Metro Life Flight

[FFAndy]

I believe Cleveland Metro Life flight is using MARCS radios now
State of Ohio MARCS - Multi-Agency Radio Communications Trunking System, Statewide, Multi-State
State of Ohio MARCS - Multi-Agency Radio Communications Trunking System, Statewide, Multi-State - Scanner Frequencies

Does anyone know what the ststem freq. is? The talk group for Life Flight is easy to pick out but there are a ton of system groups for Ohio MARCS. Im just a little confused. Thanks

 

[budevans]

Life Flight has been on MARCS for over a year (that I know of). There are several Life Flight TG listed in the MARCS database.

Regarding your frequencies question. I'm not sure what you are looking for. In the case of MARCS you'd program in the control freq for the MARCS towers that you can recieve.

Besides the MARCS radio's, the helicopters have radio's capable of simplex communications with local police and fire (150 Mhz and 400 Mhz). The Metro dispatch provides the frequency when they dispatch a copter. As an example, for most of Cuyahoga County they use 155.385.

Note: The Life Flight Helicopters are not all based at Metro. Starting last summer helicopters are also based in Lake, Lorain and Medina counties.

Besides Metro affiliated Life Flight there are other Hospitals with helicopter affiliations. Case University Hospitals, Cleveland Clinic and Akron Childrens Hospitals all have helicopters. Akron Childrens use Care Air (sometimes referred to as Care Bear) helicopters.

Hopefully I touched on what you were looking for. If not, please provide additional details. I'm sure someone out hear can point you in the right direction.

 

[fpo701]

Bud,

The Helo at Akron Childrens is AirBear. Care Bears were those colored teddy bears from the '80s.

Frank

 

[FFAndy]

I use to be able to hear life flight dispatch call in patient reports and get dispatched for calls. Since they changed there frequencies I dont hear them anymore. On the ohio marcs page the fallowing talk groups are listed for life flight
38192 953 D CLE-LF-LZ Cleveland Metro Life Flight - Landing Zone
38208 954 D CLE-LF-CPO Cleveland Metro Life Flight - CPO
38224 955 D CLE-LF-AIR Cleveland Metro Life Flight - AIR
38752 976 D CLE-LF-MC Cleveland Metro Life Flight - MICU

I dont know what the system frequencies are so I can hear those talkgroups. could it be anyone of the following
6F0F 042 Strongsville (Cuyahoga) 867.42500 867.87500a 868.17500c 868.48750 868.82500
6F0F 043 Cleveland (Cuyahoga) 866.65000 867.60000 867.63750a 867.75000a 867.91250c 868.20000a
6F0F 044 Hopkins Airport (Cuyahoga) 866.87500 867.30000a 867.85000c 868.57500a 868.73750a
6F0F 045 Beachwood (Cuyahoga) 866.70000 866.96250a 867.78750a 868.10000c

I know im probably confusing eveyone. I can haer them when they tune into the fire department frequencies when they talk to them. I just want to hear dispatch again. Please help if you can

 

[Nasby]

Just an FYI. Lifeflight can still be heard on rare occasions on their old vhf channel of 155.385.

 

[budevans]

FFAndy,

You are hearing less Life Flight traffic because most of the helicopters are now based in neighboring counties. Before the move last summer, all of the helicopters were based at Burke Lakefront and dispatched from Cleveland Metro Hospital. Today the helicopters are based in neighboring counties and get the transport requests from the local hospitals, law and ems. The only time you hear a call from Lorain is if the patient is being transported from Lorain to Metro. Their radios are affiliated with the local MARCs tower. So Lorain only traffic is only available on the Lorain towers. But, when a Lorain based helo calls Metro (Cuyahoga County) then both Lorain and Cuyahoga towers carry the call. It's like cell phone coverage.

