Site Trunking Dub/Wor System

At approximately 12:16 this morning, the Dub/Wor simulcast zone went into site trunking causing a loss of console connection at both the Dublin and Worthington communications centers. The outage lasted approximately 7 minutes.

System managers are following up on the outage, which appears to be T1 interruption between the Avery Road site and the Dublin Justice Center. 

The system is back in full operation.

Rebanding Phase I Complete

Motorola has finished the work of retuning frequency 1 on the system. This completes the rebanding process for the City of Dublin license. Users should see no change in system performance as the change is transparent to subscribers.

Thanks to Motorola for their quick and efficient work!

Rebanding Phase I

Starting today, Motorola will begin the process to retune the one Dublin frequency that is subject to rebanding. COIRS channel #1 (852.0125) is being retuned to the new assigned frequency (856.6125).

Today, Motorola will be taking the three Dub/Wor sites off line for approximately 2 hours each to prepare the sites for the move. Users may see some diminished coverage, especially in buildings, as each site is taken off line.

Tomorrow, Motorola will take channel #1 off the air for most of the day to complete the actual retuning. Users should not notice any change in service during this work.

Since this frequency is not used as a control channel, there are no changes needed to subscriber equipment.

The three NPSPAC channels licensed to Worthington will be rebanded sometime in 2011 after mutual aid subcribers are upgraded to accomodate the new, lower frequencies.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Jay Somerville

Site Trunking - Dub/Wor System

At approximately 01:30 this morning, the Dub/Wor simulcast zone went into site trunking causing a loss of console connection at both the Dublin and Worthington communications centers. The outage lasted approximately 10 minutes.

System managers are following up on the outage, which appears to be a network connectivity problem between the master site and the Dub/Wor side of the system. The cause of the outage will be investigated.

The system is back in full operation.

Training Video - Clear Communication

Motorola has provided an update training video entitled "Say no to background noise. Say yes to clear communication" Clear, coherent communications are mission-critical to all first-responding agencies. Motorola has been working with the International Association of Fire Chiefs (the IAFC) to test, track and pinpoint the best practices for firefighters to maximize communication intelligibility and overcome background noise, whenever they use a portable or mobile radio. No matter where they are. No matter if it’s analog or digital.

Watch the video below to learn how to incorporate best practices and discover the difference intelligible communications can make when lives are on the line. 


If you ever have any questions or concerns about your walkies, mobiles or the system, please don't hesitate to contact any technical committee representative. We are here to help!

Annual Preventive Maintenance

On Tuesday 11/23 and Wednesday 11/24 B&C Communications will perform the annual preventive maintenance on the Dub/Wor simulcast sites. Each site will be taken off line for approximately 2 hours during the testing & optimizing. Users may experience some diminished in-building coverage during these outages. Below is the schedule of work:

• Tues 11/23 0900 to 1200 - Hard Road
• Tues 11/23 1300 to 1600 - Huntley Road
• Wed 11/24 0900 to 1200 - Avery Road

If you have any questions or concerns about this work, or if you need to have the work delayed for a large scale incident, please contact Jay Somerville immediately. 

Avery Tower Work Today

Crews will be placing the antenna pod back onto the top of the Avery Road water tower now that painting work has been completed. The Avery site will be taken off line starting at 8am. It is expected that the pod will be lifted into place by 1pm and the site back on line by 6pm tonight. During this outage, users may experience diminished in building coverage in the west and southwest areas of Dublin.

Scheduled System Outage - Dub/Wor Simulcast

The Dub/Wor simulcast side of the system will go down on Thursday 10/21 @ 05:00hrs for system maintenance. Motorola will be replacing the TenSr power supply cages to address false alarms being sent by MOSCAD. The outage is expected to last no more than 90 minutes.

User agencies will be notified prior to the outage and will need to implement their back up plans accordingly. A full service message will be transmitted once the work is complete.

If you have any questions, please contact Jay Somerville.

MARCS Agreements

Member Agencies:

You more than likely received an e-mail from Andrea Payne from Ohio MARCS asking that you execute a users agreement to cover the radios you received from Columbus via one of the three grant programs administered by Franklin County. The agreement you were sent was not the correct one. None of you are full time users of the MARCS system. Please DO NOT not execute the agreement. 

Each of you are currently Local Emergency Use Only (LEUO) users on the MARCS system. The MARCS ID you have in each of your radios has already been paid for and you would only be billed by MARCS if you use their system for more than just emergency use. 

We have talked with MARCS about this issue on behalf of the COIRS members. In the next few days, we will send each of you a completed MARCS LEUO agreement to sign. This will ensure all of our member agencies are current with their MARCS agreements. Once we receive all of the signed agreements back, we will submit them and a complete radio inventory to MARCS on behalf of the COIRS member agencies.  

