MARCS - interconectivity (NOT) Rant

phask · Jan 9, 2015

RANT mode on.

Another fine example today of how great the interoperability works

Fairly large recovery operation in Muskingum county, several dive teams from various counties, car in frozen deep pond, etc...

Anyway - Muskingun EMA is using MARCS 02 (TG 37664). OSP on scene advised dispatch he will be on MARCS 02 and to contact him on it if needed. Dispatcher advises, he does not know where that is and will use cell phone.

We have all heard instances of this. System is promoted, designed, developed and financed with this in mind and it will do it extremely well. System is promoted as doing all this, enhancing officer safety and on and on.

As with most - training, training and more training. As good as anything is, it falls to the end user for implementation.

As a taxpayer - I'm rather disappointed when this happens.

medic611 · Jan 11, 2015

I'm not certain if OSP has merged dispatch centers in Zanesville , but if it's like several other posts that are managing multiple units over multiple counties the search for talkgroups in a system can take time. Ideally you should be using several different channels or talkgroups for an incident. Not everybody needs to be on one channel , all that does is cause confusion, and in a large event causes an overload on system resources.

phask · Jan 11, 2015

OSP has merged FAIK everywhere, the unit was via the Post 60 console. EMA was in charge - several FD's moved to that TG - including one of the Fairfield units. They sent a dive team- and thanks for that.

It was not a major comms issue or event - but just saying, if it was it would have been failure. It was big in number , but as it was a recovery, no real time issue.

I've set in on de-briefing after a fiew of out counties mass cass. and haz mat sessions. Comms always came up, but nothing serious was ever acted upon. This was pre-Marcs.

medic611 said:
I'm not certain if OSP has merged dispatch centers in Zanesville , but if it's like several other posts that are managing multiple units over multiple counties the search for talkgroups in a system can take time. Ideally you should be using several different channels or talkgroups for an incident. Not everybody needs to be on one channel , all that does is cause confusion, and in a large event causes an overload on system resources.

grumpy_hermit · Jan 12, 2015

phask said:
I've set in on de-briefing after a fiew of out counties mass cass. and haz mat sessions. Comms always came up, but nothing serious was ever acted upon. This was pre-Marcs.

Likewise. In every debriefing that I have been involved in over a 25 year span, comms was always deemed the greatest weak point. I reckon that whenever the excrement hits the fan, we will have trouble communicating, no matter how much improvement there is in technology.

wa8pyr · Jan 13, 2015

It is now and ever shall be...

The bane of our existence for those of use who work in the public safety communications field is now and ever shall be proper training on radio procedure (more correctly, the lack thereof).

The radio is the most important tool on their utility belts for public safety personnel, and while some agencies do a very good job training their personnel and actually carrying out exercises to keep it fresh, the training received at most agencies on how to use it properly is generally something along the lines of "here's your radio, here's how to turn it on, here's how to use the channel knob, have a nice day" and they're out the door.

I don't like it, and I continually work to change it, but I've learned to live with it. The best I can do is make it as "user-proof" as possible.

Firefox89 · Jan 13, 2015

Working as a Career Firefighter and a Part Time 911 dispatcher, I will tell you that if communications break down, it could/will break down the whole incident. I work at one of the most state of the art dispatching centers in Ohio, we have access to patch to most of the MARCS and MARCS IP TGS as long as we know what channels we need to patch and work. We also have our own communications response vehicle that can virtually patch any radio with any other radio. The only problem with working the desk is that sometimes we don't have the channel that they want us to patch to (a secondary channel to a mutual aid secondary channel.) The dispatcher may not have that certain channel on his/her console… that is the only problem that I would see.

phask · Jan 13, 2015

Some good points .

Since the HP cars can - seemingly - switch to nearly any TG - can the HP consoles?
I know our county EMA can go to seemingly anything.

I know this is another issue all together - yet I constantly hear a user ask dispatch to call some other user for info. Yet both are on MARCS. I know sometimes it's just easier, yet it also happens on lengthy issues - such as a multi-unit chase.

