kinerity
Member
Anybody know about this? We just received 4 portables for our FD since we run MA into Franklin. Here's the email I got yesterday:
We were informed today that Franklin County will be undergoing a radio refresh that will essentially make all Washington County mobile and portable radio assets inoperable on their frequencies, effective tomorrow morning sometime after 09:00 hrs. Unfortunately, there is not sufficient time to physically touch all the radio assets in the County (or even partial assets) to bridge this communication interruption.
What we have in place as a temporary bridge will be the following protocols;
Option A:
Option B:
- When a unit is responding “INTO” Franklin County, the Washington County ECC will direct your unit(s) to either Tac 5 Ops or Tac 6 Ops with instructions to move to the talk group and standby for Franklin. Franklin will be completing the set-up of a patch through their ECC back to the Franklin County operating channel. This should create a functional workaround until W.C. Communications Maintenance can work with the private contractor for Franklin County on programming of our radio assets.
- When a patch is in place, all Washington County radio assets will function on Tac 5 Ops or Tac 6 Ops as assigned.
- Franklin County will also be providing 3 Franklin County portable radios to each fire station (Sta.’s 4, 13, 27, 9, 7) and 1 portable for 75-9 and 1 portable for Sta. 79 to aid in operations on smaller incidents.
- This will not provide enough Franklin County portables for firefighters working on larger incidents, so you will need to work within the patch as described above for these incidents.
Option C:
- When a Franklin County unit responds “INTO” Washington County they will move to our operating channel as in past (Tac 1 ops, PS1, etc..) as their operating changes have already been incorporated earlier in the process.
Now is the time to grab your radios and scroll through the zones to identify the National Interop Frequencies and familiarize yourself with accessing those frequencies (refer to “IN2 Zone” in your radio). Communications Managers from both Counties are working on a programming schedule for Washington County units moving forward. I am not sure when those details will be brought forward, however I have requested to be kept in the loop on progress. Our apologies for the last minute brief, however we (DES) just learned of tomorrows planned implementation around 12:00 hrs. today. Please keep us posted if you encounter problems with communications under this plan.
- If the above options fail, you will be instructed to go to one of the National interop frequencies (refer to IN2 Zone). From there, a patch will be set up through our Motor-Bridge Network. This historically has worked fairly well, however it does not always produce the audio quality we would expect from the direct patching outlined in Option A above.