Three months ago it was announced that the SCHEART DMR system added a new talk group named SC Call. This talk group operates on Time Slot 1 with a code of 27510 and covers all SCHEART repeaters. Users wishing to reach stations outside the coverage of their local repeater, can use SC Call to make an initial contact and then should move their conversation to Chat 1 or Chat 2. SC Call is not designed for stations to have extended conversations. It is an initial contact talk group. Likewise, PRN talk group can be used to make an initial contact for station outside of South Carolina. With the system implementation of SC Call, the need for regional grouping of the Local Talk Group on each repeater has been eliminated and functionality extended between all regions.
The SC Call talk group has been operational since September and many station are using it. W3KH had requested the Local talk group links be retained for a limited time to allow users time to reprogram their radios with SC Call. It has been 3 month, so effective January 1, 2017, regional groupings of the local talk group on SCHEART repeaters will be terminated. At that time, the Local Talk Group will be local to the specific repeater. SC Call will reach all non active SCHEART DMR repeaters using Time Slot 1. If a repeater is busy with traffic traffic on Time Slot 1, incoming traffic for SC Call will be inhibited for 5 minutes to ensure local conversations are not interrupted by traffic from another repeater.
