a388sig2
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Honda Donates MARCS Tower to State of Ohio for First Responders
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Anybody logged this tower yet? It may be fairly low profile so you might have to be pretty close.
It's not showing as a neighbor to Columbus MARCS.
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west-pac
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It says that one tower will help improve coverage in 6 counties. It doesn't sound like it'll be low profile. 🤷♂️
if its on the Honda plant property thats in Marysville...Union county
mmckenna
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As more jurisdictions adopt the latest NFPA rules, in-building coverage for public safety systems becomes a requirement.
Addressing radio coverage in a large factory like that is difficult. BDA's or headend style systems are expensive and require a lot of upkeep.
A company donating a tower/site to an agency like this can fix their in-building coverage challenges a lot cheaper than building out and maintaining a large BDA/headend type system, plus it puts all the maintenance/upkeep on the agency.
And yes, it benefits the surrounding areas.
Pretty good plan, if you ask me.
Nothing like excessively optimistic PR spin.
The best they can realistically get would be about 8-10 miles in any direction from the tower depending on terrain before performance drops to an unacceptable level for portables (which is mainly why this tower was put in, to help with portable and especially in-building coverage at Honda). Mobiles would be somewhat better. With the tower being fairly close to the plant, that means they'll improve coverage in parts of northwest Union, southwest Marion, southeastern Hardin and eastern Logan counties. On a really good day if the wind is blowing in the right direction it might help with a small part of northeastern Champaign County and western Delaware County but I wouldn't stake my life on it.
The Honda plant is actually several miles northwest of Marysville along US33; looking at the map it's not even in the City of Marysville (although I'm sure Marysville likes to claim it is). Placing this tower to avoid major coverage overlap had to be interesting; it's pretty close to the existing towers at Richwood and especially Marysville.
Specs on the site from the FCC database:
21001 State Route 739 (Substation behind Honda R&D... looks like it's right by the TRC test track)
Lat: 40.30369
Lon: -83.53442
Raymond (Union County)
Freqs: 851.1125, 851.3000, 851.8375, 852.2500, 852.7125, 853.2750, 853.4750, 854.4625
mmckenna
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Yep,
I'd be interested to know if the site was actually necessary for the system, or if it's just needed for in-plant coverage. Like I said above, a great way to shift the cost of BDA system maintenance off to the agency that runs the system.
In-plant coverage was the driving force behind putting the tower in. That's a very rural area and in-building coverage wouldn't particularly be a major issue if Honda weren't there.
Your comment about it being cheaper to put in a tower is spot-on, as Honda actually has several plants all clustered around that area, each of which would have required a BDA or DAS. The primary manufacturing plant (a really huge building complex at Pottersburg) is about a mile south of the tower, the R&D facility is right by the tower between Pottersburg and East Liberty, the Transportation Research Center is at East Liberty about a mile NW of the R&D facility (with the test track between the two) as well as a couple of other smaller plants right in that general area. There are also several businesses (Honda suppliers) scattered around.
The primary facility at Pottersburg alone would have required a massive BDA/DAS that would have been a bear to install and maintain.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's some down tilt on the antennas at the site just to make sure Honda gets blanketed with signal, but even then I'm not sure how it would help the R&D facility; the tower is almost literally beside the building (maybe a few hundred feet away).
And another thing. . . Claiming coverage in Madison County is a stretch; if I were a first responder I definitely wouldn't count on it.
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I ran across this info a few months ago and keep a list of frez's beside me. I checked on a map, it's under 11 mile from my house. I will search all the frez a little more often now! If I hear anything will post ASAP.
So you're saying it will help improve coverage in 6 counties. Got it. (I'm just giving you a hard time.)
Only if the wind is blowing the right way. . .
The radio user would probably have to hold his tongue just right as well.My big concern with it being so close to a couple other towers would be radios jumping from tower to tower a bit too much, especially mobiles.
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