Firefox89 said:
Working as a Career Firefighter and a Part Time 911 dispatcher, I will tell you that if communications break down, it could/will break down the whole incident. I work at one of the most state of the art dispatching centers in Ohio, we have access to patch to most of the MARCS and MARCS IP TGS as long as we know what channels we need to patch and work. We also have our own communications response vehicle that can virtually patch any radio with any other radio. The only problem with working the desk is that sometimes we don't have the channel that they want us to patch to (a secondary channel to a mutual aid secondary channel.) The dispatcher may not have that certain channel on his/her console… that is the only problem that I would see.

Firefox89 · Jan 13, 2015

phask said:
Some good points .

Since the HP cars can - seemingly - switch to nearly any TG - can the HP consoles?
I know our county EMA can go to seemingly anything.

I know this is another issue all together - yet I constantly hear a user ask dispatch to call some other user for info. Yet both are on MARCS. I know sometimes it's just easier, yet it also happens on lengthy issues - such as a multi-unit chase.

It all depends really... I know I personnaly for my dispatch center that I do not have all the TGs that my police and fire units have.... but that's if they go mutual aid far away. But with a simple colaboration, with another dispatch center if they are able to patch the active channel with a tac channel we share is a possibility to open up interop

wa8pyr · Jan 14, 2015

Firefox89 said:
Working as a Career Firefighter and a Part Time 911 dispatcher, I will tell you that if communications break down, it could/will break down the whole incident. I work at one of the most state of the art dispatching centers in Ohio, we have access to patch to most of the MARCS and MARCS IP TGS as long as we know what channels we need to patch and work. We also have our own communications response vehicle that can virtually patch any radio with any other radio. The only problem with working the desk is that sometimes we don't have the channel that they want us to patch to (a secondary channel to a mutual aid secondary channel.) The dispatcher may not have that certain channel on his/her console… that is the only problem that I would see.

That would be a failure at the TIC Plan level; procedures and channels for this sort of thing should be spelled out in the county TIC Plan, and should only be channels everyone has access to. If the situation has gotten so big that someone needs use of an asset that not everyone has access to, it's time for a COM-L to start untangling things.

612345 · Jan 14, 2015

Regarding the Muskingum County dive incident; that would have been the ideal reason to call out the BSSA Regional Communications Truck. Even if you could lead the horse to water………….

wa8pyr · Jan 15, 2015

612345 said:
Regarding the Muskingum County dive incident; that would have been the ideal reason to call out the BSSA Regional Communications Truck. Even if you could lead the horse to water………….

Why? Fancy trucks are not the answer unless it's an ongoing incident where there are multiple disparate radio systems which need to be patched together. This wasn't the case here, where everybody had MARCS radios.

In addition, the incident would have been a recovery rather than a rescue after about 30 minutes to an hour at most, and a recovery isn't too high a priority for assets like the BSSA trucks.

MARCS radios all include the basic interoperability suite, which includes the MARCS, LECOMM and ECOMM talkgroups. Just because a dispatcher couldn't find the desired talkgroup is no reason to call out costly assets when either simply changing to another talkgroup or instructing the dispatcher how to find the necessary talkgroup would be all that's needed.

It all boils down to training and knowledge of the available assets, and I'm sure the error was pointed out in the hot-wash and after-action meeting. Whether the problem is corrected through better training is another matter altogether.

612345 · Jan 15, 2015

As you stated; "Training and knowledge " however I suggest the truck could be used for command and control purposes. If you do not use them no one knows ( or forgets) they are there.

wmlovell · Jan 15, 2015

The people in these forums understand the capabilities of MARCS better then a majority of the MARCS users. It is overwhelming to the majority who came from 4-16 analog frequency radios to 30+ zones of 16 digital talkgroups. Especially when they had no clue what VHF, UHF or 800 MHz was when they were using what they had before. Now ask them to leave their home zone to find a specific talkgroup somewhere in the 30+ possible zones is disastrous. Even with prior instruction and practice, unless it is utilized routinely, it is forgotten. In a larger operation, I do not have the time to conduct a "MARCS Radio 101 - Refresher" class during the incident. Many of the users forgot how to even change the zones. I have also experienced that what a zone is labeled in one area's radio template can be labeled different on another. It is easier then to stay with the old school habits and have somebody relay between talkgroups. An analogy would be teaching the residents at the Asst. Living Facility how to prepare and submit their taxes using web based software when many of them haven't even used email. Sure, you will eventually get them to submit it, but you better be there again to do it with them next year, too. ...and the others would insist on just mailing it in, anyways.

