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.