Howard County Fire Using RINS

[TinEar]

Howard County fire was having trouble hearing units inside a building while fighting a fire. As a result, Command ordered all units to switch to B-14 and announced that B-14 was RINS-5. However, after they switched I could not hear a thing from my location. When the Howard County police/detectives switch to RINS, I have absolutely no trouble hearing them. I guess that means the fire department does not use a repeater when on the RINS frequencies.

 

[w9ofa]

I heard the same thing Mr. Ear.

Did you catch where the fire was? I thought someone said home depot. It sounded like a major event. I also saw a helicopter around the 175/Snowden River area around midnight.

 

[n3cs]

Same thing happened tonight (3/27 about 1 AM) at Giant supermarket fire on Freetown Rd in Columbia. I am nearby and could not find them when they switched to "B14, RINS5". I listened to all the old VHF freqs, but no luck.

I suspect they are switching to an analog 800 MHz channel as their radios likely lack VHF. This takes them off the trunk system which is why their communications fail (I can't get a cell phone to work in that Giant either).

I suspected 868.51250 and listened there, but could not confirm (too little activity on fire ground by the time I got back to my PC and found that as a simplex 800 MHz freq. candidate).

Would appreciate someone who can clarify what they are using.

UPDATE: I found RINS-5 on another older post 866.8625...too bad I didn't have this earlier tonight!


Chris

 

[bear105]

Tinear, do you remember what units were dispatched??

 

[markgrutz]

That triangle there at Cedar Ln and Freetown Rd is one of the "spots" where radios seem to fail, even though there is a repeater on top of the hospital. These radios seem to fail in the nursing homes there unless you are at a window or outside. Rt 40 at Chatham Home Depot is another spot that I know the radios fail. I guess this is the 10% that we didn't pay for, or the 10% that is not covered according to the system bid

I don't have a whole list, but the standard box assignment should be E71,Twr7,P75, E101, E51, E91, Twr10, BC1, EMS1. Then The task force will bring 1 additional engine and the white wave.

*Afterthought* - The RINS channels (5 and 6) on the fire template are AUTO SIMPLEX... you have no repeater access unless you go to the Oscar or Sierra zones. The police usually go to those two zones to operate "off the system".

 

[troymail]

This may function silimilarlly to AA County's "talkaround"
channel(s) -- AA Fire TG 10-P (I think)....

In the AA County case, it's an 800 Mhz conventional freq
where units can talk direct to each other without hitting a
repeater... you need to be pretty close to hear anything.

The Howard B-14 may or may not be the same thing - but
it sounds like it.

 

[w9ofa]

Yeah, we are all talking about the same event. They did keep mentioning "grocery store" so I guess it makes sense that it was the Giant.

One of the callsigns I kept hearing was "Tower 10"

 

[TinEar]

Denis, no, I don't remember which units were dispatched.

As mentioned above, the fire was at the Giant store.

The RINS freqs are listed in the database at this site under the Common/Shared section of the state listings. Even though Command announced that B-14 was RINS-5, I had another scanner searching through all six RINS freqs while I was checking RINS-5 on the primary scanner I was using for the webcast. Nothing heard at all. So, yes, it's fairly obvious there is no repeater involved, at least for that particular RINS freq when used by Howard County Fire. They did keep the Incident 1, Staging talkgroup active with regular operations while the main body of the force went to RINS.

Oh, and before I forget, in the Howard County Police bandplan, E-9 is Baltimore County's TG2000 (VNA 153). I've caught them several times switching to that freq but this was the first time I heard them call it E-9. They did it several times this past week.

 

[cohenner5377]

Fire in Freetown Giant

I was listening to that, and from Baltimore, I heard B1 loud and clear....

 

[lawman349]

Here in Charles county, we've set up the RINS as simplex. I suspect Howard Co. has done the same. It makes sense to switch on-scene ops to a simplex mode if the radio becomes a brick once inside the building. The on-scene commander simply assigns one guy to monitor/communicate with the dispatcher and everyone else uses simplex modes for reliable communication with each other.

This type of operation is low-power and probably could not be heard more than a mile or two from the scene

 

[ericcarlson]

Command ordered all units to switch to B-14 and announced that B-14 was RINS-5.

Did anyone happen to confirm the frequency they were using? Per the channel plan we have, B14 is labeled "RNS1" -- but Howard County could have put any frequency there and called it RNS1 (or the channel plan we have may be wrong).

-Eric

 

[markgrutz]

I am going to the station tonight, I will take the scanner with me and will get a definitive answer on the RINS channels as programmed into the radios, and ammend this post later tonight.

Mark

** Update **

Ok, here is the list. It is RINS5 and RINS6 on every zone A,B,C and D. And they are in simplex by default.

RINS1 - 868.5125
RINS2 - 866.8375
RINS3 - 867.2375
RINS4 - 867.4875
RINS5 - 866.8625
RINS6 - 867.7625

This is tested as per Fire Department F5 Template on a portable radio in simplex.

** Update over **

Mark

 

[TinEar]

My guess is that each Incident set will have different RINS freqs assigned to the RNS1 and RNS2 slots in the band plan. If Incident 1 (Zone B) is using RINS5 and 6 for those slots, Incident 2 (Zone C) might use two other RINS freqs, such as RINS3 and 4, for the same slots.