The whole point of Ohio MARCS?

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W8VFD

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I thought that the entire point of the Ohio MARCS system was interoperablilty between agencies? Ohio Highway Patrol Post 4 & Ashtabula County Sheriff's office are working on a manhunt for a breaking & entering suspect but yet each agency is using their own respective talkgroups with no patches and having dispatch relay traffic between agencies. Is it lack of training or what?
 

n8dhw

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Yes could be lack of proper training or could just be laziness of the officers involved not wanting to switch talkgroups.

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Volfirefighter

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Ashtabula County Statewide Interop 54509. If this is not the purpose of this talkgroup, then I do not know what is.
 

Nasby

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I seriously doubt many of the troopers or deputies even know how to switch their radios to different zones to activate mutual aid talkgroupings.

Lots of equipment being completely underutilized to the detriment of the taxpayers who had to foot the bill for the stuff.

There's probably one or two guys on the force that even understand mutual aid channels, zones, etc. and most likely they are off duty enjoying their weekend.
 

W8RMH

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That is why there are mutual aid talkgroups (XLECOMM). A dispatcher or supervisor should have had everyone switch. Most of these agencies have never had anything more than their own channels so this is all new. Training is needed like anything new. OSHP has not switched over to the new system yet and may not have had that capability.

There are other points to this system besides mutual aid. It's roaming capability is valuable too. Older radio systems had range issues. You left your city or county and your radio did not work which could be a serious issue in a pursuit or while transporting a prisoner. I did prisoner transports in the 80s and 90s and once we left our county we were on your own. On MARCS-IP a unit can go anywhere in the state and have full radio capability.
 
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W8VFD

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Both agencies are still on the "old MARCS" so there's no reason for them not to be able to utilize a common talkgroup.


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n3obl

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Lots of agencies dont want other agencies on their dispatch talkgroups. So they have these interop groups to combat that.

Again lots is user training. most field people are not radio savy. Here how you turn radio on, channels you need and button to talk.

Frank
 

grumpy_hermit

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I hate radios that require the user to look at the display to make a change. It was so much easier and more efficient to just reach down and turn the selector knob however many clicks it took to go to an alternate channel and not have to look away from the action. Unless it is easy and simple, interop will suffer.
 

wa8pyr

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I thought that the entire point of the Ohio MARCS system was interoperablilty between agencies? Ohio Highway Patrol Post 4 & Ashtabula County Sheriff's office are working on a manhunt for a breaking & entering suspect but yet each agency is using their own respective talkgroups with no patches and having dispatch relay traffic between agencies. Is it lack of training or what?

That's exactly what it is, lack of training and lack of will.

Interoperability isn't so much hardware as it is a state of mind. While having everyone on the same system certainly helps (whether it's MARCS, or conventional VHF or whatever) and makes it much easier, it can still be made to work even without a fancy megabuck radio system.

The problem is usually poor planning and/or poor execution. Even on the fancy megabuck radio system, interoperability won't work unless people know how to make it work and the will to use it is there.

In Ohio, it seems to me that the farther north and east one goes, the prevalence of the "go it alone" attitude increases dramatically, to the point that neighboring agencies often won't talk to one another at all, even if they do have the capability. It's gotten considerably better over the last few years, but examples like this are still all too prevalent.

I hate radios that require the user to look at the display to make a change. It was so much easier and more efficient to just reach down and turn the selector knob however many clicks it took to go to an alternate channel and not have to look away from the action. Unless it is easy and simple, interop will suffer.

And that's where planning and training come in. With a proper channel plan, an agency can have their most-used talkgroups in a single zone, including a couple of common interop talkgroups, and switch channels exactly as you mention.

Even so, for a long-term op, if someone has to look at the radio to change channels, so be it; at a properly managed incident, they shouldn't have to change channels more than once each operational period.
 
