Our current staff of 20 dispatchers come from all walks of life...we have firefighters, police officers, several career public safety dispatchers as well as fire buffs and many people who just share an interest of monitoring public safety communications.  Some of our staff are members of amateur radio 'skywarn' groups who provide spotters for severe weather activity. Several are volunteer fire fighters who call in information on incidents they just worked at upon completing their duties. Our staff resides throughout the metro Detroit area, from high above downtown Detroit to downriver, from St. Clair county to the western suburbs, night and day, we have members who are listening for activity.

Technology plays a major role in how we are able to operate our network. While many of our members use only one scanner to primarily monitor activity in their own city or area, we have several members who employ tall free standing towers and hi-gain antennas feeding multiple radios to keep abreast of communications throughout metro Detroit. With the growing trend of public safety agencies adopting 800 MHz trunking radio systems, many of us are employing state of the art "trunk tracker" radios, capable of following multiple trunked radio systems. FNN operates a multi-site uhf radio system that is used primarily by our dispatchers to coordinate paging information.  We also employ Nextel radios to assist in operations. Several of our staff carry wireless 2 way pagers, allowing paging to take place while our members are on scene of working incidents. With the recent improvements to our web site, we are now able to provide paging directly from our site to PCS users, as well as the ability to send pages while on-line thru our dedicated server.

All of our dispatchers are volunteers, and we ask that they be willing to provide a minimum of 8 hours per month of service to assist in paging operations. In return we offer free yearly paging service for the networks of their choice, access to our uhf radio system, the necessary software to be installed on their personal pc to support network paging and all the training, materials and personal instruction necessary to begin paging incidents to our network. You will also receive a yearly subscription of your choice of any magazine or publication related to public safety communications, fire, EMS, etc.

We conduct several dispatcher meetings each year, many of them are held at local media outlets such as the studios of Fox 2 and WXYZ channel 7. These meetings are informal but allow us to review operations, provide news and updates to our members and allow interaction between ourselves. We also try to hold events such as a summer barbeque and annual winter get together, which allows our spouses and significant others an opportunity to  meet and become friends. Our dispatch operation is intended to be fun and informal, all we ask is that the membership conform to our established written policies and maintain our professionalism.

Our subscribers include all of the Detroit area news media, numerous police, fire and EMS providers, the American red cross, several federal agencies, and many other interested parties. We strive for accuracy and pride ourselves on providing timely and concise paging to our subscribers. If you have 8 or more hours available each month, have your own pc and enjoy listening to public safety communications, give us a call. We particularly could use persons available during daytime hours.

If you are interested in becoming a dispatcher or would like more information, please contact Garry Watts at fnnm400@fnnm.net or take a moment to fill out the online FNN dispatcher form.