OHIO MARCS IP Liked or Disliked?

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TailGator911

Silent Key/KF4ANC
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Fairborn, OH
Monitoring Fairborn PD and Montgomery County South Dispatch this morning and a transmission from the usually clear Fairborn PD channel was garbled to the point of sounding like encryption. As I wondered about that, the unit calling his dispatch remarked that her last transmission was unreadable and sounded like Donald Duck. So it's not just on our end, folks. They sounded very frustrated with the Ohio MARCS-IP system.

I have a nephew on the Germantown PD force, and a good friend and fellow ham on the Greene County Sheriff Dept Last year I remember asking my friend if they (GCSO) were ever going to full encryption (we were discussing scanners online) and he told me then that when I heard a garbled transmission on an otherwise unencrypted channel that it was usually two or more people trying to transmit at the same time. He says he loves his communications system. He says others do not. And, he noted, none of them are in favor of online scanners.

Do you think our public safety people like or dislike the Ohio Marcs-IP system?
 

fyrfyter33

Member
Premium Subscriber
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Aug 17, 2003
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222
Location
Cincinnati, OH
Like.

It’s way better than the old Low Band/UHF stuff using in vehicle repeaters.

I use MARCS every 3rd day. We have been using a Motorola digital system in this area for 15+ years. Once you get used to the differences, you can see and hear how much better off we are now.

Two units cannot simultaneously key and transmit at once on the same channel/talkgroup. The system won’t allow this. It if sounds garbled, it either a tower drifting out of sync or a radio drifting off frequency. It happens. It’s still RF based with computers in there. It will not work 100% perfect 100% of the time.
 

wa8pyr

Retired and playing radio whenever I want.
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Ohio
Like.

It’s way better than the old Low Band/UHF stuff using in vehicle repeaters.

I use MARCS every 3rd day. We have been using a Motorola digital system in this area for 15+ years. Once you get used to the differences, you can see and hear how much better off we are now.

Agree; system works very nicely, although I do miss VHF/UHF conventional. It was so much simpler.

Two units cannot simultaneously key and transmit at once on the same channel/talkgroup. The system won’t allow this. It if sounds garbled, it either a tower drifting out of sync or a radio drifting off frequency. It happens. It’s still RF based with computers in there. It will not work 100% perfect 100% of the time.

Not completely true; settings can be changed in the system so that radios can transmit simultaneously, although I'm not sure why anyone would want to permit simultaneous transmission. The default setting doesn't permit it and every radio I know of uses the defaults.

In my experience, if one unit or the other is garbled, it's because one of the radios is in a slightly flaky location. Consoles with a direct connection to the system should not be garbled unless the receiving radio is in a bad location.
 

612345

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Location
Danbury, Ohio
Monitoring Fairborn PD and Montgomery County South Dispatch this morning and a transmission from the usually clear Fairborn PD channel was garbled to the point of sounding like encryption. As I wondered about that, the unit calling his dispatch remarked that her last transmission was unreadable and sounded like Donald Duck. So it's not just on our end, folks. They sounded very frustrated with the Ohio MARCS-IP system.

I have a nephew on the Germantown PD force, and a good friend and fellow ham on the Greene County Sheriff Dept Last year I remember asking my friend if they (GCSO) were ever going to full encryption (we were discussing scanners online) and he told me then that when I heard a garbled transmission on an otherwise unencrypted channel that it was usually two or more people trying to transmit at the same time. He says he loves his communications system. He says others do not. And, he noted, none of them are in favor of online scanners.

Do you think our public safety people like or dislike the Ohio Marcs-IP system?
You bet!

From a public safety standpoint MARCS brought Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake and now Portage County fire departments onto one radio platform. With the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System used in this region, the radio system has allowed responding units to switch talkgroups and go to tactical channels regardless of county, city, village, township locations. We could not do our jobs without this radio system.
 
Joined
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1,915
Location
parma,ohio
i miss the OLD Type-2 System i could at least monitor the system at home in Parma now i'm like in a dead zone only my G5 Pager works 100% on the new MARCS System
 
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jasonhouk

Uniden Betaman
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Mar 29, 2013
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895
Location
Marion, Ohio
The thing I miss the most since Marion County PD, Sheriff, Fire and EMS switching over to MARCS is the old analog Stateband 155.370! True interoperability from county to county, city to county etc.

Training on MARCS here has been very limited and an interoperability nightmare.

J



Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk
 

belvdr

No longer interested in living
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Aug 2, 2013
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I wish there was a way to use my scanner in southwest Ohio to listen to northeast Ohio traffic. I have trouble finding an online streaming source.
 

fyrfyter33

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Joined
Aug 17, 2003
Messages
222
Location
Cincinnati, OH
The thing I miss the most since Marion County PD, Sheriff, Fire and EMS switching over to MARCS is the old analog Stateband 155.370! True interoperability from county to county, city to county etc.

Training on MARCS here has been very limited and an interoperability nightmare.

J



Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk



I’m sorry to hear this. Training here was great and we will soon have true multi-state interop among all 3 states.
 

W8RMH

Feed Provider Since 2012
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Jan 4, 2009
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Location
Grove City, OH (A Bearcat not a Buckeye)
Columbus/Franklin County which is one of the largest users and I have not heard anything negative. Occasionally I hear a garbled transmission, and the dispatcher says "repeat", so they didn't get a clear transmission either, (simultaneously key or bad location), which also happened on the old system, it just sounds different on digital.

If you are having issues using a scanner that is due to multi-path distortion which is a scanner issue not an issue with MARCS. My HP-2 works great on MARCS throughout the state (and locally on my Yagi antenna), except while mobile and in major cities with simulcast sites, in which my Unicaton G4 works fine.
 
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