Unencrypted police channel?

[JonN]

Hello all!

So, the emergency services are all encrypted in my country (they all use some form of custom encrypted TETRA, impossible to monitor), last week I was monitoring my scanner and I heard what sounded like traffic police conducting a raid. I've heard it before last year back when I lived downtown, now I live in a more suburban area. Without giving out too much detail it sounded like they were listing all the cars and vehicles that were passing by. I asked someone else IRL and they agreed it sounded like traffic police. Some of the comms were hilarious, especially when they became angry/agitated at some of the drivers!

Anyway, the point of my thread is does there exist non-tactical/non-sensitive emergency/police channels using analog narrow FM in Europe where most everything is encrypted TETRA/custom in-house system like VIRVE (Finland)?

What is your theory?

 

[BC_Scan]

impossible to monitor)

not true if its not ENC you can listen via USB dongle @ software (SDR software defined radio)

 

[G7RUX]

Here in the UK it is quite common for some emergency services (particularly fire services) to use narrow FM scene comms rather than TETRA due to the simplicity and reliability of simple FM VHF/UHF systems.

 

[JonN]

Yeah, I was thinking the same too. Maybe they don't bother with TETRA/VIRVE some of the time, I heard (can't find the source anymore sadly...) once the battery life on these encrypted digital radiotelephones/handsets/whatever can be quite poor sometimes. I'm not sure how true that statement is though. I can also imagine them being expensive when one wants just a simple radio to transmit with.

 

[G7RUX]

Yeah, I was thinking the same too. Maybe they don't bother with TETRA/VIRVE some of the time, I heard (can't find the source anymore sadly...) once the battery life on these encrypted digital radiotelephones/handsets/whatever can be quite poor sometimes. I'm not sure how true that statement is though. I can also imagine them being expensive when one wants just a simple radio to transmit with.

To be honest, modern TETRA radios have pretty good battery life (typically 6-8 hours of moderately heavy use in my experience for Sepura units) so I'm not sure that's the driver for it. I would imagine that the reason is actually one of cost; using Airwave TETRA here in the UK results in a per-minute charge along the same lines as using a mobile phone and it is pretty alarmingly expensive. Using this system for scene chatter would be stunningly costly so I believe that is why fire services for example use nFM simplex for scene comms.

 

[Robbie1984]

Here in South Australia both SA Ambulance and SA Police have P25 encrypted talk groups on the SA-GRN but also got access to open digital unencrypted multi-agency talk groups which are linked to fire, rescue, forestry and parks/wildlife but these TG's are very rarely heard unless there's an emergency or incident where interagency communications is required like a motor bike accident in a national park which involves a seriously injured rider requiring medical extrication this would require SAAS,CFS and SES to be able to communicate with each other on one channel

As for scene comms the CFS ,Forestry and National Parks use VHF narrowband channels that NAC codes as they share the same frequencies/channels as Victorian CFA does plus using NFM simplex channels for fire ground communications frees up their primary GRN talk groups for sitreps, response acknowledgement and other necessary comms