Your COIRS Technical Committee is on top of the issue and will see to it that interoperability will not be adversely affected.

If you have any questions, please contact Jay Somerville.

Technical Committee Meeting Agenda

The COIRS Technical Committee will meet today at 1:00pm at the Worthington Police headquarters building at 6665 Worthington-Galena Road.

Please CLICK HERE to review the agenda for today's meeting.

Temporary Roaming Plan In Effect

Effective Saturday 09/18, talk-group roaming between systems will be limited to EMS talk-groups only. This change is to help reduce the loading on the Delaware side of the system during the Delaware County Fair. These restrictions will be in effect until Monday 09/27.

If you have any questions or emergency roaming needs, please contact Patrick Brandt to arrange for changes.

System Update

At 5:25 am today, the system was restored to full service using the alternate fiber route to bypass the damaged cable. Delaware County's fiber vendor will be working today to repair the primary cable. Once that work is complete, the system will be moved back over to the primary fiber. This move back may case a brief return to site trunking, lasting no more than 5 minutes. Users will be informed prior to the move.

More details about this system event will be gathered and an after action report completed. That report will be shared with all user agencies.

Dublin/Worthington in Site Trunking

At approximately 23:55 on Tuesday 09/14, the Dublin/Worthington side of the system went into site trunking. A check of the system revealed a fiber optic cable cut in front of the Delaware 9-1-1 center that has disrupted the connectivity to the Dub/Wor side of the system.

At this time, the Delaware County side of the radio system is NOT effected, although Delaware County mobile data users have lost connectivity as that traffic is carried on this same fiber run.

Crews are responding to make repairs to the cable. No ETA is yet available. Radio users on the Dub/Wor side of the system have the option of using the system in site trunking mode or going to their back up plans using alternate trunked radio systems such as MARCS or the Columbus 800MHz system. Consoles at the Dublin & Worthington dispatch centers will remain disconnected from the COIRS system until the cable is repaired. Updates will be posted as they become available.

Technical Committee Meeting Announced

The next COIRS Technical Committee meeting has been set for Monday September 27th at 1pm at Worthington PD Headquarters. Agenda items should be submitted to Jay Somerville by no later than Friday 09/17.

Avery Tower Work Complete

The removal of the Verizon antenna pod and the temporary placement of the COIRS antenna is complete. The temporary configuration will remain in place for the next 6 weeks while blasting and painting of the water tank takes place. Once the work is complete, the COIRS antennas will be removed, the pod placed back on the tank and the COIRS equipment returned to its normal configuration.

Avery Road Antenna Work

Starting at 08:00 today, the Avery Road tower site will go off line to allow removal of the antenna mounting pod owned by Verizon Wireless. This temporary removal is being done to accommodate the repainting of the water tower. Once the pod is removed, the COIRS antenna equipment will be mounted back on top of the tank on a
temporary lattice during the painting work. This temporary configuration will last approximately 6 weeks.
 
Users may notice diminished walkie coverage, especially in buildings, west of the Scioto River and south of Brand Road. Work updates will be posted here.

October 2010 Governing Board Meeting - Date Change

The October meeting of the COIRS Governing Board has been changed to Friday 10/22. The meeting will be held at Worthington Police Headquarters and begin at 9:30am.

Governing Board Meeting - Friday July 7th

The next meeting of the COIRS Governing Board is set for Friday July 7th at 9:30am. The meeting will beheld at the Worthington Police Headquarters at 6665 Worthington-Galena Rd. CLICK HERE to view a copy of the meeting agenda.

For more information, contact Jay Somerville at 614.410.4800 or jsomerville@dublin.oh.us

Governing Board Adopts New System Name

At the May Governing Board meeting, the system members adopted a new official name for the council of governments: the Central Ohio Interoperable Radio System (COIRS).

The members wanted an official name that represented the regional collaboration along with the primary mission of the system - interoperability. All COG business will be conducted under the new COIRS name effective immediately.

System Event - Connectivity

Today at approximately 10:56hrs, the Dub/Wor simulcast lost connectivity with the main controller in Delaware causing the system to go into SITE TRUNKING and the dispatch consoles to lose connection. In checking the system, technicians found there was a network interruption on the OARNet portion of the connection. OARNet network operations has been notified and is investigating the problem. The connection was restored at 11:09hrs. 

During the interruption, back up plans were implemented successfully. 

A full outage report will be provided as soon as it is available. 

