The Pickens County Communications Group (PCCG) has existed since the mid 1970's.

We are an official volunteer division of the Pickens County Emergency Management Department in South Carolina, and we follow the protocols and guidelines established by FEMA and other Emergency Organizations.

We maintain a number of VHF and UHF repeaters licensed for Amateur Radio usage and also have four repeaters licensed for GMRS usage by the general public in Pickens County and the surrounding areas.

We also support a series of member only email mailing lists, and obviously, the website that you are currently browsing,

  ...but then again, the organization itself is rather unique.

The Pickens County Emergency Communications Support Group (PCCG) is a community service type organization, in that its volunteer members have offered their Radio Equipment, Knowledge, and Time to provide Emergency Communications Support to the Emergency Management Department of Pickens County, South Carolina, on a “when needed, as needed” basis.

The PCCG is an official volunteer division of the Pickens County Emergency Management Department for Pickens County, South Carolina.

Unlike most similar groups providing communications support services to their local governmental Emergency Management organizations such as the local City, County or State Emergency Operations Centers (EOC); the PCCG is not a “Radio Club” nor does it's membership only utilize Operators and Radio Equipment licensed under a single section of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, such as any one of these listed below in alphabetical order:

    Amateur Radio                        (FCC Part 97 rules), 
    Citizens Band radio (CB)             (FCC part 95 rules), 
    Family Radio services (FRS)          (FCC part 95 rules),
    General Mobile Radio Services (GMRS) (FCC part 95 rules), 
    Land Mobile services                 (FCC part 90 rules).

Most Radio Clubs are organized to support only one of the categories listed. PCCG is unique, in that we accept individuals from any and all of these service categories - providing, of course, that they can pass the required Background Investigation.

In addition, some members of the PCCG operate Radio Equipment under the rules of the The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), located within the Department of Commerce. In essence, the NTIA provides the rules and coordination efforts for Governmental Radio usage, while the FCC does the same for non-Governmental Radio usage.

Members of the Pickens County Communication Group are all Licensed Radio Operators authorized to operate their personal radio equipment under one or more of the rules contained in FCC rules parts 90, 95, and 97, or under the rules and regulations of the NTIA.

This website, is also unique, in that it supports public viewable pages, as well as areas that contain applications and information only available to PCCG members. Each PCCG Team can have additional resources uniquely available to each individual team, can document Team procedures and reference material.

The PCCG website is known as wx4pg.org, as that is the FCC issued Amateur Radio “club” Radio Callsign assigned to the group. To my knowledge, WX4PG has been used by the group since its original organization in the 1970's.

As it turns out, “Pickens County” is not unique either. There are several “Pickens” counties in the southeast USA. Try using Google or Bing or DuckDuckgo and search for “Pickens County”.