I own BCD996XT and BCD996T would I have to upgrade to the home patrol in order to hear?
Get use to it. Just about all of the older radio systems around the country are either at end of life or have since passed the end of support. It doesn't matter what company made it. I know of a few radio systems that are being maintained by buying parts off the Internet. That is not what I call good support for a public radio system.
It takes some real talent to keep an older radio system on the air. But there comes a time when your better off putting the older gear out to pasture and up grading the equipment. What it costs is how good you write the specs and how hard you beat up on the vendors to get a good price. That's where the use of a GOOD radio system consultant can make this happen at a reasonable cost. There are consultants out there that don't do a very good job and cause radio systems to have high costs.
The real cost comes in installing the controlling computer switch for a trunking system. If you can work with another agency, you can save a pile of money. But you also need to work out a good sharing of the costs and maintenance of the switch for the sharing to work.
You can look at 2 statewide systems where the state is currently supporting all the user cost for the switch. How the user radio costs are done might change in the future. The state of Louisiana and Mississippi both have a statewide trunking systems. I believe that Louisiana is one of the largest statewide user systems in the country. The Mississippi system seems to have politics getting in the way and time will show what their outcome will be. You can take a mobile or portable in Louisiana and be able to talk back to your dispatch from just about any place in the state that has radio coverage.
If Nashua is going to share the switch with Manchester, then they both will make out on the project. They both just need to work through the politics and come up with a plan to make it work, if that's the direction they are headed in.
