State of California OES ACS Newsletter

March 24, 2003

Published weekly (except for vacations and emergencies) by the Auxiliary Communications Service, State of California Governor's Office of Emergency Services.

Articles in this Issue:
EMMCOM Bulletin # 386

EMC386 OES ACS FIELD UNITS Pt5
To: Emergency Communications Units - Information Bulletin
To: Emergency Management Agencies via Internet and Radio
By: Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS) of the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services

EMC386 OES ACS FIELD UNITS Pt5 Release 3/24/03

Bulletin 384 described the communications vans supported by the ACS Field Teams.

Bulletin 385 described four mobile earth stations, a mobile earth station hub and VHF and UHF radio caches for law enforcement and fire response mutual aid.

This bulletin describes additional State OES rolling assets.

There are eight OES Mobile Communications Unit meeting ICS Type 2 criteria. These Incident Support Units are mounted on various truck (i.e., 2 1/2 ton box) or motor home type chassis and are often seen at fire or law enforcement unit field deployments. They have self-contained power generation capability. They do NOT have a telephone switch aboard, but are pre-wired for telephone extensions.

Five of these units are configured to support Fire and Rescue operations, and are pre-positioned with Fire agencies in four of the six Mutual Aid Regions. Typical Fire radio complement (80 Channel Midland Syntech I radios):

1 VHF-Lo radio (46 MHz Fire frequencies)
2 VHF-High radios (150-174 MHz)
1 UHF radio (450-470 MHz)
1 800 MHz conventional (Non-NPSPAC) radio
OES Fire Radio Network (Low/High VHF)

The remaining three units are configured for Law Enforcement incident support, and are positioned with a Sheriffs Office in three of the Mutual Aid Regions. Each of these units has space for two communications operators and office or conference activities.

Typical Law radio complement (300 Channel Midland Syntech 2 radios):

1 VHF-Lo radio (40 MHz Law frequencies)
2 VHF-High radios (150-174 MHz)
1 UHF radio (450-470 MHz)
1 UHF radio (470-490 MHz)
1 800 MHz conventional (Non-NPSPAC) radio
(80 Channel Midland Syntech I radio)
1 Motorola Syntec 800 MHz NPSPAC
OES California Law Enforcement Radio System (VHF Hi/UHF)

(Note: The above described radio packages are being replaced with Kenwood 690, 790, 890, VHF and UHF (w/CDF Version firmware providing 254-mode or channel and all 16 PL tones as selectable) and Motorola Syntec Astro 800 MHz NPSPAC radios.)(NPSPAC is an acronym for National Public Safety Planning Advisory Committee standard.) It is important to keep in mind that these assets deploy as a result of requests from local City/County government or state or federal agency. OES is not a primary responder. In fact, requests for mutual aid are the fundamental basis of the deployment of these assets. A mutual aid region is a group of counties. More on the mutual aid system appears on the State OES web page.

To subscribe to bulletins send a blank Email to emcomm-bulletin-sub@cesra.org

Bulletins archives:
ACS Web page: ftp.ucsd.edu/emcomm or ftp.oes.ca.gov/
ACS/EMCOMM and a Landline BBS at 916-255-0798 (graphical & standard interface)

Submitting News and Articles:
Send news and articles for the "ACS Newsletter" to the editor: Gary Crowe, Ph.D. KG6HIM

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emcomm-bulletin- unsub@cesra.org (send message from old address) Look for a confirming E-mail message, and reply within 24 hours. If your old address is not available for unsubscribe, or if the above procedures do not work, send message to listmaster@cesra.org, with "Manual request" in the subject line. Include old and/or new addresses in the message text.

Thanks to the ACS List master, Mark Hartman, AA6MH, for this fine service.

Links/Chats/Lists/Contacts California OES URL:
http://www.oes.ca.gov/ California OES ACS URL:
http://www.races.net/ ICQ RACES
Chat Room: ICQ#40163274 (Sundays 1000-1200 Pacific Time)
RACES Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RACES
"ACS Newsletters" since 11/6/00 and "EMCOMM Bulletins" since 1/3/00:
http://www.races.net/sca/archive.html "
ACS Newsletters" since 2/7/98 and old "RACES Bulletins" and "EMCOMM Bulletins":
http://acs.oes.ca.gov/

California OES ACS HQ facility contact information: Auxiliary Communications Service Program, Room A-139 Governor's Office of Emergency Services P.O. Box 419047, Rancho Cordova, CA 95741- 9047

Copyright 2003 by State of California OES ACS. All or any part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or quoted, provided that credit be given to this issue of the State of California "ACS Newsletter."

Opinions expressed in articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of State of California OES ACS. State of California Office of Emergency Services and its "ACS Newsletter" editor, Gary Crowe, Ph.D. KG6HIM, do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions in the material contained herein, regardless of whether such errors result from negligence, accident, or any other cause whatsoever.

73, Gary Crowe, Ph.D. "ACS Newsletter" Editor State of California Governor's Office of Emergency Services Operations Support Branch Auxiliary Communications Service Tel: (916) 489- 8709 Fax: (916) 488-0148.