from the first active channel, and buffers any active audio on other selected channels, then plays it later when the current active channel is clear, in the order it was received. Zello also saves audio transmissions on your device, so you can easily go back and listen to radio traffic you may have missed. The audio is saved in individual, time-stamped "chunks", making specific audio searchable by date & time, and without having to listen to "dead air" in between. Zello audio also has a higher sampling rate, which makes it much clearer and easier to listen to, and there is hardly any background noise. Although more is involved in the initial setup, the reasons listed above make Zello a the preferred method for listening to my scanner audio.

* = Broadcastify Stereo feed. The Fire/Rescue/EMS Dispatch talk group is on the Left channel, and the Fire/Rescue/EMS TAC & Command talk groups are on the Right channel. You can use the Balance Control on your audio player to select between the two as desired. (Note that there is no balance control available when you use the Web Player option on Radio Reference).

Jefferson County, located in the state’s Eastern Panhandle, is the eastern-most county in West Virginia. It is 70 miles North-West of Washington, DC, and 80 miles West of Baltimore, MD.

The Jefferson County Communications Center began utilization of their digital trunked radio system (TRS) on October 28th, 2008. We currently have our receivers programmed to receive dispatch and operations talk groups that pertain to Jefferson County. Scanners are capable of receiving only one channel at a time. Therefore, we try to use configurations that concentrate on emergency dispatch. For this reason, our current configurations do not include known private or non-emergency event-based talk groups. Since WV State Police units use Jefferson County police talk groups when handling calls taken by the Jefferson County Communications Center, WV State Police talk groups are not included, as they are often busy with Berkeley County WV traffic. Our feeds more closely resemble ‘monitors’ than they do ‘scanners’, since each feed covers specific traffic. This gives the listener a much greater opportunity to hear the intended traffic with less chance of other traffic getting in the way.

Jefferson County WV’s county-wide communications and early-warning system went on the air at 10:15am on December 27th, 1960. The project was conceived by an ambitious Civil Defense Director who, aided by a small group of firefighters and community leaders, utilized funds made available by the Federal Government for use in municipal Civil Defense systems to purchase the radio and warning equipment. Later enhancements to the system and its operation placed it among the most modern, innovative, and emulated in the area during the ‘60s & ‘70s. I am proud to have been associated with many of its founding fathers, and to have been a part of its history in the '70s and '80s.

My hardware consists of 3 scanners (RS Pro-2018, RS Pro-106, and Whistler WS1065) with an

Alienware laptop running oddcast software, and a Dell tower running Zello software.

Updated 12-22-23