Summit Cnty MARCS radio checks affiliating with Cuyahoga Cnty MARCS

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northernsummit

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Summit's system had a brief outage of some sort. Multiple agencies scrambled over to MAC channels for their operations during the event. A few of them told everyone to fall back to analog including Summit County SO. I don't know what it was because for the duration of the event I saw control channel data flowing, but they were apparently getting carrier (RID showing up on the display) but no audio from what I heard in some cases. It's pretty obvious they've been making changes all evening. Somwhere around an hour or two ago the active control channel changed over and the site suddenly had 20 voice channels instead of 10 or so (most likely brought over from the P25 system turned down earlier this morning). We may never know what it was but I'm pretty certain that is why you kept hearing radio checks.

I have noticed that most of the northern agencies (Twinsburg, Valley Fire, and even Cuyahoga Falls) have all been affiliating with Cuyahoga County throughout the day. I record at the site level so I was getting a transmission on an 800mhz summit site voice channel and the same exact transmission on a 700mhz Cuyahoga County voice channel.
 

budevans

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In the last hour I've monitored over 40 different Summit Talk Groups on the Cuyahoga Site. So far I've only found one TG 62754, that I couldn't ID. The rest were already in the RR MARCS Summit database.
 

wmlovell

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If I understand this correctly...

MAC Talkgroups. = Multiple Agency Communications
MERC Talkgroups = Major Event Radio Communications

When two or more agencies are operating at the same incident/event, they move that incident to a MAC talkgroup. These talkgroups are coordinated by requesting assignment on MAC-CALL. If the incident/event becomes larger to a County incident/event, they then would operate on MERC talkgroups.

Similar to the LECOMs & ECOMMs talkgroups within the State on MARCS.
LECOMs are for Local incidents/events & ECOMMs are coordinated for State Incidents/events.
 

firemantom26

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If I understand this correctly...

MAC Talkgroups. = Multiple Agency Communications
MERC Talkgroups = Major Event Radio Communications

When two or more agencies are operating at the same incident/event, they move that incident to a MAC talkgroup. These talkgroups are coordinated by requesting assignment on MAC-CALL. If the incident/event becomes larger to a County incident/event, they then would operate on MERC talkgroups.

Similar to the LECOMs & ECOMMs talkgroups within the State on MARCS.
LECOMs are for Local incidents/events & ECOMMs are coordinated for State Incidents/events.
That makes since. Thanks
 

northernsummit

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If I understand this correctly...

MAC Talkgroups. = Multiple Agency Communications

I always thought it was some play on mutual aid. The documentation in https://800mhz.summitoh.net/images/stories/PDFs/User_Manual/p25_user_manual_2017.pdf calls it this too.

20-MAC Countywide Mutual Aid (MAC)
21-MERC Countywide Major Emergency (MERC)

Summit County's use of MAC channels is hands down better than Cuyahoga County's use of REGION IO channels or even MARCs offerings. The interop between communities in Summit is pretty slick, where as if you listen to Cuyahoga all the agencies are split between MARCS/GCRCN and even if they're on the same system they always seem to ask their dispatch to call the neighboring department instead of getting on a common talk-group.
 

budevans

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Isn't that 77 MAC CALL ?
Thanks for reply. I was so busy writing down the Summit TG's coming in on the Cuyahoga Site, I checked every group except for Common. DUH.

Regarding MAC & MERC here's another version that a friend sent me.
MAC = Mutual Aid Communications
MERC = Major Emergency Radio Communications

To me, they all roughly say the same thing.
 

fpo701

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MAC is used for "small incidents". Most communities call for a MAC channel the minute they request any mutual aid. It keeps from everyone having to have all their neighbors talkgroups.

MERC is for, well, major emergencies. Hazmat calls always go to MERC. It is reserved for incidents that automatically pull from lots of agencies.

Agreed. It is a fine line.
 

mszabo2000

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MAC = Mutual Aid Channel, for daily mutual aid communications and managed by the SCSO. MERC = Major Emergency Radio Communications, for use only when the EOC is activated and managed by EMA.
 
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