The COW is a portable site on trailer. It is used temporarily mainly at large events, or when normal communications infrastructure may have failed.
COW stands for cell on wheels. This is usually used when talking about cellular infrastructure. You may also see them referred to as SOW, or site on wheels.
Jacob
COW stands for
Communications On Wheels. There is one posted in Salina and one posted in Wichita. There is not cell equipment on them. If we need cell, we have special contacts with ATT, Verizon, Nex-Tech and a couple others.
Each one has an independent and separate 7 channel 700 meg digital trunking system on board. They also have ACU and ACUM on board. The last time I had it out for exercises it had two VHF, two UHF, two conventional 800 radios and KSICS that could be crossbanded. While they hate to do it last minute, there is a manner by which they can program and reprogram alot of different local systems and comms on the fly.
Most of us who are IMT Comms for State of Kansas have a cache of radios that are on the KSICS with all the interops. In the statewide interop template the COWs each over capability to have 16 talk groups each. While they don't like to do it, they can often tie into KSICS but they rarely do because it is best to segregate events and incidents from the normal everyday stuff going on. Keeps good Command and Control and also keeps folks who don't need to be on the system talking out of the hair of the Incident Commanders.
The last time I saw and looked at the equipment on the COW trailers, it did not have any cellular equipment or Bi-Directional Amplifiers. If we need to boost cellular for the command, we have satellite comms on our trailers.
The COW was supposed to be getting AM radio transmitters like the travel advisory ones but I don't know if that project made it out of the process yet.
Depending on who is in charge of comms on the event or incident, will depend on what system gets used. It is not up very often, but normally there is an announcement on this forum.
