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Rebanding is a subject which has come up many times in this forum. Last week I was speaking with someone at the Uniden help desk re my BC245xlt and some possible repairs. His recommendation was that money not be spent on repairs, but rather a new scanner. He recommended a BC346XT (I haven't found it on their webpage yet) or a BCD396XT. I wonder if he meant the BC246T. He stated that rebanding was almost complete in ALL areas and our Seattle/King County area, as well as others should be switching over soon.

Do we have an approximate cutover date as yet? Is it on the very near horizon?

He recommended looking at the BCD346xlt in case encryption is used in our area. In reading the past posts, it appeared to me that encryption shouldn't be a problem for MOST law enforcement/fire service listening in this area. Has that changed at all?

I would be interested in any information you can provide on either encryption or rebanding. I would also appreciate other recommendations for a handheld scanner when I have to use the 246xlt for my VHF and UHF listening.

Any help is appreciated,
Wayne

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Wayne
KF7FYL

I must correct myself. I have been advised that the "D" in the model number stands for digital and doesn't have anything to do with encrpytion. With rebanding, do current plans provide for an analog or digital system? If analog, is digital seen in the next few years? And yes, I would be interested in encryption information as well.

Sorry about that, but at least I caught the error,

Wayne

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Wayne
KF7FYL

Someone else will have to speak to rebanding, but as far as encryption goes, forget it. If they go encrypted, you have two options:

1- Join the NSA and use their stuff to try and hack the radios...Should take a a few weeks to hear what was going on; or

2- Join the agency you want to listen to and get issued a radio.

You can't break it with publically available gear, and even if you did, it's still a federal felony rap to listen.

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President-in-Exile, Seattle Area Radio Communications And Scanner Traffic Intercept Crew (SARCASTIC)
Don't feel bad if you can't use your STD100/200; there are still people using Digital Frequency Search!
Bunnery definition for the under-fives

Of course he wants to sell you one of the new X models! They're the latest and greatest that they have to offer and they've probably yet to break even since they've only been out for a few months.

But he's right--rebanding is coming soon, in geological years.

I highly doubt you'll see it this year. There's one big problem with rebanding King County's system: if you reband it, you have to reband the Port system. Both of these also affect Snohomish county's system, and also Tacoma and Puyallup's systems. Seems Nexthell didn't realize this.


King County is also going to go to a shuffled band plan after the reband. Here's how it works now:
Say a user on talkgroup 16 keys up. The controller sends information out on the control channel that tells all radios listening to talkgroup 16 to switch to channel 001 (or some channel not in use). So all the real radios and scanners switch. The systems are set up with a default band plan, and the channels are assigned in sequential order. Due to licensing, not every system can use any every channel.

With the shuffled band plan, the same will happen, except the system will know that 001 isn't actually 851.0125. It'll be whatever the techs want it to be. Every radio on the system will also be programmed to understand this "shuffled plan". Currently there are no scanners that can be set up to monitor a shuffled band plan system.

So you can safely hold off even longer before you buy a new scanner because for a while there will be no scanners that can monitor the system. I suppose the developers of Trunker or one of the other computer monitoring programs might modify their programs to track these systems (or there might be one that already does this) so in the meantime you could probably listen with two scanners and a PC.


I think the main reason they're switching is to prevent hacked radios from jumping on the system. In order to transmit each radio will need this special key.

Hmmm, I'm hearing that the rebanding will be complete by end of this year for King county....

Shuffled band plan (which was a standard compnont of MPT1327 since 25+ years ago) offers greater efficiency as well as significant flexibility, should future "rebanding" or changes to the band take place. MPT did it because the span of frequencies at 400-512 MHz was simply too great to build a DFA (direct frequency assignment) table, as is currently used in several of the trunking protocols.

Depending on how it is implemented, it could also accomodate wierd offsets (or not).

Passport uses different DFA "bands", but this restricts any given "site" (the site controller can host multiple "sites" of differing bands) as well as subscriber units to one range of freqs. The makers of Passport (and Passport radios) had to update a few years ago when the 406-420 band went to a standard 9MHz offset.

