There's been a lot of experimenting with various things for the past year in Catawba County. I'm not sure what Hickory is doing with their current patches but those of us still on VHF can't monitor them. We've had our SO patched to VIPER for a few months now. It helps the lake patrol officers out because of a few dead areas on Lake Norman and Lake Hickory. The eventual plan is to transition to VIPER but have it patched to the current VHF system-Fire, EMS, Law.
Tomorrow I'm handing out VIPER portables to our division that handles scheduled transfers and letting them play for a couple of days. It will be the first real world test of the system for us.