This past Friday I was visiting my father near Batesville and I heard the unmistakable sound of NXDN digital on the OEM dispatch frequency of 154.025. It seems that it was a test run... I got the SDR dongle and DSD+ reconfigured and running as fast as I could but too late. Despite monitoring that frequency all of the rest of the weekend, I didn't hear any more digital traffic. Their FCC license does not show any recent changes but hey this is Arkansas - not a surprise.
Independence County OEM - changes soon (?)
- Thread starter wbswetnam
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NXDN
Are you sure you heard 025? We have two private VFD repeaters out here that use NXDN one is Southside and the other is Oil Trough. It is possible that someone keyed their department radios on OEM in digital mode not realizing what channel they were on.
OEM frequency is comprised of hundreds of radios of all different manufacturers so it would be rather difficult to impliment NXDN on that channel and have everyone be able to use it.
Are you sure you heard 025? We have two private VFD repeaters out here that use NXDN one is Southside and the other is Oil Trough. It is possible that someone keyed their department radios on OEM in digital mode not realizing what channel they were on.
OEM frequency is comprised of hundreds of radios of all different manufacturers so it would be rather difficult to impliment NXDN on that channel and have everyone be able to use it.
Yes, that is possible. I heard it on an old non-digital scanner with very few channels programmed onto it, and I did not have SS VFD or Oil Trough programmed into it.
What's Oil Trough VFD doing on NXDN when they are licensed for NFM and DMR?
WQVD942 (Oil Trough, City of 2014102901) FCC Callsign Details
What's Oil Trough VFD doing on NXDN when they are licensed for NFM and DMR?
WQVD942 (Oil Trough, City of 2014102901) FCC Callsign Details
weird
Talked to another HAM around here and he said he explicitly heard a test conversation going between the two OEM guys regarding NXDN. I don't know what they are doing other than potentially going to knock out scanners when it comes to official county OEM business. The fire departments around here likely won't be moving over to it due to all the different types of radios. I have heard rumors of the PD's moving to NXDN in the near future.
Not sure what to say about Oil Trough other than I have seen it, it is a Kenwood NXDN vhf unit.
Talked to another HAM around here and he said he explicitly heard a test conversation going between the two OEM guys regarding NXDN. I don't know what they are doing other than potentially going to knock out scanners when it comes to official county OEM business. The fire departments around here likely won't be moving over to it due to all the different types of radios. I have heard rumors of the PD's moving to NXDN in the near future.
Not sure what to say about Oil Trough other than I have seen it, it is a Kenwood NXDN vhf unit.
Batesville Police Department is currently licensed for NFM and NXDN digital. At this time they are operating NFM with full-time simple voice inversion scrambling. When they can allocate funding for new radios, they will go to Kenwood NXDN. Considering that they are currently scrambling their analog signal, I fully expect BPD to encrypt their digital communications when they upgrade to digital. This is a trend with law enforcement in Arkansas. All we can do is shrug, complaining does not good.
Some volunteer fire departments have gone to DMR (i.e., Floral VFD and Thida VFD), and at least one to NXDN (Southside VFD), while others have remained NFM mode only. BPD is licensed for NXDN and when they can afford it, they will implement it, I'm sure, with encryption to boot. This mish-mash of transmission modes is very counter-productive to interoperability but... (here I stopped myself before engaging in a pointless rant).
OTFD is testing out NXDN gear, as is SS.... They may have an impending mod or maybe new lic in the works but being the way the FCC data is.. They could also have an Temp use permit until new lic/mod is approved... Yes BPD is going to fully encrypt. OEM is also testing out the gear to see how feasible it is to implement for private ops... But to go full NXDN they will have to coordinate with a lot of local FD's.. As well as all the First Responders for the county, ADEM, and surrounding agencies to set up interop, maybe an analog chan and an NXDN one.... Its insane that the AWIN is right there, and is being improved and the State is pushing it harder than ever for everyone possible.... But there it is.. Little fish wanting to have complete control over a tiny part of the ocean.
OT and SS have deployed NXDN gear, there isn't any testing going on. I don't see OEM ever going fully NXDN unless they want to buy Icom and Kenwood radios for everyone they are forcing off the air. I could see someone with a commercial frequency doing that but not a county that provides emergency services channels.
Maybe you can explain why everyone else is clamoring to spend $2-3,000 per person on AWIN equipment when the system that exists now works.. Tell the fire departments around here that your forcing them to upgrade and see how many new repeaters go up in the next couple months. Once this happens the county will then have to find a way to page them out.
Oil Trough VFD is (at this very minute) working a house fire and they are using analog NFM.
I suspect this was to interop with Thida who was also paged. Talked to chief who said they were all digital so it seems it's not by his choice they are running analog.
So the lesson to be learned is that for interoperability, it is best to use the simplest and most common mode: FM. Whatever happened to the Principle of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)? Naaaah, let's complicate the situation by having each and every VFD on not only different frequencies, but incompatible digital modes as well. Too bad we can't throw Provoice, Open Sky, and TETRA into the mix.
The word for today is "provincialism", folks.
The word for today is "provincialism", folks.
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