Bolt21
Spark Chariot Driver
You know, I knew about that trick but had completely forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder.
It appears they are conventional.
Levy County, Fla to go Icom iDAS NXDN
- Thread starter kd4efm
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You know, I knew about that trick but had completely forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder.
It appears they are conventional.
They are NXDN type d trunking. Does not require an FB8.
kd4efm Evans, sent using TapTALK on my HTC M9
Like to know why you're saying NXDN is not the good choice for public safety. I'm a veteran on NXDN and it's operation since it came out in 2004/5 and put it into service for hams. And it's pretty darn good, over Dstar.
kd4efm Evans, sent using TapTALK on my HTC M9
Bolt21
Spark Chariot Driver
Thanks for that.
Comparing ham radio usage to public safety usage is not a fair comparison.
If you had seen some of the incredibly crappy amateur repeater installations that I've seen in my 30+ years in the hobby you'd agree. And some of those were at commercial or public safety sites!
My experiences with NXDN were not generally positive. I would not recommend it for ANYTHING. OK, maybe something was wrong with Icom's implementation and maybe it got fixed later, but having a greater than 10 percent transmission dropout rate with a clear line of sight and strong signal conditions is NOT acceptable for ANYTHING and that's what we were getting.
Granted, they may have had a problem that may have been corrected later, but that is what we were experiencing with Icom's first generation NXDN radios.
Granted, they may have had a problem that may have been corrected later, but that is what we were experiencing with Icom's first generation NXDN radios.
Sorry about you lumping Icom as the NXDN bad apple.
I use kenwood NXDN type C and conventional, never had any issues.
I am not going into what happened with Levy. There are several of us in North FL who know what happened, this is not the place for it to be talked about, even from me.
I have to leave it be, for now.
I would point you to my project were kenwood and Icom coexist in a conventional world.
NXDNINFO.COM
Cheers.
kd4efm Evans, sent using TapTALK on my HTC M9
mmckenna
I ♥ Ø
I'll add to this.
I've been running a 5 channel NexEdge trunked system for a couple of years now without any issues. We don't use it directly for public safety, although our PD does have access to it and does use it.
It works fine. It sounds fine.
When we first brought up the system in a test environment, it took a week of tinkering around with all the settings to get it to sound the way we wanted. It's not a plug-n-play thing, there some thought that has to go into it.
The issues I've seen is when someone sets it up without understanding how to properly do it. I didn't when I first started, but spending some time actually talking with Kenwood engineers helped a whole lot.
I think what happens fairly often is technicians attempt to set these digital systems up without actually understanding what they are doing.
Unfortunately the manufacturer or the technology gets blamed.
I've been running a 5 channel NexEdge trunked system for a couple of years now without any issues. We don't use it directly for public safety, although our PD does have access to it and does use it.
It works fine. It sounds fine.
When we first brought up the system in a test environment, it took a week of tinkering around with all the settings to get it to sound the way we wanted. It's not a plug-n-play thing, there some thought that has to go into it.
The issues I've seen is when someone sets it up without understanding how to properly do it. I didn't when I first started, but spending some time actually talking with Kenwood engineers helped a whole lot.
I think what happens fairly often is technicians attempt to set these digital systems up without actually understanding what they are doing.
Unfortunately the manufacturer or the technology gets blamed.
Does Kenwood have some kind of training program or videos that teach the salient points to their dealer installers? If not, they should as that is money well spent to have customers praise their junk instead of cussing it because the techs didn't set it up properly.
Although having set up complex systems myself, the customer bureaucracy can often prevent the tech from completing the project properly. THEN they still turn around and blame the technology or the company anyway.
Although having set up complex systems myself, the customer bureaucracy can often prevent the tech from completing the project properly. THEN they still turn around and blame the technology or the company anyway.
OR, two weeks later tell us proficient installers, we(end user) goofed, the Codeplug is wrong, need to re program all radios, forgot to add the dog catcher talk group.
kd4efm Evans, sent using TapTALK on my HTC M9
mmckenna
I ♥ Ø
Kenwood does, but getting individual shops to actually send their techs to it is a different thing. I'm not a dealer, but I'm a big enough customer that myself and one of my guys went to Kenwood training on the NexEdge systems. The protocol and equipment are all documented very well in specific "In-depth" manuals that are freely available to authorized Kenwood shops. These manuals cover all the functions and settings quite well. Again, issue is getting time to read all this stuff.
This is true.
I work for a state agency, we invented bureaucracy. I do go to great pains to make sure the bureaucratic BS doesn't splatter on my vendors. I'm much more interested in keeping my vendors happy than I am in keeping the director happy. Believe it or not, it actually works out much better that way. Director might be unhappy in the short term, but in the end if my customers are happy, he's happy.
I also make sure none of my "customers" ever deal directly with the shop. All contact has to go through me, that way I can weed out the nonsense. We do some of our own work, all our own programming and will triage all radio issues before it ever gets to anyone outside the organization. Further efforts to keep the BS splatter to an absolute minimum.
Can I hire you to be my customer for life???
I have one customer who is the exact opposite: they dump EVERYTHING on the vendor. The clock's not set when the time changed to Daylight Saving? CALL THE VENDOR! Somebody unplugged the power cord to your computer monitor? CALL THE VENDOR!
Otherwise, life is good.
Hooterville
Member
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Can Levy County be heard on a scanner or not?
Hooterville
Member
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2007
- Messages
- 44
Is there such an animal?
Yeah, there is a few out there
Rtl-sdr with dsd+ cheaper way
Sent from my SM-G935P using Tapatalk
troymail
Silent Key
https://www.zipscanners.com/trx-1-police-scanner.html
https://www.zipscanners.com/trx-2-police-scanner.html
SDR is alot cheaper but less portable and requires some knowledge and/or at least alot of patience....
Can NXDN be Decoded?
Apart from using an actual Kenwood radio, the following methods are possible;
The Whistler TRX-1 and TRX-2 with the NXDN upgrade can decode this mode. However, they will not trunk NXDN systems. Program trunked systems as conventional objects. See the How to improve NXDN Scanning Thread and the NXDN Update Now Available Thread
The AOR DV-1 decodes NEXEDGE voice (no trunking, however)
Use either Digital Speech Decoder (software package) or DSDPlus software, along with a scanner which, in many cases, will require a Discriminator Tap. You can also use a SDR with these applications without the need for modifications.
https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/NEXEDGE#Can_it_be_Decoded.3F
Apart from using an actual Kenwood radio, the following methods are possible;
The Whistler TRX-1 and TRX-2 with the NXDN upgrade can decode this mode. However, they will not trunk NXDN systems. Program trunked systems as conventional objects. See the How to improve NXDN Scanning Thread and the NXDN Update Now Available Thread
The AOR DV-1 decodes NEXEDGE voice (no trunking, however)
Use either Digital Speech Decoder (software package) or DSDPlus software, along with a scanner which, in many cases, will require a Discriminator Tap. You can also use a SDR with these applications without the need for modifications.
https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/NEXEDGE#Can_it_be_Decoded.3F
troymail
Silent Key
This is an inaccurate statement - I see it is shown on the Wiki page exactly the same way. At a minimum, the statement is confusing. The writer may have been trying to say ...'won't track NXDN...' which is different than saying '...programming them as a NXDN trunk system won't work...'.
You should program a NXDN trunk system as a trunk system... and there are advantages to doing so. However, some may find programming the frequencies as conventional could work better (or worse). The downside is you don't get the features of trunk systems - at least not easily.
You can -- but there are downsides to doing this as mentioned above.
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