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santafe2016

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Interoperability

Clark County Sheriff and Post 12 on occasion talk on IO channel, but then again one of the dispatchers does double duty with SO and OSP and knows how it operates!! When it comes to the city on PROVOICE that wonderful system they bought years ago so NOBODY could hear anything they do, they have to have radios in dispatch to monitor and then listen and tell. No IO compatibility there at all. Allegedly they will be making a switch to IP but with that mentality everything has to go through dispatch.
 
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guttapercha

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And that's where planning and training come in. With a proper channel plan, an agency can have their most-used talkgroups in a single zone, including a couple of common interop talkgroups, and switch channels exactly as you mention.

Speaking of which, I would be very interested to see how different agencies channelize their radios. As examples, does Columbus PD put FCSO frequencies in any of their zones? Where do they put the simulcasts of the statewide VHF simplex freqs?

It would be an interesting look into how the users actually use their systems, or perhaps how they envisioned the way that they might have used them when they had their radios programmed.

JD
 

Nasby

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Speaking of which, I would be very interested to see how different agencies channelize their radios. As examples, does Columbus PD put FCSO frequencies in any of their zones? Where do they put the simulcasts of the statewide VHF simplex freqs?

It would be an interesting look into how the users actually use their systems, or perhaps how they envisioned the way that they might have used them when they had their radios programmed.

JD

As I mentioned earlier, all the zones packed full of mutual aid and tac channels from Cleveland to Cincy don't mean a darn thing if the front line users don't know how to utilize them.

I would wager that 80%-90% of cops, firemen, etc. don't have a clue on how to change zones on an HT1250, MT2000 or any APX radio they carry. And probably have no idea what LECOMM-6 or VTac is even used for or means.
 

mmartinfan

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And it still all comes down to training. The average dumb FF or PD doesn't know there are 800 plus channels possibly in his/her radio. Why should they their dispatcher is only on a few of them.

If a MCI or another huge event happens hopefully a semi knowledgeable dispatcher will know how to tell the FD and PD to go to a XLECOMM or whatever.
 

wa8pyr

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Speaking of which, I would be very interested to see how different agencies channelize their radios. As examples, does Columbus PD put FCSO frequencies in any of their zones? Where do they put the simulcasts of the statewide VHF simplex freqs?

It would be an interesting look into how the users actually use their systems, or perhaps how they envisioned the way that they might have used them when they had their radios programmed.

Franklin County and the City of Columbus have long been rated one of the top urban areas in the country for interoperability (generally in the top four, but rated first or second in several categories).

There are standardized law enforcement and fire templates that include the basic talkgroups for every agency as well as the designated interop talkgroups. With a few exceptions, all radios are identical except for designated "user option" zones which can be programmed to each agencies' preference.

Because of automatic response, fire was an early adopter of a standard countywide template, but it's only been in the past few years that law enforcement has followed suit. Even so, law enforcement generally shared talkgroups on an agency-by-agency basis before adoption of the standard template.
 

wdz

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I thought the whole point of MARCS was to make people by expensive digital scanners and gripe about programming them.
 

santafe2016

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marcs

hey TOM, is there anything about these you don't know?? I mean from the most obscure point you have an answer. You ever tried Jeopardy, LOL??
 

wa8pyr

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hey TOM, is there anything about these you don't know?? I mean from the most obscure point you have an answer. You ever tried Jeopardy, LOL??

I'll take trunking for $1000, Alex. . . .
 

phask

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MARCS Mission Statement


MARCS is dedicated to providing Ohio's first responders and public safety providers with state-of-the-art wireless digital communications, and to promote interoperability, in order to save lives and maximize effectiveness in both normal operations and emergency situations.
 

w8prr

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The crack at Tom was unwarranted. Tom, like several of use here (including me) work for agencies that use MARCS and many other radio systems. We try to give out as much good information as we can, but most are careful what they talk about is already in the public domain, not something we know from work sources that are not ready to be public information yet. Be glad they can often clear up something that is not correct from other sources.
 
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