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.

Governing Board Meeting

The next meeting of the COIRS Governing Board is set for Friday January 21st at 9:30am at Worthington PD. CLICK HERE for a copy of the meeting agenda.

For more information about the meeting, or to submit an item for the agenda, please contact Jay Somerville.

Recent Outages Diagnosed

The system outages that occurred on 12/15, 12/30 and 01/06 were caused by connectivity interruptions on the OarNET network. OarNET is the connectivity provider between the Dub/Wor side of the system and the master site located in Delaware. On each of the three nights, OarNET engineers conducted upgrades to the network that required the switches to be rebooted, causing the 8 to 9 minute outages.

OarNET routinely notified users in advance of this work, but these notices were not specifically going to the COIRS representative, but instead to agency IT employees. OarNET apologized repeatedly for the interruption and has taken steps to ensure COIRS is notified before any future outages.

Site Trunking Dub/Wor System

At approximately 12:25 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 8 minutes.

System managers are again following up on the outage, which appears to be T1 interruption between the Avery Road site and the Dublin Justice Center. Motorola has been engaged to help track the outages and determine if there is some 

The system is back in full operation.

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!