I'm in the Rockville area and I receive the WGL 900 MHz trunked system with five bars showing, strong signal. I have only Wildcard programmed, no actual talkgroups programmed.
What you see on street lights is the remains of the old Ricochet system that operated in the 928 MHz band.
Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) / WiMAX News: Ricochet's Corpse Finally Stops Twitching
Their main TRS site is in Rockville so I would expect you get great reception. I must be in a dead spot.
Yeah I remember Ricochet's antennas. The ones I'm talking about are like every few blocks and they have a similar antenna to the ones that are mounted on those green housing units that are used by WG&L but could be a coincidence. I was able to get some hits on the Dispatch TG's which were Analog Voice but it was very dicey and locking on the control channel was difficult. I'm near National Navy Medical Center in Maryland.
I'll take a picture some time and post it.
I did some searching on FCC's website and came up with 930mhz area SCADA (PSK) monitoring devices and for automated meter reading.
I do see them using 900MHz point-to-point yagi antennas for monitoring as well as hundreds of point-to-point microwave links with massive bandwidth... Is this used as a backbone for someone else besides WG&L cause that is a lot of bandwidth. I also know Baltimore Gas uses microwave links as well (one of them was on a mountain).
One of them was an Itron, Inc. DCU --
-- Data Collection Unit ("DCU") mounted in a vehicle to collect and store data transmitted by meter modules as the vehicle passes module-equipped meters. The DCU receives information transmitted by multiple meter modules simultaneously...
..
The Company's radio meter modules transmit information back to either the Company's handheld, mobile or fixed network AMR reading devices in the 910-920 MHz band pursuant to these rules..
The Company designs, develops, manufactures, markets, sells, installs and services hardware, software and integrated systems for handheld computer-based electronic meter reading ("EMR") and automatic meter reading ("AMR") systems.
They also can hook them up to below ground monitors which I think is what those antennas I'm seeing. The wires would run from below ground meters (on the main gas lines) to the transmitters above ground which are all linked in.
I'm not sure if the antennas I'm seeing for sure are old Ricochet but I know that WG&L uses 900mhz monitoring that can be activated on command from their trucks or control stations..
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