ScanDiego.com

Heard today on the Scanner that Units in Western and Northern where getting "New updated handheld Radios" . Every Shift was having trouble Logging the new Radio ID's on thier MDT's .
Could this be a Prelude to SDPD's Move to RCS. ?
Comments and feedback 8)

Negative. They are not and have no plans as of now to move to the RCS. They have been replacing all of the Saber radios, which are getting very old now. They are just replacing those with XTS radios.

I understand their plan is to move into 700Mhz as soon as it's vacated by TV. When? That's a big question than even Congress wants to know. It's the talk of the town in every "radio tech" magazine I read. TV's doesn't have to vacate until a certain number of consumers have digital capable TV receivers and consumers aren't buying those TV's in mass quanity because they're too expensive (and not much reason since there is not much to watch).

The latest I've read about is that maybe the law will be re-written to have a hard date to vacate regardless of how many units have been purchased.

In the meantime, SDPD will stay for at minimum of a few years, if not logner.

SDPD, begin the most affected system in the county by Nextel site interference, is drooling over the 700Mhz because they see it as the cure to their problems.

Uh, no... the City of San Diego is not going to RCS. If anything they MAY be moving to a 700Mhz system one day, but not the RCS.

What's going on is, the city is buying new Motorola XTS5000 HT's to replace the aging Motrola Saber SI's that are no-longer supported by Motorola. You can not buy new Saber SI's or parts, so they have been buying 'batches' of XTS5000's, putting them on the system, and retiring the old Saber SI's.

Each new XTS5000 has a new system ID assigned for that radio. Although the SYSTEM accepts the new ID in the radio because some city radio tec programmed it and entered the radio in the system, the DISPATCH CONSOLE marquee does not have an 'assignable alpha-tag' (if you will) assigned to that radio ID yet. When an officer gets one of the new radios and keys up the radio for the first time on a SDPD D1 talkgroup, it shows up on the dispatch console as a number only. The dispatcher is used to seeing radio ID's that have been 'alpha-assigned'. That can lead to a little confusion at the beginning of the shift, when new radios have been issued. If the dispatcher was not made aware of the new radios comming on the system, that can just add to the drama. Once they key up for the first time, the dispatcher can change the ID number on her computer screen to an 'alpha-tag' of who the user is. The radio tec who programmed the radio may not know who the radio will be assigned to, especailly if it's a regular patrol radio with a "patrol" codeplug. ("Codeplug" means 'information that has been programmed into a radio')

~318