Whistler announces NXDN upgrade

Bentonville, AR– (December 13, 2016) The Whistler Group, Inc., a leading industry supplier of state-of the-art mobile electronics, is in the homestretch to the highly-anticipated release of an NXDN™ update to the TRX-1 and TRX-2 which currently feature Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) capabilities.

The Whistler TRX-1 (handheld) and TRX-2 (desktop/Mobile) originally released in May of this year are multi-system adaptive digital trunking scanners with Motorola P25 Phase I, X2-TDMA, Phase II and DMR. Additionally, Whistler announced during the initial product debut, that development of NXDN monitoring was underway and the TRX-1 and TRX-2 would receive an NXDN™ upgrade later this year at no cost to the consumer.
NXDN™ is a Common Air Interface (CAI) technical protocol for mobile communications developed jointly by Icom Incorporated and JVC Kenwood Corporation. Many market segments such as security, transportation, railways, construction, taxi companies, hotels and more use NXDN™. In addition, areas of Public safety − with agencies from police, fire, municipal services and military are using NXDN technology.
“At this time we are very excited to announce that we will be releasing the NXDN upgrade for the TRX-1 and TRX-2 on Thursday, December 15^th, 2016 at 12:00 Noon CST,” said Wendy Taylor, Marketing Manager for the Whistler Group. “When Whistler entered the scanner industry we were committed to bringing innovation and we are demonstrating that by our introduction of DMR earlier this year and our continued development to provide NXDN.”

This is good news. There is some public safety use of NXDN north of Pittsburgh, and one local agency currently working on implementing it.

It is also nice to see a company deliver what they announce, in the time frame they said they would. Uniden has yet to release the advanced analysis features that were announced years ago for the BCD436HP and BCD536HP.

DMR

Whistler released its final and fully supported DMR upgrade for their 1080, 1088, 1095 and 1098 scanners. this is a free upgrade for those scanners. These radios will not be able to be upgraded for NXDN. This was released as was expected at the end of the month. This makes Whistler the first scanner company to release a fully supported DMR, trunking upgrade.

The Whistler TRX-1 and TRX-2 radios will have DMR, and are to be updated to include NXDN in September. Theses radios were announced to be available at the end of July.

New Digital Scanners

Whistler has just announced the TRX-1 (portable), and TRX-2 (base/mobile). These radios are P25 phase I, P25 Phase II, X2 TDMA, and DMR trunking scanners. NXDN is in the works, and will be a free upgrade for these radios. To be available late June.

Whistler is also going to provide those with the 1080, 1088, 1095and 1098 radios the DMR upgrade for FREE.

Allegheny County DPW

Brian N3SGU passed along the following information on Allegheny County DPW

District 1 is on Wildwood Rd next to North Park
District 2 is on Campbells Run Rd in Carnegie
District 3 is on Rail Road St in Penn Hills
District 4 is on Lovedale Rd in Elizabeth
District 5 is located in South Park
District 6 is no longer in use
District 7 is under the 40th St Bridge in Lawrenceville
District 8 is on Buttermilk Hollow in West Mifflin

Numbering is as follows
X- is the district number
X-0 is district base
X-1 is district supervisor
X-2 to 19 are district pick up trucks
X-20 to 29 are district single axle dumps
X-30 to 39 are district tandems
X-40 is district street sweeper

Paving trucks do not have a district

Parks also have trucks they use the following prefixes :
North Park - NP
South Park - SP
Boyce Park - BP
Harrison Hills - HH
Round Hill - RH
White Oak - WO
Hartwood - HW
Deer Lakes - DL
The Parks dump trucks are also used for snow removal. 

TRMA Meeting

The Three Rivers Monitoring Association will be meeting at the Kings at the Waterworks Wed, Jan 16 at 1930. All are welcome to join in.

Happy New Year

Have a happy and safe New Year

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas.

Frank K3FSS

Outback Steakhouse

I just read the Outback Steakhouse at PNC park is closed. They are going to put something else in there. That freq will be deleted in the next update. Outback was using 467.925 PL 85.4

Antenna work

I've been busy doing some antenna work.

I have a a Radio Shack discone that I needed to repair. I wasn't watching what I was doing a couple of years ago, and managed to break off a radial. I got it threaded back on, but it fell of this winter. I replaced that radial, and replaced the coax with LMR 400.

I have an old Antenna Specialist scanner antenna (Mon ???) on a 5 ft mast. I put that on a 10ft mast and changed the coax to LMR 400.

I got a new discone at a hamfest. I put that up on a 10ft mast and used LMR 400 on that as well.

I do have some improvement with the LMR 400. I can now hear Westmoreland County's 800 system. I do have to say, that stuff is a bear to work with. It is by far the toughest stuff to work with. I don't enjoy putting connectors on, and this made it worst. Its done now, so when I get some better antennas to replace the discones most of the work is already done.