In my opinion, although we are achieving the goal of inter-operability, we've made it too complicated for the average user. I would much rather have a lot less zones of talkgroups and utilize those big communication trucks to "Link" us together at the larger incidents that seldom occur. By the time the Incident develops to require that many unique talkgroups, One of those things should be on scene with the communications gurus on board to assist.

...and I believe I understand the MARCS system and the radios. But then I had an advantage. I had to program them into everyone else's scanners that didn't understand them.

wa8pyr · Jan 16, 2015

The problem with the trucks is that they're expensive to operate, require overtime personnel, and require quite a bit of time to deploy; very few of them are sitting in a manned firehouse waiting to roll out the door at a moment's notice. And with budgets today stretched as thin as they are (especially in the rural counties where many of the trucks are based), one shouldn't need to deploy a truck when everyone is on the same radio system; otherwise the shared radio system is utterly pointless.

What's needed is better planning and coordination between agencies so there are certain designated easy-to-find channels for interoperability at the drop of a hat. That's why a common channel plan is such a valuable tool. If everyone laid their radios out the same way, it's simply a matter of telling someone "LECOMM 3 is in Zone 5 Channel 3."

Unfortunately, it took nearly 20 years to get everyone to accept a standard countywide law enforcement channel plan in Franklin County (where there's been a truly shared radio system since 1997), and other areas are no different.

Reliance on fancy tools is problematic. In the right situation they're invaluable, but over-reliance on them can be dangerous. If one relies on the fancy tools rather than on proper planning, training and coordination, and the fancy tools are suddenly unavailable, one is lost with no clue on how to proceed.

It's amazing how many things boil down to planning and training.

wmlovell said:
The people in these forums understand the capabilities of MARCS better then a majority of the MARCS users. It is overwhelming to the majority who came from 4-16 analog frequency radios to 30+ zones of 16 digital talkgroups. Especially when they had no clue what VHF, UHF or 800 MHz was when they were using what they had before. Now ask them to leave their home zone to find a specific talkgroup somewhere in the 30+ possible zones is disastrous. Even with prior instruction and practice, unless it is utilized routinely, it is forgotten. In a larger operation, I do not have the time to conduct a "MARCS Radio 101 - Refresher" class during the incident. Many of the users forgot how to even change the zones. I have also experienced that what a zone is labeled in one area's radio template can be labeled different on another. It is easier then to stay with the old school habits and have somebody relay between talkgroups. An analogy would be teaching the residents at the Asst. Living Facility how to prepare and submit their taxes using web based software when many of them haven't even used email. Sure, you will eventually get them to submit it, but you better be there again to do it with them next year, too. ...and the others would insist on just mailing it in, anyways.

In my opinion, although we are achieving the goal of inter-operability, we've made it too complicated for the average user. I would much rather have a lot less zones of talkgroups and utilize those big communication trucks to "Link" us together at the larger incidents that seldom occur. By the time the Incident develops to require that many unique talkgroups, One of those things should be on scene with the communications gurus on board to assist.

...and I believe I understand the MARCS system and the radios. But then I had an advantage. I had to program them into everyone else's scanners that didn't understand them.

612345 · Jan 16, 2015

Amen.

MARCS - interconectivity (NOT) Rant

phask

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medic611

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phask

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grumpy_hermit

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wa8pyr

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Firefox89

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phask

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Firefox89

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wa8pyr

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612345

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wa8pyr

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612345

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wmlovell

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wa8pyr

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612345

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