**SYSTEM MAINTENANCE**

Tonight (03/17) between 23:00 and 05:00, XO Communications will be doing work on the T1 circuits that run between Dublin Justice and Avery Road. They report the circuits may go down for up to 5 mins at various times causing Wothington & Dublin consoles to lose connection and possibly putting the Dub/Wor side of the system into site trunking.

 

Please be sure your users are notified and back up plans are in place.

 

We did experience two short console outages last night when one of the T1 lines reset. XO will be checking that line as well as part of this maintenance. 

System Optimization Report

Motorola engineers have completed their system optimization work on the Dub/Wor simulcast zone. They specifically reviewed system coverage and performance off of the Huntley Bowl tower site. All systems were reported in excellent working condition and functioning without error.

Motorola did specifically test coverage inside Riverside Hospital ER after reports of radios going "out of range" while inside the building. It was discovered that the radios only go "out of range" on the Dub/Wor simulcast zone, but still have service on the Delaware simulcast zone. It is believed that a bi-directional amplifier inside the hospital is rebroadcasting 821 frequencies, but not 806 frequencies, or in some other way interfering with 806 frequencies. Futher investigation by radio staff will attempt to confirm this theory. To immediately resolve the issue, talk-groups WOR DISP, WOR FTAC1, WT ALERT, WT EMS1 and WTEMS2 have been set to roaming so that they will switch zones, if needed, to ensure coverage. This switch is transparent to users.

System Optimization Work

On Monday March 8th, Motorola engineers will be conducting system testing and optimization on the Dub/Wor simulcast system. Users shouldn't notice this work unless a problem is discovered.

In addition to optimization, they will be checking the efficiency and coverage of the Huntley Road tower to ensure it is performing to is maximum, including the reported coverage issues when users go inside Riverside Hospital ER.

A post service report will be provided on the web site when work is complete.

Audio Testing Complete

On Monday February 8th, the crew from Engine 95 assisted in testing the audio performance of walkies used in high noise environments. In particular, the 2008 Motorola recommended settings for high noise environments were tested against the factory default audio settings in two sets of XTS5000 walkies. The details of the test and recommended outcomes are contained in the report document posted below.

If you have any questions about the testing, or need more details on the methods used in the testing, please contact Jay Somerville.

Governing Board Meeting - Reminder & Agenda

The next meeting of the DDW800MHz Governing Board will be held on Friday 02/19 at 9:30am at the Worthington Police Headquarters Building. The meeting is open to all system users and the public.

The agenda for this meeting can be found at http://tinyurl.com/ddwgba021910

System Maintenance Complete

The OARNET system maintenance scheduled for today has been completed WITHOUT the need for a connectivity outage. Thanks to Delaware County and OARNET for completing this work!

System Maintenance - Time Delay

The system maintenance to be performed today on the OARNET connection has been delayed until at least 13:00hrs. An announcement will be made prior to the outage and again when the system is back up and running.

Agencies can use their discretion on implementing their back up plans. The system will go into SITE TRUNKING and still function for subscribers. Consoles will lose connection.

System Maintenance Set for 02/01

On Monday 02/01 at approximately 11am, technicians from OARNET will be doing maintenenace on the radio system network that will adversely effect Dublin/Worthington users. For approximately one hour, the Dublin/Worthington system will go into site trunking. Subscribers will notice the message SITE TRUNKING on their mobiles/walkies and the dispatch consoles will lose connection to the system.

Back up plans may be implemented during this outage at the descretion of each dispatch center.

An announcement will be made prior to the outage and again when the work is complete.

If you have any questions please contact Patrick Brandt or Jay Somerville.

Digital Systems and the Fire Ground

Over the past two weeks, several articles about Hamilton County firefighters and the problems they've reported with fire scene communication have circulated throughout the media. We wanted to take this opportunity to address the concerns brought forward in these articles, discuss some best practices, clarify misconceptions in the media reports and let you know what we as your COG Technical Committee are doing to address concerns.


Two articles in the January 15^th edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer that were reposted by several Columbus area media outlets allege the system used by Cincinnati firefighters failed during recent fires. The articles speak in generalities about these failures when, in reality, they are speaking of very distinct and separate issues. These issues include:

Governing Board Meeting Rescheduled

Due to a late schedule conflict, the Governing Board meeting set for Monday 02/01 needs to be rescheduled. New proposed dates/times have been sent out via TimeBridge. Please indicate your availability ASAP so the meeting can be confirmed.

Technical Committee Meeting

The agenda for the Technical Committee meeting on 01/28 @ 1pm has been posted.

http://www.dublin.oh.us/ddw800mhz/pdf/2010/Agenda01-28-10.pdf