Scanning Madison County

[biglogdog]

I'm sure a lot of you scanner enthusiasts in Madison County have noticed you can't pick up any of the sheriff's dept. channels anymore unless you have an RTL-SDR connected to your computer. For those of you who don't know, they upgraded radios to digital Icom radios, which uses NXND digital instead of P25 digital. Good news though, Whistler just announced they will be releasing the new TRX-1 and TRX-2, which will be able to scan NXDN in the near future. http://forums.radioreference.com/whistler-scanners/333386-cats-out-bag.html

 

[cajunjerry]

So is there anything in Madison you can listen to?

 

[MississippiPI]

I still get the PD's and the VFD's, the VFD's have MSWIN link and it's active. The S. O. will chat on high band every now and then



Be Safe

 

[biglogdog]

The cites of Madison and Ridgeland are on MSWIN.. County VFD'S are still on the old analog EMA channel. Gluckstadt FD has 4 talk groups on MSWIN plus an EMA patch. Madison SO, Flora PD, and Canton PD are using NXDN. Madison SO has 2 analog channels they still use SO F3 (County common law) and chancery court. The county VFD'S will soon be swapping to MSWIN or NXDN, depending on what the wireless commission approves.

 

[INDY72]

MWCC has been pushing Madison County to jump on MSWIN for a long time. SO plays games politically as always. Read up on the minutes each time MCSO is asked about plans. They stall, stall, stall and fib fib fib. The were given radios to test, and barely used them. Given that first TG for SO use on MSWIN. Never used it, and gave it to be an interop for the FD's.... They whine about coverage but over and over again have been shown they have rather excellent coverage, especially after the area got an new site or two. MSWIN is cheaper by far than what they are paying for that NXDN system. Good Old Boy Network at its finest. Oh well, we hashed and rehashed this to death. MS AG, and maybe Fed AG need to look into things.

 

[biglogdog]

Milf, you hit the nail on the head! Check this out, the county rejected the MSWIN quote from Motorola during the initial bid, because it didn't meet the specs of "digital high band", even though the Motorola quote was only $3,000 more for the same amount of radios. Whenever the County went before the WCC, they were asked specifically if they could communicate with the cities of Madison and Ridgeland using the new radios and they said yes. They got approval due to the "immediate need" to upgrade due to narrowbanding. However, after the request was approved and the radios were purchased, the County purchased an additional 45 portable and 32 Icom mobile radios for Madison and Ridgeland totaling $60,000. There are 3 main reasons the county refuses to swap to MSWIN. 1) They think nobody can hear them with the Icom's. 2) They want to keep all this business going thru Ozborn Communications. 3) They want to keep control over the communications in the county. I've spoken tthe guys at the wireless commission, who told me they were willing to put up a site in Canton if the county would have waited and gone to MSWIN instead of the NXDN.

Let see how this 10 year life cycle costs the county vs going to MSWIN.....
MSWIN $356,830
Icom- $625,511.23
$353,691.12 (Original Purchase)
$33,102.81 (Ridgeland's radios)
$27,269.80 (Madison's radios)
$20,647.50 (Flora's radios)
$72,000.00 (C-Spire Fiber to repeater @ $600/mo)
$118,800.00 (Tower rent @ Ozborn Comm @ $990/mo)