so I'll throw out a story on the same: back when I was dispatching it was the early 80's, and there was a lot of sunspot activity. Which meant a lot of radio interference; made understanding calls bloody awful at times during daylight. And it had another fine effect, too: skip. As in causing stuff you sent to 'skip' off the upper layer of the atmosphere for sometimes amazing distances. Which meant that, as Florida Highway Patrol and OK HP used the same frequencies...
It's a pain when you can hear a unit in Florida better than you can one of your own a few miles away. And it works both ways. One day a FHP trooper drove up on a car in a canal and was calling for help, and his HQ about twenty or so miles away couldn't hear him at all, but the guys here could. The one working tried calling him back, and it worked: he got the location and details, called that HQ and gave them the information.
I understand the radios are better now and it's much less of a problem. And no, I don't miss that part of the 'good old days'.
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