AA County closer to digital?

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troymail

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So the fire department has been issued new mobile radios (last fall?) that seem to be fully ready to "turn on digital" and over the past few weeks, all of the portable radios have been replaced with new radios (most if not all)... PD got new radios last year...

We gotta be getting closer to digital... ???
 

Llwellyn

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They have been doing some significant testing on digital talkgroups of late; several of the digital TG's I've been logging when running trunker are up into the thousands of hits range. Also, the frequency of units accidentally using digital is increasing seemingly daily so more of these digital ready radios must be in the units than before.

I'm just hoping for no significant changes to the TG layouts... and from the looks of things, I'm going to get that wish. Most of the testing is taking place in the 64000-65000 range and there is a range of TG's starting in the 17000's that looks like the current TG plan.
 

troymail

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Llwellyn said:
They have been doing some significant testing on digital talkgroups of late; several of the digital TG's I've been logging when running trunker are up into the thousands of hits range. Also, the frequency of units accidentally using digital is increasing seemingly daily so more of these digital ready radios must be in the units than before.

I'm just hoping for no significant changes to the TG layouts... and from the looks of things, I'm going to get that wish. Most of the testing is taking place in the 64000-65000 range and there is a range of TG's starting in the 17000's that looks like the current TG plan.

64000?

I agree with the TG layout - it looks to be very similar -- I have Digital Fire 1-A as being 16496, 1-B as 16528, etc.... PD appear occasionally also and I think they'll start at 17328 for 11-A (Northern) [from my calcs and observations].
 

Llwellyn

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Whoops, nothing in the 64000 area, they're all 65000 or higher. I didn't have my data in front of me.

I have over 600 hits on 65536 and over 50 on 65504. Most other TG's though only have a couple of hits, so it's hard to say if it's legitimate or not. Unfortunately, I haven't caught any voice on these as my scanner doesn't work inside the building at work and I haven't been monitoring much when I'm home.

They may have added a couple of encrypted TG's in the 32000 series of TG's but with only 1 or 2 hits on them it's hard to say for sure. I don't have any radio ID's logged yet so I couldn't tell you which dept. made the hit.
 

Grondoline

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There's a whole lot of "can you hear me now" transmissions on TG 17552 going on. It sounds like they're checking every corner of every room in a building in Crofton. Sometimes it's OK, sometimes it's unintelligible on my BC 250. I sure hope they get it right before they cut it over.
 

troymail

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There's a whole lot of "can you hear me now" transmissions on TG 17552 going on. It sounds like they're checking every corner of every room in a building in Crofton. Sometimes it's OK, sometimes it's unintelligible on my BC 250. I sure hope they get it right before they cut it over.


ooooooo.... that's a good thing -- could be "acceptance testing" finally starting
 

troymail

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Test teams out again today on 17552 -- sounds real good on my PSR-500!

Edit: Testing paying off - already heard a "fail point" in the basement of some building... mentioned problem was near an electrical panel -- dead spot in the building or interference from the electrical system?????

Another failure.....

Lots of failures -- in fact, not sure where they are but they just failed an entire "building" (vs. a "point")... not going well as best I can tell... seems like you don't want to be caught in a basement calling for help over the radio....

Started listening on my BC396 also -- audio quality still really poor on my 396 and more machine-gunning than I've heard in a long time (but I don't listen to my 396 much these days so that explains why).

I'm also listening on my BC296 (with digital card) - that radio is plugged into a nice desktop amplified speaker -- generally sounds pretty good in that setup and I can't recall hearing any machine-gunning there...

I plan to plug my 396 into that same speaker shortly and see if the digital audio quality is any better (I suspect the tiny speaker in the 396 is a problem and I haven't ruled out that my speaker is damaged in same way).

EDIT again: yup - don't want to use this digital stuff (right now) in a basement.......lots of garbling and "pixelating"
 
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troymail

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When it becomes digital will i have to get a new scanner. I have a Pro-94. Which would be the best scanner for me to buy?

I won't try to answer that at this point - at least not directly.

I HIGHLY recommend that you view the GRE and UNIDEN forums -- looks at references to the GRE PSR500 (handheld) or PSR600 (base/mobile) as compared to the Uniden BC-396 (handheld) and BC-996 (base/mobile)...

They all have their pros and cons - so it depends on what YOU want or need.

The Uniden radios have been out for about 3+ years and the GRE models just arrived last fall (2007).
 

ka3jjz

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And to continue Troy's thought - our wiki has extensive articles on all the currently available digital scanners (note that anything in blue and/or underlined is a link...)

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Category:Digital_Scanners

When you bring this article up, simply click on the model of interest. You will be taken to that article. Both the 396/996 and the GRE units use a different way of thinking and programming, which basically eliminates the use of 'banks' as the 94 used. This is, at least I've found, one of the bigger hurdles to overcome in learning how to work with these new scanners.

73 Mike
 
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