Media Helicopters and Multi Agency Talkgroups

[kat]

OK, well yesterday was a call out of the usual when our two appliances traversed the country side looking for (from page) " report of light aircraft down 3 nautical miles east of drag strip". Lots of police, the regional commander and our two appliances didn't find it but a couple of members in a private vehicle did (with the help of some powerful binoculars! Had a bit of trouble getting out to it too! But when the channel 9 chopper landed not long after we had made it to it, it made me wonder. They would have been in a much better position than us to find out - is anyone aware of when they have been able to assist and communicate to emergency services? I guess it does happen, but we don't see them that often in our neck of the woods. Other point is how do people manage multi agency talkgroups (or any situation where monitoring two talkgroups in an appliance would be handy). We were given a MA channel, which would have been great if anyone had answered on it although I believe SHQ did contact SAPOL and ask them to monitor it. Problem is we may have missed them as we had to keep turning back to local TG as the station kept ringing us to say we were being contacted on the local TG or on State channel 111. Trying to use a handheld to monitor one channel is completely useless, transmissions were unreadable.

PS: The planes emergency landing was safe and the two occupants walked several kms to the Mallee Highway before anyone arrived  

[mattb]

Katrina, you're correct - the media helicopters have been succesfull in a couple of search operations in the past, however normally the only communications they have is a mobile phone or the air band radio, I think the Nine machine (VH-NWS) also has a UHF CB which probably could have been handy in your instance. I know some media helicopters in other states have access to emergency service radios, not so here though.

Re the M.A. talkgroups, I read recently that if you are using a M.A. talkgroup it is ok for the base or co-ordinating station to use the M.A. talkgroup for comm's. Alternatively you could try getting a command car to the job and use the two GRN radios they have.

Matt  

[kat]

Thanks Matt, I thought the helicopters would be a pretty handy search tool - communications as ever the issue  

On the Multi Agency TG, I thought it would make sense to have the Station on the MA TG. But a standard station has only one GRN station set and would therefore be unable to monitor the local channel (Group Base not normally operational for one or two Brigade response other end of Group)

And the command vehicle is a great idea if it weren't 60km away!

[Firefrog]

Could a solution be that the station and all responding appliances go to the MA talkgroup, this would allow all users to be coordinated on the same TG. If appliance to appliance chit chat is required VHF could be used.

SOP 10.6 talks about MA TG's, it does not have any clauses that would prevent the brigade station changing TG's to the MA one.

In the case of a lost aircraft I would consider having the group base open as significant resources especially communications may be needed. This should then allow the MA TG, Local TG and State 111 to be monitored by the base. Each group should have a communications plan for exactly what will be done for these types of scenarios.

[kat]

All good points. We've never had the Group Base open for a job our neck of the woods, I guess because it's a distance away and if we needed additional resources, being on the edge of a group most of them would be from two neighbouring groups. We are a sub base and technically able to operate as a base (an urban rural rating gives us prescription for a few "extras"). Never heard the police come up on the MA TG gave up and went back to local! But SHQ didn't waste any time allocating us one and notifying all agencies so that was postive.