New to NWI and making sense of Safe-T

[CyberGuyPR]

Greetings all. I am slowly getting back into the hobby after a long absence and am trying to wrap my head around what I need to get to monitor my area of interest. I'm in NWI and am interested in monitoring mostly PD/FD/EMS in Chicago and NWI. My old radios cover Chicago pretty well.

Now, for NWI I understand many municipalities have moved to Safe-T including St. John, Dyer, Munster, Whiting, etc. Would a BCD436HP be the right tool for this job? I am also having a hard time identifying if any of the local agencies have gone encrypted. Any tips on how to find this out?

Thanks all in advance for your help.

 

[WB9EMT]

Lake county Indiana is not using Safe-T, they are using their own P25 p2 system. The 436 will work for all of those areas though.

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[CyberGuyPR]

Got it. Thanks for the input.

 

[c_snyder]

I would also recommend getting a 436. While SAFE-T is not phase 2 yet it will be in a couple of years. Also as already noted Lake county is P2.

Some talk groups on lake's system are encrypted but they're mostly specialty ones like swat, drug enforcement, etc.

 

[INDY72]

SAFE-T is the backup for Lake County if thier own system goes down, and is also where EVERYONE will be for interop during magor events etc... Pretty much the rest of the area will be on SAFE-T by Christmas, with LaPorte going live in about 1 week, St. Joseph etc, already on.... SAFE-T is currently Phase I FDMA, but is about to begin upgrades to add Phase II TDMA capabilities, and hopes to b fully TDMA compatable by 2020.