[TheList] digital radio hitches see light of day (Long winded ignore if you're not interested in the behind the scenes)

Mon Aug 24 05:39:55 AEST 2009

Had the pleasure of Wellington's good weather last week and a chance to
watch the control channels on their new system.

I was based in the CBD and got a good range of both UHF and VHF to pick
from...

Found 4 active channels while monitoring...(VHF) I mean channels not freq
allocations...

How many does Wellington work with?  Knowing we have at least nine in
Auckland including motorways and checks channels not to mention
simplex..and specials..

Each control channel had up to 5 support voice channels (That went active)
with the system cycling the voice channels 

UHF system appeared to have the one main channel active which I can assume
was Wellingtons city channel...guess the control channels I 
found in the city were being used mainly for Wellingtons CBD channel. I seem
to recall seeing a second channel on UHF to active 
from time to time Friday night..no doubt it was active more but the main
masked its appearance..

Could have done with a laptop to log more but I should be grateful I was
able to catch what I did...

I saw the LNK icon light up for all voice channels as they went active so am
wondering how the radios hand off between repeater sites..
Hope someone more technical can answer that one..I am used to monitoring
Auckland's private trunk systems where they physically change channels
as required as they leave coverage of the CBD repeaters..(EDACS system now
owned by Team Talk.)

Does the new system have some form of voting in place to ensure portables
have access to the best repeater for example.

Most vehicles I saw in the CBD area where sporting three antennas across the
boot with the new ESB antenna in the boot center and a UHF and
the older 75 MHz on the boot edges...

All staff on foot sported the nice new TAITS...I so wanted to ask for a look
but didn't really want to get locked up while on holiday...
seems Wellington has its fair amount of little hoods for the on foot guys
and girls to deal with while I was watching on.

Annoyed the wife no end with the abrupt noise heard just before the voice
channel with quiet but it was great to see what Auckland has to look 
forward too...well from a technical point of view...don't know if silence is
golden in this case..I saw active UHF on the old band but after
years of listening found it more interesting to get a feel for the fun the
tech people must be having getting the new system working and 
debugged...

They get Wellington de bugged the rest of the country will be easy...famous
last words...guess it depends on coverage needs..
Will the system need to provide coverage for a North 1 car in Manukau for
example or will the channels work as then do now
and the mobile change from North 1 to South 1 as they leave their patch...