Friday, May 23, 2008

Arlington's New Project 25 System

After the Nats game on Wednesday night, I spent a little time listening to Arlington's P25 system. The audio quality was decent from near Capitol Hill, using the Radio Shack 800 MHz antenna on the BCD396T. There was some audio distortion and the like, but this is to be expected with a simulcast digital system. Overall, not too bad.

Since it was fairly late in the evening (10:30-11:15 or so) there wasn't a lot of traffic on the system. The Police and Fire talkgroups were correct as noted at RadioReference for some time. The Sheriff was active on talkgroups 62 and 66. 66 may be used for the jail. Police units made heavy use of I-calls, as they had on the analog system.

By the way, the analog system is still on the air, albeit in a diminished form. Arlington chose to keep an analog system active so that other jurisdictions can talk to them in mutual aid situations, etc. Smart (and necessary) move. As of that night, Falls Church Police are still on the analog system. It's unknown if they'll be migrating to the digital system.

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