Wood County Fire forced off VHF to MARCS?

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Hi, based upon an article in the BG Sentinel-Tribune on June 14th, the North Baltimore EMS will be "forced" to buy MARCS radios? Why? Why can't they stay on VHF, like most of Wood County has for fire- everybody has access to 153.890 county-wide. BG City PD and Fire have DMR, but also have an analog link.
North Baltimore is freaking out because the 4 radios will cost over $14,000 not in their budget.
My question is: are they being forced into MARCS?
Can't they just buy ONE MARCS radio and patch it into their current VHF system?
What's the big rush, and who's pushing this?
Thanks,
73,
J
 
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Same thing happen up in cleveland when the OLD Marc's Type-2 System was up, A Fire Chief MADE everyone in the Hillcrest Area MOVE from their GOOD 420 system to Marc's their was a LOT of UN HAPPY departments lol
 

fredva

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I just read the article. It states that North Baltimore EMS is dependent on the sheriff's department for dispatching, and that gives the sheriff control over what radio systems will or will not be used. And the sheriff has decided that his dispatchers will only use MARCS in the future. North Baltimore EMS can stay on their current system if they find an alternate dispatch center, but that's apparently not a good option.
 

Hummer8290

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Patching of a MARCS talkgroup to a conventional freq. for the purpose of simulcast only ( not two way) is permitted by MARCS. The department you speak of, does it the same way mine does.
 

Nasby

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Patching of a MARCS talkgroup to a conventional freq. for the purpose of simulcast only ( not two way) is permitted by MARCS. The department you speak of, does it the same way mine does.

Its all about that mighty dollar. The friendly MARCS folks want every penny they can get.

So they are not about to let an agency use VHF radios to patch into their system and use it for their daily Ops free of charge. Simple as that.
 

wa8pyr

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Its all about that mighty dollar. The friendly MARCS folks want every penny they can get.

So they are not about to let an agency use VHF radios to patch into their system and use it for their daily Ops free of charge. Simple as that.

Actually there's more to it than that. Hang-time and delays on a conventional repeater can cause a talkgroup to stay active on a trunked site nearly continuously, adversely affecting site capacity and essentially negating the talkgroup priority feature of the system.
 
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So Wood County is going to take their perfectly functioning VHF system and trash it? Also, IIRC, there is no MARCS tower in BG, only out in Bradner, where there's nothing but cows?
Anyone in the know, know if they will maintain the CD/EMA on 153.89 for dual tone activation of the sirens, or for tone-out of fire in addition to using MARCS-IP?
I would hope that they would keep the VHF as the 'all hell breaks loose back-up'. Even Toledo was smart enough to keep their original VHF fire repeater in use as the last gasp for comms- their backup plan is if their 800MHz system goes down to send hams to all fire stations and hospitals, and where they don't have a ham, use the old VHF repeater. Glad some places still have a backup plan. Likewise, most LEO in Ohio still have access to some nice high-power VHF comms on the statewide channel of 155.370 MHz. Any new MARCS tower planned for central Wood County?
 

w8prr

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There is no way in hell they have to pay 14,000 dollars for 4 radios. I'm sure they only talked to one vendor. MARCS has a long list of radios that work on the system, not all from the big M. Many can be had for under 2000 per radio.
 
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