Ohio Landing Zone Interop

[rcid1971]

I listen to Cleveland Metro LifeFlight struggle to establish comms with Hudson Fire yesterday. They eventually used the MLF legacy VHF channel.

In the Cleveland Area you'll often hear landing zones either direct, or on a variation of dozens of frequencies.

So between MARCS, GCRCN, Ottawa/Parma/Medina, the Lorain 5-City, why isn't there one zone with a few LZ-interop channels that makes it the one stop on every fire & ems radio? It seems every department has a different way.

Many will use 8TAC92D (852.0125 156.7 PL), it seems more complicated than ever to hear them try to communicate. Funny thing is, the scanner user has the last laugh, they hear them all!

 

[scannerboy02]

This is why the (band specific) national interoperability channels should be programmed into every radio. Not only does that help with landing zones but all other forms of interoperability.

Of note on this, a few years ago I was on an incident in Hamilton County and they were landing Air Care in the eastern part of the county and having a heck of a time establishing communications on "8TAC92D". As I was standing within eyesight of the LZ coordinator and could see him transmitting on his radio so I put my scanner in Close Call mode and discovered that he was talking on the old pre 800 MHz rebranding frequency for 8TAC92D and of course Air Care was on the correct frequency.

 

[ecps92]

I listen to Cleveland Metro LifeFlight struggle to establish comms with Hudson Fire yesterday. They eventually used the MLF legacy VHF channel.

In the Cleveland Area you'll often hear landing zones either direct, or on a variation of dozens of frequencies.

So between MARCS, GCRCN, Ottawa/Parma/Medina, the Lorain 5-City, why isn't there one zone with a few LZ-interop channels that makes it the one stop on every fire & ems radio? It seems every department has a different way.

Many will use 8TAC92D (852.0125 156.7 PL), it seems more complicated than ever to hear them try to communicate. Funny thing is, the scanner user has the last laugh, they hear them all!

https://www.metrohealth.org/-/media/metrohealth/documents/life-flight/radio-frequency-form.pdf

 

[elijam1]

I listen to Cleveland Metro LifeFlight struggle to establish comms with Hudson Fire yesterday. They eventually used the MLF legacy VHF channel.

In the Cleveland Area you'll often hear landing zones either direct, or on a variation of dozens of frequencies.

So between MARCS, GCRCN, Ottawa/Parma/Medina, the Lorain 5-City, why isn't there one zone with a few LZ-interop channels that makes it the one stop on every fire & ems radio? It seems every department has a different way.

Many will use 8TAC92D (852.0125 156.7 PL), it seems more complicated than ever to hear them try to communicate. Funny thing is, the scanner user has the last laugh, they hear them all!

In Cuyahoga County there is a template that is supposed to be in all FD/EMS radios. In that template there is a helicopter zone which has the talkgroups for a number of the medical flight helicopters. The first two channels are however 8TAC92D and 8TAC94D. These would be the preferred channels for scene communications when receiving a helicopter.
When confusions ensues it is probably from one of the following. Either the agency does not have the county template programmed in or the user does not know how or was not trained to go to that channel for communications.

 

[rcid1971]

In Cuyahoga County there is a template that is supposed to be in all FD/EMS radios. In that template there is a helicopter zone which has the talkgroups for a number of the medical flight helicopters. The first two channels are however 8TAC92D and 8TAC94D. These would be the preferred channels for scene communications when receiving a helicopter.
When confusions ensues it is probably from one of the following. Either the agency does not have the county template programmed in or the user does not know how or was not trained to go to that channel for communications.

Wow, and to your point, does not drill for interop comms.

 

[n3obl]

You would be surprised how many radios have errors in them.