nexedge question from newbie!

[drbone30]

Guys I live in Wabash Indiana and the local police are using kenwood nexedge . my question is I found a portable scanner Kenwood NexEdge NX-300K UHF Portable Two-Way Radio the has it listed that it will pick up the 12.5 and 6.25 kHz channels would this work for me ??? thanks jay

 

[tampabaynews]

Guys I live in Wabash Indiana and the local police are using kenwood nexedge . my question is I found a portable scanner Kenwood NexEdge NX-300K UHF Portable Two-Way Radio the has it listed that it will pick up the 12.5 and 6.25 kHz channels would this work for me ??? thanks jay

Need more info. Wabash City or Wabash Township? Trunked or conventional? VHF, UHF, or 800?

I couldn't find any Nexedge public safety in the database for both areas.

 

[mmckenna]

Guys I live in Wabash Indiana and the local police are using kenwood nexedge . my question is I found a portable scanner Kenwood NexEdge NX-300K UHF Portable Two-Way Radio the has it listed that it will pick up the 12.5 and 6.25 kHz channels would this work for me ??? thanks jay

Good questions above.

The NX-300 comes in two models, a 400-470MHz version and a 450-520MHz version. You will need to make sure you are purchasing the correct one. While you can ~sometimes~ sneak them a bit out of band, you should NOT rely on that as a solution.

A 450-520 radio will have an FCC ID of ALH378500
A 400-470 radio will have an FCC ID of ALH378501

If the system you want to listen to is trunked, you will not be able to listen to their traffic with this radio. The NexEdge trunked systems will not allow a radio to be set up with conventional channels and a RAN = 0 to hear traffic. I run a NexEdge trunked system, trust me on this.

NXDN (Kenwood uses the NexEdge name and Icom uses the IDAS name) comes in two flavors, 6.25KHz Very Narrow, runs 4.8kb/s and 12.5KHz Narrow, runs 9.6kb/s.
If the system you want to listen to is conventional (not trunked) you can set up the radio with the proper receive frequency and the right narrow/very narrow setting and you should be able to hear them Getting the 6.25KHz/12.5KHz setting wrong will cause the radio to not decode the audio. The green RX lamp will come on, but it will not pass anything to the speaker. This setting has to be correct.

If they are using encryption, you are out of luck. While the NXDN encryption isn't really high end, you will have to guess from tens of thousands of combinations to get it to decode. Anyway, interception of encrypted communications comes with some legal issues.

If the system is trunked, the only way to get the radio programmed to work on their system is to have it programmed with a system key. The PD or whoever does the programming will hold this key, and likely guard it with their life. You won't be able to "borrow" it. It's a USB key, and there are some system activation files that have to be on the computer for it all to work. Not something you can accomplish on your own without the right tools.
The trunked systems also have a few layers of security. Even if you were able to get hold of the system key/activation files, frequencies, you still would need to have a valid radio ID programmed into the trunked system. If the radio ID isn't in the system, it won't receive. The radio has to register with the trunked system for the receive function to work, so programming trunked channels as "RX only" won't work. The can even go as far as tie the individual radio ESN's to the radio ID's and require it all to match what is marked as "valid" in the system.

Long winded reply, but just trying to make sure you don't purchase one of these radios and then try to put it on a trunked system, if that is what they are using.


If it's just a conventional system, you just need the receive frequencies and to figure out if it's 6.25 or 12.5KHz. Please, as a system administrator, do not program in the TX frequencies. While you would know better than to accidentally transmit, the radio falling into the wrong hands can create a lot of issues for the department.

Good luck!

 

[racingfan360]

drbone30 - good advice there (as ever) from mmckenna. What I would recommend is have a look out for a program called DSD+. With this, and a low cost SDR receiver, you'll be able to receive the channels your PD are using, and figure out if it's encrypted and/or trunked. Then you can make the informed decision on whether to invest in a proper NX3xx portable.

 

[drbone30]

Tampa this would Wabash city police dept. (Wabash county -Indiana). they are digital . I use to get them on my scanner then it stopped . I know the chief well (old school mate) He told me they had to change or lose there ditgial due to over loading the Tower they were on ?? Im also thinking they were trunked .. hope that helps ..

Jhampton thanks for info but how hard is it to set up a dsd+ and sdr ??

 

[mmckenna]

I looked them up in the FCC database under WQBR341

FCC shows two repeated channels:
154.8675 shows an emission designator of narrow band FM analog.
158.775 shows an emission designator of 6.25KHz NXDN (aka Very Narrow NXDN)

The license doesn't indicate it's a trunked system.

They've got a couple of other frequencies, look like simplex:
154.710, showing 6.25KHz NXDN
159.0375, showing 12.5KHz analog FM.

The chief's comment "He told me they had to change or lose there ditgial due to over loading the Tower they were on ?? " doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's not unusual. It's pretty rare for police officers to fully understand the radio systems.

So, unless they are running on a separate system not covered by the WQBR341 license, then it looks like a VHF NXDN capable radio from either Icom or Kenwood would do just fine. That is, of course, unless they are running encryption, which we can't tell from the FCC license.

 

[mmckenna]

I'll add,
The transaction logs show that they applied for these new NXDN emission designators around August 04, 2015. So likely sometime after August of last year your scanner stopped working?

Looks like they also added a second repeated channel, also, as part of that transaction.

Might be worth asking Chief Schnepp if he can provide the programming info you'd need so you can listen in.

Looks like they are using J & K Communications out of Columbia City as their radio shop.