MARCS is a (Motorola) Trunked radio system which use Apco 25 Digital for voice coms.
I see you listed all of the four Cuyahoga County MARCS tower frequencies. Late model Trunk and Digital capable scanners only need the Control frequency. So for Cuyahoga County you really only need, 867.9125, 867,8500, 868,1850 and 868.1000. The Control Channel will tell your scanner what frequency to use. If you want to be safe you can also include the Alternate Control channels. FYI, In the last year I haven't once seen any of the Alternates used.

You listed four Life Flight Talk Groups (TG). I have another Life Flight TG 18896, on which I have recorded over 2000 hits. You might want to add it.

The following are Talk Groups that I've copied Life Flight and other local helo traffic.
Case Med UH1 TG55152
Case Medical TG29952
Medflight Helo TG10896
Medflight Ground TG10912
Akron Childrens TG31152
Cuyahoga Falls TG31136

One last group of suggestions:
Program in the Talk Groups for the area's larger hospitals. Metro, Case, Cleveland Clinic, etc.. Also include the larger hospitals in Lorain, Medina and Lake Counties.

You might also want to add the Control Channels for MARCS Towers in Lake, Medina, Summit and Lorain (if you can get a signal from those towers). From my location I can receive both the MARCS Willoughby tower (Lake County) and the Richfield tower (Summit County).

Hope this help. Good luck.

 

[mdulrich]

I have another Life Flight TG 18896, on which I have recorded over 2000 hits. You might want to add it.

That would be Life Flight out of Toledo and a few other locations in NW Ohio

Mike

 

[Skyhawk9]

Help with MARCS OHIO Freq.

For some reason I am not able to hear all traffic on a few frequencies I have programmed. I mainly want to listen to Metro Life flight in Cleveland and MedEvac in the same area. Now I can get some traffic but when Im at work I hear everything on these frequencies (at firedepartment only 20 miles from my home).
The two frequencies in question are

MedEvac Dispatch on Dec 55152 and

Metro Life Flight on Dec 38224

I am wondering if I need to add a tower frequency and if so which one???? I live in Medina county ohio and work in Cuyahoga county.

The signal shows very strong when I do hear on these two frequencies, but Im not receiving all traffic.

 

[Nasby]

Make sure you have all the MARCS towers for Cuyahoga and Medina Counties in your scanner. Especially the Richfield and Beachwood sites as they seem to carry very strong signals. This should cover your talkgroups.
Also, Medevac uses VHF channel 155.265 for dispatch. Lifeflight sometimes uses 155.385.

 

[Skyhawk9]

Thank you for your response...Im a bit new to this and I appreciate the help.

One more question...For the tower selection on my scanner I selected "Cuyahoga Marcs" I do have Richfield, and some other one that starts with "SW" (dont have my scanner with me so cant remember the rest of the letters." So my question is do I leave the "Cuyahoga Marcs tower" set with the frequency (metro and Medevac) or change it to "Richfield or any other one. The Cuyahoga Marcs signal strength is strong shows all 4 bars.

The beachwood one I know I don't have ....How do I get that one?? What would that freq. be??
Again thank you for your help...

 

[Nasby]

Not sure what scanner you have but I have the Radio Shack PR0-106. At any rate, program ALL of the MARCS control channel frequencies for Cuyahoga and Medina Counties. The list of tower freqs can be found in the database section. They are listed by county. If you need any help, you can shoot me a private message. I live in Portage County and have a nice system setup for all of NE Ohio for fire, rescue, etc.
Good Luck!!

 

[Skyhawk9]

Marcs towers

Sorry snjct2000 I tried to send you a private message and for some reason it would not go through.
Hello again.

To answer your last post I am using the PSR 500 digital hand held scanner. Its a great scanner, but just need to work out a few details on it.

The scanner was per-programmed for Cuyahoga, Geauga, and Summit counties. I added a few freq's myself Metro Lifeflight, and MedEvac Dispatch on marcs system.

Now Life flight I do hear but not every day. One day I will hear non stop traffic and the next day not even one hit...This freq is not so much a problem (i dont think)..but my concern is the MedEvac freq. ( Dec. 55152) and it is set at "cuyahoga marcs."...do i need to change this?

