All-Hazards Communications Unit Leader (COML) Training

Jim1348 · Post by **Jim1348** » Sat Mar 01, 2014 9:22 am

I am attending All-Hazards Communications Unit Leader (COML) Training next week. I am just wondering who here has attended this and what I should expect.

Jim
NØJS

Post by **escomm** » Sat Mar 01, 2014 1:32 pm

You should expect at least one person in the class that doesn't know what simplex & repeated operations are..................

Will · Post by **Will** » Sat Mar 01, 2014 2:15 pm

We are doing "All Hazards Communications" in real time and for real here is So California.

Jim202 · Post by **Jim202** » Sat Mar 01, 2014 4:06 pm

You should also expect that there are a bunch of people that have never heard of the "National Interoperability Radio Channels".

Then there will be those that think a multi band radio will solve all their radio communications problems between the different bands. What the vendors are not telling you is that there is only one receiver in the multi band radio. It acts just like the scanner you probably have at home to listen to multiple radio bands. Once it locks up on a radio transmission, it won't hear anything else till the channel releases and the receiver can start scanning again.

If your going to have an incident that requires agencies to be on different bands, you will find out real fast that a different radio for each of the bands being used is the only way to go. At least that way you will be able to monitor the radio traffic.

Jim

John · Post by **John** » Sat Mar 01, 2014 4:33 pm

The class is mostly a review of ICS and several practical exercises in creating comm plans (ICS 205) and identifying resources.. The biggest effort is getting your position task book signed off after the class is over. Since this is mostly left to each state the procedures may be obscure or even non-existent. Good luck.

Jim1348 wrote:I am attending All-Hazards Communications Unit Leader (COML) Training next week. I am just wondering who here has attended this and what I should expect.

Jim
NØJS

Post by **escomm** » Sat Mar 01, 2014 5:52 pm

Jim202 wrote:You should also expect that there are a bunch of people that have never heard of the "National Interoperability Radio Channels".

Then there will be those that think a multi band radio will solve all their radio communications problems between the different bands. What the vendors are not telling you is that there is only one receiver in the multi band radio. It acts just like the scanner you probably have at home to listen to multiple radio bands. Once it locks up on a radio transmission, it won't hear anything else till the channel releases and the receiver can start scanning again.

If your going to have an incident that requires agencies to be on different bands, you will find out real fast that a different radio for each of the bands being used is the only way to go. At least that way you will be able to monitor the radio traffic.

Jim

thank

tdats · Post by **tdats** » Sun Mar 02, 2014 4:16 pm

The class will spend a lot of time on the leader part of the title and incident command. As someone else said, they will get a lot into the com plans. It can be a pain to get the task book signed off on depending on what you already do. Mine was actually fairly easy to do since they allowed events from before the class to count in our state. If I remember right, they gave us a 2 year window.

From what I hear, the COMT class is a lot more interesting, and more hands on. I haven't been able to commit the time yet to go trough COMT. (T is for tech)

I found the class very useful, but I would much rather play with radios during an incident instead of managing people, but that's just me.

mostar · Post by **mostar** » Mon Mar 03, 2014 11:23 pm

> The class is mostly a review of ICS and several practical exercises in creating comm plans (ICS 205) and identifying resources..

This.

It is unfortunate that a class with other ICS courses as a prerequisite will still spend more than half of the time covering that material from those prerequisite courses. Time that could be better spent focusing on communications-related issues. Oh well. EVERY NIMS/ICS course I've taken follows that same pattern.

Probably the most valuable take-away from the COM-L is the hour or so they spend discussing establishing relationships and building teams PRIOR to an incident. That is the real key to interop solutions.

> From what I hear, the COMT class is a lot more interesting

This is probably true, for most of the folks who hang out on Batlabs. The COM-T is far more hands-on, and more technical.

radioinstl · Post by **radioinstl** » Tue Mar 04, 2014 9:24 am

What is a lot more useful than both COMT and COML is the COMS class. Much harder to get. The class is designed as the FEMA US&R Communications Specialist class. It is offered to the FEMA teams, but if you want you can pay to take it at TEEX. VERY GOOD COURSE!

Jim1348 · Post by **Jim1348** » Fri Mar 07, 2014 8:25 pm

Thank you very much for all of the replies. It was a great class, but I am looking forward to COM T being offered locally sometime soon. They also mentioned that there is a COM AUX course!

Post by **escomm** » Sat Mar 08, 2014 8:34 am

So why don't you tell us what you expected and what you saw so the rest of us have a fresh first hand perspective on some of the finer details of the course

Jim1348 · Post by **Jim1348** » Sat Mar 08, 2014 11:22 am

escomm wrote:You should expect at least one person in the class that doesn't know what simplex & repeated operations are..................

escomm wrote:So why don't you tell us what you expected and what you saw so the rest of us have a fresh first hand perspective on some of the finer details of the course

Jim202 wrote:You should also expect that there are a bunch of people that have never heard of the "National Interoperability Radio Channels".....

I expected what you had posted a week ago, but I was pleasantly surprised. I found my fellow classmates to be quite knowledgeable. Since the Minnesota ARMER system is what most people there are using, we discussed specific talkgroups that would be used. John was spot on with regard to discussing the Incident Communications Plan ICS Form 205.

Everyone seemed to be up to speed on the 8CALL and 8TAC conventional channels.

It was a great class and I look forward to learning more.

BigTex1136 · Post by **BigTex1136** » Sat Mar 08, 2014 12:45 pm

escomm wrote:You should expect at least one person in the class that doesn't know what simplex & repeated operations are..................

I don't know what that means. LOL

I too am have been talking with our Asst. Chief about the same class. We are starting some new training county wide.

KE7JFF · Post by **KE7JFF** » Mon Mar 10, 2014 10:49 pm

Most of the firefighters and police officers who do COM-L I find know simplex and repeater; they just don't realize its called direct or thru the system in their own world. Its more of finding out the limitations of your equipment...like I know someone that was doing a COM-L class in Chicago and well, there was one student lets say who found out the hard way their agency issued equipment that works on the UHF T-band doesn't work in the federal UHF portion...