Hi again,
TETRA in broad terms is equivalent to APCO, as well as being a direct competitor to it in the professional radio comms market. As standards though they are not interoperable.
It started out as a pan-European next-generation radio communications standard (in the same way GSM mobile telephony did) and has since broadened in appeal.
China seems to be TETRA country when it comes to digital trunking systems, so it seems likely this is what they have put in place (for free no less!)
Also likely is that it might be some homegrown variant, as they do have a penchant for taking an international standard and modifying features or components to suite local requirements.
I doubt that your 396XT would be able to resolve TETRA traffic, which is GSM-like technically. The ability to do so would have to be encoded in hardware in some ways. Generally speaking the standard is encryption-friendly, further limiting the possibility.
Either way, the best bet for getting a sniff at it, RF spectrum-wise, would be with an SDR device, like the HackRF -
HackRF, an open source SDR platform by Michael Ossmann — Kickstarter
Thanks for the frequencies, have them all logged as such anyway. I have a tonne of others that I have no idea as to their usage. Intent listening for short lapses into English though often gives a clue! ;-)
Will share a few more in a future post.
Best wishes.
