Open Mikes

Ever have one of those days....where the microphone at your dispatch center was stuck open? And EVERYONE heard the off mike remarks?

Anyone have some interesting stories to tell?

Let's keep 'em clean....as possible!:D :p

When we had our Sigtronics head set installed, the radio guys had one of teh push to talk buttons installed a little to close so one of our Captains was talking about what they wer having for dinner.
"Ok, you get the tomatoes, and I'll get the meat and buns. Hey I wonder if the Chief is going to come by, otherwisse we could have some beers with dinner"! Needless to say the Chief did come by and make a little visit. Luckely there ws no beer to be found.

Ok how did you get the icon (badge) under your name?

we've had numerous times where dispatch and the crews have had open mikes. not too long ago we had an ambulance staging for a suicide call and the crew had an open mike. we clearly heard them say "yeah, here we on the map and there's the address. ok, we can get there pretty F$%#*&@ fast." needless to say, i immediately toned them and later sent them a page joking that the FCC does not approve of those words being used over the radio waves. they were pretty nervous for awhile afterwards.

We have had many good open mics. One of the best was when one of the fire agencies we dispatch for got a new rescue truck and they had new headset installed in it. The first morning they had it we were sitting at dispatch, everything was quiet, all of the sudden of the fire channel we hear "Ladies and gentlemen thank you for flying with Durango Fire, on this mornings flight we will be going to Dennys if you could all please take your seat and fasten your seatbelts................." this went on for several minutes till someone from the station quit laughing long enough to run and told the guy to shut up. Evidently there was a short in the wiring and every time they plugged in the headset it opened the mic. Evidently they did not tell the next shift, that night we paged them out for a two vehicle accident around 11:30, every time that we would talk it would squeal in their ears, so we got a lot of cussing and screaming over the air. One of the battalion chiefs called to apologize but we thought it was funny.

One of our fire agencies recently got the alpha numeric pagers. One day one of the other dispatchers had a 60 year old male, on o2, difficulty breathing and can not get up. She typed in "60yom,on O2, diff brea,can not get it up." The phones all started ringing with firefighters and EMTs that wanted to know what they were suppose to do about it, they told us that they did not carry viagra on the ambulance.

I worked for a small combo department for a while (2 paid a shift) and my partner and I were in dispatch one day talking with the dispatcher and a PD officer.

My partner sat on the dispatch desk, and unbeknownest to him (and us), the desk mike. He proceeded to tell us about how well he thought the hiring process was going for him at Tulsa, and how close he thought he was at getting hired.

The last thing he said, before one of the patrol officers called in on his c-phone, was, "Don't tell anyone that I might be leaving soon."

Needless to say, WE found the situation much more humorous that HE did. He did make Tulsa very soon after that.

This goof up involved an open mobile mike in a vehicle, a girlfriend, and a wife at home with a scanner. I think you get the point. Needless to say he took an extended leave of adscene, and invested in a tone pager. Don't worry he is still happily married to the wife with the scanner.

one of our dispatchers had a problem one morning during an ice storm. he appearantly forgot that in between tones you can hear what is being said in dispatch... **ring**"This is F****** unbelievable!"

he "disappeared" for awhile...

That happend to our dispatch was
One time we heard the dispatched discussing her weekend plans talking about how she was going to vegas

Most recently we could hear an incident working on another frequencie

On my scanner I've heard a lot of fun stuff. :)

Once a commander at a very large incident requested a crash truck from the airport. Because of the size of the incident, each console had 2 people working the console. The dispatcher keyed up to respond, and rogered the commander, but in the background you could hear her partner give a long and drawn out "Hooooly s__t!" :eek:

Back when Police were on conventional UHF, they had two channels reserved for wants checks etc. I remember more than one time hearing lots of.... "discussion" :D in the dispatch center after giving a 29 result... and wouldn't'cha know it, the officers on the street took a l-o-o-o-n-g time to change to another channel to tell the dispatcher to tell Records their mike was stuck. ;)

--j.

we have a guy on our job who accidentally dropped his gym bag on the foot peddle mike, and then started looking for his smokes. he was saying "cigarettes, cigarettes, where are you, oh cigarettes, i need you". somebody kept telling him his mike was open, but he never thought about the foot peddle, and this went on for about 3 or 4 minutes before he realized what was happening, and put a stop to it.

we were all rolling on the floor laughing!!!

fireteddy

One FF was sitting in the front seat of the unit and was going to mess with another by commenting on his rear attributes over the PA. The PA button is on the radio and apparently he did not hit the button. So the rest of the department heard "Nice A#$, real nice A#$" over the air.

One of the older trucks had two mics, one for the PA and one for the radio. Someone thought it was funny to switch them one day. The trucks were clearing a training, one firefighter picked up the mic that was in the PA mic space and made a comment about another firefighters back view. He did not realize what he had done till the dispatcher came back asking him to repeat.

Had a dispatcher once that went into a sneezing fit. Every time she would sneeze, she would lean forward. When she leaned forward, her foot would hit the pedal..."Aaaachooo....Aaaachoo oo....Aaaachoooo", she was "blessed over the radio and phone numerous times!:D

One of the worst open mikes I ever had was when I was a young upcoming person in a large deparment. I and another firefighter were in a new utility truck that did not yet have a radio in it yet. For that reason, the other firefighter had placed the WT in his rear pocket(you know only officers get belt holsters for WT's) and sat on it in the truck. The WT had a speaker mic that fell off in the seat, but the side PTT on the radio was pressed. I have found the thing not say around a radio in a dept you hope to work well in is, "Did you hear Capt -------- is coming to our station on our shift next month?" and following it up with "I can't stand that jerk. I hope I get to go to another shift soon." Now our city's radio system was excellent. Every station and Officer's Office in the city heard our conversation very clear. With the nice little ID tag our radios had, it was a cinch for the Batt Chief to find out who hated that Captain. The Captain and I had some problems at first, but things worked out better over time and then I switched shifts.

Back in the mid 80's I was a PS spatcher in a city of 80,000, this particular night I was on the fire side and patrolperson Peg was working the midnight on the pd side, about quarter past lights down (2 am) on this nice quiet week day, one of the walking beats called in to request some station time for reports... (in police lingo he wanted to use the bathroom...) well, Peg about Jumped about 5 feet in the air and yelled I beg your pardon??!!!? and I about fell out of mine, laughing....
The officer in question was latino and had a thick accent, we civilians had grown acostomed to his shortening things on the radio, "Q" instead of HQ and his post number rather then post or sector ##... Most always due to this the shift officers didnt put him on post 4, and no one caught on until at 2 am he called one of the active female officers
on the desk , using "4Q" repetedly... instead of "post 4 to head quarters" needless to say the order was read at rollcall at 7 am ...lol jim