It only hit two or three times. Now at work I hear non stop traffic on my department radio, so I know there is traffic on this freq. I would bring my scanner to work with me and set it next to my radio and...no scanner pickup..even though there is traffic coming from my radio.

My question is how do I get the cuyahoga and medina marcs towers freq's...the beachwood one for example I can't find...I have the richfield, SWRCN, Parma, and one that is titled cuyahoga marcs.
Is this as simple as adding a dec. number in for these towers?

 

[budevans]

Skyhawk9,

I have a couple suggestions to help you get up to speed.

First, go back to the "Ohio Radio Discussion Forum" and read the "Understanding how MARCS works" thread, it's about the seventh thread from the top. That will help you to understand how MARCS (a trunked radio system) works.

After you've read the How MARCS works thread come back to this thread (Metro Life Flights) and look at the following permalinks. Permalink #4 from FFAndy, then look at permalink #6 (my response to FFAndy). That should give you an idea as to the way MARCS is setup and some additional medical Talk Groups (TG) you might want to load.

One last suggestion, if you aren't using a Windows based program to setup and modify your scanner you should consider getting one. Software like ARC500 or WIN500 are two examples of intuitive and easy to use programs.

 

[fpo701]

My question is how do I get the cuyahoga and medina marcs towers freq's...the beachwood one for example I can't find...I have the richfield, SWRCN, Parma, and one that is titled cuyahoga marcs.
Is this as simple as adding a dec. number in for these towers?

I'd like to make sure you aren't mixing things up here. Let's break this last paragraph down into managable sections.

The frequencies for the MARCS towers in Medina (zone 6F0F site 027), Strongsville (zone 6F0F site 042), Cleveland (zone 6F0F site 043), Hopkins (zone 6F0F site 044), and Beachwood (zone 6F0F site 045) can all be found in the top section on the MARCS page on RRDB (Ohio MARCS - Multi-Agency Radio Communications Trunking System, Statewide, Multi-State - Scanner Frequencies).

Now, for the second half of that paragraph. All of those others you mentioned (richfield, SWCRN, Parma, and Cuyahoga MARCS) have little to do with the current MARCS system. They are different radio systems, set up for the users of the talkgroups on each system. For example, the Richfield system (Richfield Trunking System, Richfield, Ohio - Scanner Frequencies) only carries traffic for Richfield. The Parma system is used by Parma and a handful of others. You will only hear (maybe) some traffic from the medical helos on them when the cities on them are in need of their assistance.

The one exception is the Cuyahoga MARCS. That's the P25 implementation of MARCS that is in its infancy. There are currently no active users.

Hope that clears up some of your confusion.

 

[Skyhawk9]

Thank you all for your help...it is greatly appreciated. Like I had mentioned before I'm very new to this and any bit of advice helps. I will take your advice and hopefully start to understand the system.

Thanks again..

 

[Nasby]

Skyhawk. I sent you a PM about this.

 

[Skyhawk9]

snjct2000 can you send me your contact info through PM..I would like to go a head with your request. I can't respond to your PM..It wont let me. Thank you

 

[Skyhawk9]

snjct2000,

This sounds great... I have everything I need from local fire and police. I just need help on the air medical marcs stuff.

Air medical in area.. Metro LF, University MedEvac, Akron's Air bear, and Cleveland clinic.

I am unable to bank anything in banks 19 and 20 (don't know the reasoning ...there are no freq set in these banks all other banks are full..they were preprogrammed when my wife purchased the scanner for me). If all possible I would like the air medical freq's to go...bank 19 or 20 either or. If we can't use 19 or 20...bank one is fine.

I just posted my 5th post so hopefully the forum God's allow me to PM now.
Thanks snjct200

 

[Skyhawk9]

Snjct2000

This sounds great I am available this coming sunday anytime and Wednesday anytime before 4pm. I know where the Cracker Barrel is so this would be perfect...I will wait to hear from you as to date and time. Thank you again you have been very helpful. If we need to go into the following week (week of the 10th) just let me know.