German Twp. Clark County

[n8wel]

It appears since Monday that German Twp. police is now using the former twp. fire repeater 154.220 as a TAC channel, busy during the weekday for traffic control and Clark SO has access. in the evenings only one patrol car is operating and uses the MARCS SO TG.

From township minutes it shows MARCS has contacted them and was asking price for reprogramming by P&R out of Dayton $560 for template setup and $1601 for talkgroup layer and not sure if the prices is per radio or all 11 radios (portables & mobiles). WS out of Xenia got their VHF repeater and radios setup in late fall.

My next question is this temporary as one would think programming could be on site instead in the shop and using a vhf system, or will German twp. pursue MARCS getting a TAC talkgroup shortly when the money is in. No motion was carried out during December meeting. They should thought of a tac channel during the intial MARCS process.

Also Mad River-Green Twp. Fire finally switched to MARCS and was the last FD to switch in Clark County.

 

[rcid1971]

Serious, perhaps dumb question, and a little off topic specific to German Twp.

A lot of these agencies have legacy VHF systems.

What would it take to license for P-25 and have digital transmission on the former agency VHF band as another Zone within their MARCS radios? I realize it’s way out of band for 700/800, but can any radio do that?

 

[wa8pyr]

Serious, perhaps dumb question, and a little off topic specific to German Twp.

A lot of these agencies have legacy VHF systems.

What would it take to license for P-25 and have digital transmission on the former agency VHF band as another Zone within their MARCS radios? I realize it’s way out of band for 700/800, but can any radio do that?

Yes, various manufacturers (off the top of my head, Harris and Motorola) offer multi-band radios. They do analog as well as P25 so there's no need to reconfigure the VHF for P25, just leave it as-is so you have a viable backup as well as a stand-alone alerting solution (as recommended by the NFPA).

 

[n8wel]

Duhh Me...... I totally forgot about dual band Harris P25-vhf or UHF radios. I was told Harris radios were bought and could be programmed for both MARCS and vhf or uhf as a smart move on the PD chief for his township budget. Yes Motorola may have similar but late is the game in pricing as the middle finger is pointing to the state of Ohio agency DAS- MARCS for now. Local government do not give up your renewal FCC VHF/ UHF repeater license for backup despite only simplex. Only MARCS issue is that the SO or others could not to go to his TAC for the worst...