Are your accessories the right fit?

Much thought, research and consideration is put into selecting the right radio for the job. Will it be rugged enough? Is it intrinsically safe? Do the controls, buttons and knobs work well with gloves on? But do you give the same amount of consideration to the accessories you use with your radios?

One area of concern, especially to fire agencies, is the remote speaker microphone. Many agencies have not given much thought to speaker mics, treating them as "disposable" items. But is that speaker mic up to the harsh environment of firefighting or law enforcement?

The Shaker Heights Fire Department recently experienced problems on the fireground with a radio that would continually key up and block other traffic, only to discover the problem was with a speaker mic that had gotten wet. Although they had purchased "water resistant" mics, they in fact needed "water proof" mics.

Shaker Heights did internal testing of their current speaker mics and confirmed their theory: water proof mics are preferred on the fireground. CLICK HERE to read a copy of their report.

Lightning Strike at Huntley Road

During the storms in the early morning hours of Monday February 28th, it appears that the Huntley Road site took a lightning hit and was knocked off the air. The site was brought back on line on Wednesday March 2nd at approximately 5pm after replacing the channel bank cage, the #2 WAN card and a poly-phaser. Also damaged in the storm was the interface board for the stand by generator and the mid-tower lighting. Repairs are in progress on those two systems.

During the outage, there was a minor loss of coverage in some areas. Users did not report any issues as the overlapping coverage of the Lazelle Road tower was used by allowing the Worthington talk-groups to roam onto the Delaware side of the system during the outage.

The cost of this outage is still be calculated.