When they went after VHF (where there is no standard offset) they simply diddled the framing of their control data to send a DFA number for TX and for RX.

It would be interesting to learn if Motorola offers this along with the shuffled plan.

I think the feature called "hard key" is what keeps bootleggers off their system, but there are much more knowledgeable folk here to answer that.

As much as it pains me to say, nuclear burrito is correct

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I generate Board Warnings

Since that's just a mental transcript of your lectures, I'd hope so. :D

That's just gas.

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President-in-Exile, Seattle Area Radio Communications And Scanner Traffic Intercept Crew (SARCASTIC)
Don't feel bad if you can't use your STD100/200; there are still people using Digital Frequency Search!
Bunnery definition for the under-fives

Your best investment per se, imho, is probably a used Uniden 396T. The "XT" model is still new (and thus pricey)... PLUS, Uniden has slacked off and not even finished their programming software. There are 3rd party software packages, but I don't know off hand if these are free (probably not.)

You can find a lot of 396T for sale right now... esp on EBay. I just recommend finding one that is already firmware upgraded to 3.02 so you don't have to mess with that.

There weren't a ton of changes in the 396X. All I see are color LEDs, GPS, multi site, packet output, NACs, and some other minor features. Nick's right; now's the time to get a 396.

Re-banding- We have just begun the re-banding process in Seattle. "Cutover" will NOT be this year, and you can take that to the bank. It may, or may not, be complete by the end of next year. As I recall, the present schedule calls for Wave 4, Border Area to be complete mid-2011 (I don't have the schedule in front of me as I write this, but it can be found on the FCC and TA web sites). Re-banding is not at all "almost complete" in the Puget Sound area. Anyone that says otherwise should not be listened to.

Digital- DO NOT confuse digital with re-banding. They are different. Re-banding ONLY involves replacing our current 800MHz frequencies with other 800MHz frequencies. However, because many radios (not all) will nedd to be replaced to accommodate re-banding, you may see some agencies doing some factory upgrades to prepare for future system changes.

Shuffled Band Plan is being planned for. If it is actually turned on, you will know it right away as your scanner will no longer track the TG call.

As I said in a previous reply, many date are still fuzzy around re-banding and digital modulation. The only thing for sure is that we WILL see them come to pass. Check my previous reply (earlier this year, I think) as to timing of these enhancements as pertains to buying a new scanner. The info in that reply still holds.

Wiz

Wiz

Re: Shuffled band plan, I think I asked this question before, and never got a reply (and I don't know if that means the answer is bad news), but - is government working with scanner manufacturers, or other interested parties (i.e. news media, and us!) to allow them a way to monitor the system once shuffled band plan is implemented?

I remember when the trunked radio system was first implemented, the fact that outside users could no longer monitor public safety radio communications was a big deal (as trunk tracking scanners had yet to be invented). If I remember right, the news media made a huge stink over it (of course). I think the initial solution was allow the media to buy thier very own government radio that would be programmed by the radio shop to be receive only and be loaded with a select set of talkgroups, so the media could listen to fire / police dispatch, etc.. I think the charge for each of those radios was like $3000+ or something. (correct me if I'm wrong here, going off of very old memory)

So, will it take something like that again for people to monitor the system after shuffled band plan is implemented? Or are system planners working on any other solution at this time?

I mean, if this isn't yet figured out, why should anyone buy a scanner now at all? If the solutuion is still completly unknown, how do we know any existing scanner will even be able to accomodate whatever unknown solution is eventually worked out? Make sense?

I remember when the City of Seattle offered 800 mhz Radios that would only receive and not transmit. I believe at the time it was done through the SFD radio shop.

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Realistic Patrolman PRO-48, Uniden BC-800XLT, Radio Shack PRO-2018, Uniden BC-895XLT, Uniden BC-245XLT, RCA RP-6100,
Realistic PRO-2006, Uniden BR330T, Uniden BCT15X

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