Volusia County (FL)/Daytona Beach Area Guide

Daytona Beach Area Guide

This page is designed to help the new hobbyist or a traveler unfamiliar with the Daytona Beach area to get started listening to this part of Volusia County Florida.

Of course if you want to jump right in, the RR Database is the place to go to see the confirmed users and frequencies for this area.

Looking at the information in the database and reading this guide will answer a lot of questions, but if something is unclear or missing, you can always visit the Florida Forum and search for an answer or post your question there.

The RR Wiki is a great place to see the work in progress by contributors coordinating efforts to identify and confirm unknown frequency and talk group users as well as new licensee data. Check the corresponding Wiki pages for Volusia County, Florida, and any trunked systems to view relevant data. Please make any contributions of unknown data there. Confirmed data should go into the RR database submission process. If you have anything to add to this guide then of course those edits would be great here! I would encourage people who could create a similar page for the DeLand area to start one focused on the West side of Volusia County.

If you are here for a temporary event like a race, you might find posts in the Sporting Events or Florida forum have the most recent spotting so don't forget to check there as well.

Public Safety

Public Safety in Volusia County primarily found on a trunked 800 MHz EDACS system. This system has two redundant sites with one having better coverage in the West side, and one having better coverage on the East side of the county. Almost all of the talk groups are carried on both systems so in most cases someone in the Daytona Beach area need only program and monitor the East system. There is a third site on this system that is labeled Daytona Beach and whose coverage is centered on this area. Normally it has very little activity when there's not some sort of special event like a race or other large gathering in town. Almost all of the communications on this system are not encrypted. If you are here for an event you should program and scan this system in as well. Some of the talk groups from the East system will also be patched onto this system but there may be others in use that are not. There are a few cities and departments that still have conventional radios tied to talk groups on this system, primarily for fire alerting. There is also a LE Mutual aid talk group that is patched to a VHF conventional frequency and shows inter-agency activity from time to time.

Over the last couple of years the state of Florida has applied for a Special Temporary Authorization (STA) and setup a trailer and tower adjacent to the event site. We usually see this a couple weeks before the event and post about it in the Florida forum. Florida Highway Patrol units in this area normally are users of the state's SLERS system, which is a different EDACS system and whose communications are for the most part encrypted.

There is a listing in database for the county's newer P25 trunked system but at this time it's limited to a single site down in Sanford just across the county line and carries talkgroups for units operating in that far SouthWest corner of the county.

Marine

The geography of Volusia County features both the Atlantic Ocean on the East side, as well as the Intercoastal Waterway both of which usually have a mix of both private and commercial watercraft present. The Marine band channels are one of the nationwide listings found at Radio Reference but visitors to the area might not think to program and scan them since they aren't listed on the county pages. You will hear workers at the local marinas talking to vessels coming in for supplies or to berth for the night as well as the captains of various ships talking to each other about how best to over take and pass each other or calling ahead to the drawbridge operator. The commercial fishing vessels will sometimes talk to each other about where their nets and the fish are located, and a couple of companies operate towing and salvage in the area. There's a USCG station located just South of Ponce Inlet and sometimes they operate off the coast.

-this page is under construction