>>685996Depends on the system they use. Might be analog, but a lot are moving to (or already have moved to) P25 for interop with other public safety agencies, especially as the analog subscriber units go end-of-life.
Analog has an advantage in more mountainous regions... while the signal may be noisy, it'll generally still be readable. Digital starts to "twist" at the fringe, and when that twisting happens, you get a crystal-clear but untelligible talking-with-a-mouth-full-of-marbles sound.
If they're still on analog, then yes, with the right freq split/code/tone you should be able to get on there.
P25 ... unlikely. You can receive it with most scanners, but a transceiver has to register to the network in order to use a talkgroup. (That equipment also costs a lot more than a baofeng, and the programming software is significantly more difficult.)
Fire dept. I worked with still maintains some analog equipment on the main fire dispatch TG for an area that's difficult to get coverage into (mountains/canyons). Otherwise everything else is tier-2 digital.
FS goes for the real nice (and $$$$$... your tax dollars at work) Pepro cabinets for their deployable systems. >Pic related.
As far as
>>685999, distance is really subjective. Put good ears on a tower on a mountain, and a little 4W portable subscriber can hit it from 100 miles away.
For simplex operation with the rubber-ducky antennas on a baofeng, yeah, about 3mi is all i'd expect to see.
