Team/Volunteers/Radios

Contact

Phil has offered to help us organise radios. Along with the volunteers team.

Licenses/Compliance

Apparently Phil can arrange this for us.

Use

The primary use of the radios is for emergency co-ordination. Secondarily they can be used for general cross site co-ordination between teams.

As back up responsible people (primary contacts etc) should also have charged mobile phones with them at all times.

We will likely need a radio manager who will co-ordinate charging, hand over at shift changes and run logging (mainly to make sure radios don't go missing).

Will collaborate with Phil to come up with a briefing pack

• Basic radio use
• Care and feeding of radios
• Radio etiquette
• Radio sign in/out

Channels

The maximum number of channels is 48. We suggest 5 channels:

1. Security / Fire piquet / First aid / Control
2. Janitorial / Infrastructure
3. General admin
4. Spare A for off net chit-chat / setting up links etc
5. Spare B for off net chit-chat / setting up links etc

alt version (via James Harrison):

1. Emergency Channel
2. Volunteers
3. Production (ie: admin chat for managers) and Control
4. First Aid/Medical
5. Security/Fire
6. Traffic Management
7. Spare
8. Spare

Argument for separation of security and first aid is that an incident on either channel will produce a lot of required chatter. Noted that it will be as likely that security are first responders to an incident so having security & first aid on the same channel will simplify this. Once first response is established communication can be moved to a spare.

Emergency channel to be kept clear and always monitored by HQ. In case of event it's monitored and reported on via this channel whilst HQ organises appropriate response via other channels (e.g. security/ first-aid)

Radios

The radios that we are being offered are the type MTS 2000 I's (spec sheet). According to Phil these are:

The MTS2000 is a very high spec radio but without the infrastructure (cellsites etc) it basically is a simplex/semi duplex handheld with CTCSS

There are two separate times that we'll need radios:

1. Set-up/tear-down of the camp
2. during the camp

It has been proposed that we have a couple of base stations for the HQ in order to monitor the various channels as well as a mast to ensure complete coverage of the site. Phil says that for a location of this size this will be over kill

It's also suggested that we get headsets for all the radios, firstly for ease of use and secondly to help stop eavesdropping on what could be sensitive conversations (especially on first aid/security channels). UPDATE [5-06-2012] Phil says he'll look at if these will be available.

If possible get direct dial radios for managers etc?

Set Up/Teardown

• NOC x5 (ideal, could be less if unavailable)

Camp

This is the initial round up based on the email thread

• First Aid (x2) 1/first aider
  • so we can get hold of them
• Front Gate (x1)
  • likely point of contact for help/information (especially on the first day)
• Security (x2) 1/ per person and we have 2 people on at all times
  • It's security, they need to know what's going on
• HQ/infodesk (x1) preferably a scanner to be able to monitor all channels at once
  • HQ needs to know what's going on
• Bar (x1)
  • another likely point of contact and/or possible source of problems (dehydration/slips etc)
• Alpha stage (x1)
  • point of contact (and for beta/workshop)
• Beta stage (x1)
• Workshop tent (x1)
• Car park attendants (x1? maybe 2?)
  • Mainly because they'll likely have to co-ordinate large vehicles arriving as well as cars during set up
• Infrastructure manager (x1) ?
  • so they can stay in contact whilst on walkabout/checking things
  • may not actually be needed
• Shuttle driver (x1)
  • delete due to no real use case, if assistance required phones will probably be better (range etc)
• Venue Runners (x2)
• Vendors co-ordination
• NOC (x2)
  • NOC location and duty person (networks operations centre? will this be a different location to HQ?)
• Spares (x3)
  • Allow for grab and go in response to situation

Totals

• Total radios: 20
• Radios (with spares): 25
• Batteries (radios x2): 50