richee2000
Communications Professional
where has that helped ??
Nashville going encrypted
- Thread starter nashscan
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Knox fire and EMS is still clear. You claim your wanting new gear monitor is based on KFD?
Na I'm good. This isn't a revolution where thousands of protestors will make a difference. Plus, we offer no benefit to them either way. We're just groupies. I have $1000 burning a hole in my pocket. Gotta spend it on something before the wife takes it.
Of course Knoxville isn't the only stuff I listened to in the past. I travel a lot now regionally and thought between listening locally and around the southeast, it would be fun to pick up the latest radio. This thread woke me. I'm looking at the bigger picture. If I was slowly going blind, I wouldn't want to spend serious money on new camera gear.
Was my point, pretty much. His posted sounded pretty silly...like just looking to complain. But hey, some are negative 24/7 so...to each their own, I guess.
surfacemount
Member
I've invested a TON in comms gear for over 25 years. I haven't bought a single new radio in around 3 years because I am waiting for all this to settle and see what comes of it. I can't rely on dumping a ton of money into a scanner, and then a new mode comes out, and now the scanner doesn't do that, and I can't just buy the radio they are using because it's too big of a pain to program without issues. (shrugs)
The worst part is, legacy land mobile public safety radio will be dead in ten years or so. PTT over cell, and the second coming of FirstNet is going to straight kill legacy systems once they get their act together. You can have a klunky brick reliant on a few towers, or you can literally have a Star Trek Communicator that streams video, location, data, maps, conference multiple groups, anything you can dream, and in a form factor of a fat smartphone. Maybe smaller.
I don't know if that will wind up traveling over LTE or one of the 5G standards, but, the RF leg will be cellular, so... no scanning. (shrugs) Watch and see.
Motorola APX Next... It's a ht with a screen instead of keyboard.
Yes, that is the sad reality...but there are a lot of other things to listen to besides LE or other PS stuff. Sure, that's what most of us enjoy monitoring but there are other things so scanners do not suddenly stop receiving when some agency goes to one of these silly new modes.
I personally don't like it and though some will laugh I do feel that as citizens, whose taxes support the purchases, we have a right to monitor it but, regardless, changes are on the horizon. Hopefully it's far away.
Hopefully the local agencies here where I am are far behind it - they're all still running on analog FM...
I personally don't like it and though some will laugh I do feel that as citizens, whose taxes support the purchases, we have a right to monitor it but, regardless, changes are on the horizon. Hopefully it's far away.
Hopefully the local agencies here where I am are far behind it - they're all still running on analog FM...
surfacemount
Member
Here is the issue I don't feel like you are weighting properly: For every radio nerd in my end of the state, when I was little, there were 15 average citizens that had a scanner on their console television, or on a shelf, that served as a one-way facebook 'local crime' group. It provided unfiltered information of greater quality than what we get now from the 'media'. No one needed to ask 'what's the sirens about' or 'what's all the lights down there going on about?'... everyone knew because they got the same information the officers initially did.
You could hear the highway department in the winter and knew how bad the roads were, the schools to see what buses were having problems. Now all of that is digital, which is ok, but increasingly enc, which is a knee-jerk, kn... sorry Lindsay. I'll stop here. It's great to listen to walmart, or river depth gauges, but the majority of scanner users I am familiar with utilized them for public safety monitoring, which is dying, and few want to spend 300-500 dollars on something that can't hear local police or fire.
When I teach radio classes, I bring a few generations of radios. When I get to the modern radios, I tell them that it is no longer a radio with a small computer inside it, this thing is a small computer with a radio inside it. (shrugs) Right now, radio places around here really want IT people more than they want RF people. I've experienced it firsthand.
surfacemount
Member
It dawned on me just now what you were referencing. I have no basis in a leaked internal document or anything, but that right there is the gateway drug to ptt over cell form factors. That thing is the springboard from LMR to LTE/Band 14... In fact, it and a few earlier ones already have LTE radios in them.
The main thing I don't know is, what will the next generation of firstnet look like topology-wise when AT&T loses it. No time to research lately with personal stuff, but if you invest in stocks, whatever that is, will be a smart move to put money into.
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