Pennington County (SD)

Rapid City Area Radio Traffic Guide

The Rapid City area mainly utilizes the South Dakota State Digital System for radio communications. Some departments still use analog frequencies, but they are few and far in between. Pennington County Dispatch is operated by Pennington County and located in downtown Rapid City. In May of 2015 Pennington County, along with state radio dispatch moved into a new multimillion dollar dispatch facility.

EMS and Fire dispatching to Rapid City and Volunteer Fire and EMS departments in the county is done over digital text paging at 154.43000. Along with text paging volunteer department members get text messages pages direct to their cell phones.

Pennington County maintains a large system of analog repeaters in the county. These repeaters are located in Keystone (155.61000), Hill City (155.41500), Rapid City (155.55000), and wall (158.79000). There is also one on top of Bear Mountain (155.67000). County Emergency Management also operates one analog repeater it is located in Rapid City (154.98000).

Rapid City Police

Rapid City police conduct their main radio traffic on RCPD 1 TG 13632. They also use channel two in times of emergency for non-emergency traffic. If you hear "10-33", that means that there is emergency traffic only on RCPD's main channel, and all other traffic will be on RCPD 2 TG 13648. At all times units may use RCPD 4 TG 14016 as a general car-car channel.

Pennington County Sheriff

The main dispatch that traffic channel for the sheriff's office is Pennington SO 1 TG 13696. Units may use other channels such as Pennington SO 1-4 for car-car traffic, but this is rare. Pennington County also operates a statewide prisoner shuttle. This shuttle uses Pennington SO 2 TG 13712 for their communications across the state. Pennington County Jail operates on an analog repeater on the frequency of 453.15000.

Rapid City Fire and EMS

Rapid City Fire conducts their radio traffic on RCFD 1 TG 13440. This include dispatching for fire and EMS units, as well as general traffic. For heavy working structure fires they will take their traffic to a Rapid City Fire Ground 1 (154.17500), a simplex analog frequency.

Station List

Station 1

Station 3

Station 4

Station 5

Station 6

Station 7

Pennington County Volunteer Fire and EMS

Pennington County has many small volunteer fire and EMS departments. Main radio dispatching occurs on Pennington Co Fire 1 TG 13488. Fire 1 also is the channel used for scene traffic. During times of high call volume fire units may also respond on Pennington Co Fire 2 TG 13504, as per requests from dispatch. Pennington County has three back up analog repeaters that are available for use. Zone WEST (154.385) Zone Rapid (154.235) Zone East (154.340) Some departments such as Hill City use Zone WEST for their dispatching and traffic since they are usually unable to use their digital radios due to the terrain. For scene communications at fires departments use the analog fire ground channels 1-4 (See database). Each department uses a separate channel spaced out geologically.

Pennington County Search and Rescue

Pennington County Search and Rescue units use Pennington Co Fire 1 for their dispatching and scene communication. Search and Rescue also uses Penn SAR OP's talk group for unit-unit communication. Search and Rescue also has an analog repeater atop Seth Bullock Hill This channel is not used often, or at all.

Highway Patrol/Interagency Channels

In the Rapid City area the Highway patrol will use SRC Rapid City TG 688 for their dispaching and scene communications. The troopers are disphached from either here in Rapid,from Pierre SD, or even possibly Huron, SD. Just north of Rapid City is the devide between SRC Rarpid City Dispach, and SRC Northern Hills Dispach. SRC Northern Hills talk group covers all of the northen hills TG 752 to the Wyoming border. For car-car communication the troopers use HP Rapid Car-Car TG 3984. This TG is fairly active, especially at night. State interagency channels are utilized in the rapid city area as well. INT South Hills TG 1488, INT Rapid City TG 1456 and INT Northern Hills TG 1520 are active.

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