Scanners, Radio and other such tech inquiries

[railiner]

Steep Capital cost to be sure. Expensive, overcomplicated and unnecessary to the task
Digital communications can be compromised easily through hardware or software errors, atmospherics and other difficulties
Trunking, encryption, compression and other communications systems have their use and applications. But simple analog methods remain desirable for instant (no delay) dependable and inexpensive universal communications. There is really no need for cloaking such comms as "Approach Medium" or "Highball" or copying Track Warrants, Slow Orders, "Three cars more", "That'll Do!" or "Looking good on that side, AMTRAK".
The VHF channels in use are excellent for the short ranges needed to communicate on stretches of line. This and the number of allotted channels helps to keep someone from talking in Elks Breath, Indiana from interfering with someone talking in Greater Pesthole, NY.
The "alloted Spectrum" is not going away. No one is waving fecesloads of money to take these more or less line of sight frequency bands away, in the manner that Amateur, UHF and microwave bands were stolen. We have seen in the grabs for TV and Cellular channels. And now this mythical ATSC 3 ("Next Gen TV") failure. Jeeze, we just got over converting to Digital and then HD, now we need to scrap everything again and, buy new gear so we can get more targeted advertising? My battery operted TV and Rabbit Ears work when the power has failed and the cable TV is out.
I mean really, folks, no one wanting to profit from targeted advertising and monetization is drooling over 108 - 455 MC. The historic migration of commercial communications from the low band <>20 Mc through 450 Mc is pretty much over. Public service radio has moved into 800MC and above using digital and trunking for dispatch and security reasons.
The use of AM VHF voice comms for air to air and air to ground communications is similar to the VHF FM comms for railroads. There are huge numbers of users, the system works, and changing from one standard to another would be expensive, time consuming, a massive pain to execute changeover, and to what end?

Author's Note:
Please don't give me that Hertz vs Cycles (per second) guff. I've heard it all before. I shall continue to use the descriptive and understandable technological nomenclature that I have for 70 + years. Cycles per Second means something. Hertz was a man's name. Honored, to be sure, but certainly not intuitive or descriptive.
Centigrade means a 100 unit measurement. Who or what was a Celsius? Nevermind, I care not.
Shall we change Lumens to Edisons? What happened to Footcandles?
FM to Armstrong Signal System? Uh nope, bad acronym
Foot Pounds to Ugga Duggas?
Miles per Hour to Furlongs per Fortnight?
Acre Feet to - oh Hades, you get the idea... This has gone far enough.

One Moe Thing - YOU KIDS GET OFFA MY LAWN!

From one curmudgeon to another, well said!

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Trunking, encryption, compression and other communications systems have their use and applications. But simple analog methods remain desirable for instant (no delay) dependable and inexpensive universal communications. There is really no need for cloaking such comms as "Approach Medium" or "Highball" or copying Track Warrants, Slow Orders, "Three cars more", "That'll Do!" or "Looking good on that side, AMTRAK".

Of the examples listed only encryption includes obfuscation as a fundamental design goal; any other cloaking is merely incidental.

The "alloted Spectrum" is not going away. No one is waving fecesloads of money to take these more or less line of sight frequency bands away, in the manner that Amateur, UHF and microwave bands were stolen.

Spectrum rarely goes away completely but it does see new limits and restrictions imposed to make way for ever more transceivers.

The use of AM VHF voice comms for air to air and air to ground communications is similar to the VHF FM comms for railroads. There are huge numbers of users, the system works, and changing from one standard to another would be expensive, time consuming, a massive pain to execute changeover, and to what end?

The only spectrum safe from regulatory interference is MIL. Everything else lives and dies on budgets, lobbying, and market conditions. It's incredibly unlikely that any of us will see major changes in train, plane, or trucking VHF comms, but nothing stays the same forever.

 

[jis]

Of the examples listed only encryption includes obfuscation as a fundamental design goal; any other cloaking is merely incidental.


Spectrum rarely goes away completely but it does see new limits and restrictions imposed to make way for ever more transceivers.


The only spectrum safe from regulatory interference is MIL. Everything else lives and dies on budgets, lobbying, and market conditions. It's incredibly unlikely that any of us will see major changes in train, plane, or trucking VHF comms, but nothing stays the same forever.

All very good points DA.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind though....

While the spectrum is unlikely to go away, how the allotted spectrum is divvied up into channels is more likely to change over time to add capacity within the same spectrum allocation. This may render old devices obsolete requiring replacement.

Even though a specific set of channels remain in use as before, the routine interesting information carried may be shifted substantially to other channels. Witness the use of Air to Ground channels where almost all technical stuff has been moved off from voice communication to digital things like ACARS. Similar has happened to some extent in railroads, like the significantly lower volume of voice communication along the NEC with most of the tech stuff now moved to digital channels related to ACSES and such.

 

[TinCan782]

This quote is from "nickwilson159" on the Radio Reference Railroad/Railfan Monitoring Forum.
In the thread "NXDN Reception Comparison" he pretty much sums up my take on the subject.

"With that said, unless you're near a yard, you're probably not going to hear any NXDN in use on railroad channels. Almost everything is still analog, especially on road channels. The NXDN mandate has been around since 2008, and they have still barely scratched the surface - so much so that the fleet of first generation NXDN radios all of the railroads purchased are being replaced with second generation NXDN radios now, with many of the first generation NXDN radios never having even operated on an NXDN channel in their lives."

"This doesn't mean mainline NXDN will never happen - they have been attempting to do just that on the Florida East Coast Railway, as well as GO Transit around Toronto - but there's no mandate that the railroads MUST go digital, only that the AAR recommends NXDN if they do. Most railroads are content with analog as it presently stands, so I don't foresee a big change anytime soon."

 

[xyzzy]

Beware that some of the H/T's from China have slow scanning rates.

 

[joelkfla]

Concerning the "Chineseium" radios. I have a Baofeng that was my original 2m radio when I got my ham license but which I mostly use when I operate at Seashore Trolley Museum where we use RR frequencies for train to dispatcher comms. That radio has landed in the ballast quite a few times "takes a beating yet keeps on ticking" as the old Timex watch ads used to say. The drawback for using it as a scanner is that it scans very slowly compared to a Bearcat or other purpose designed scanner. Also it is a pain to program channels through the keyboard. I usually use a program called Chirp to do this.

Your memory fails: "Takes a licking, but keeps on ticking!" It rhymes, see?

Agree on the scanning speed. Baofeng scans about 3 channels per second. BC125AT scans the entire railroad band in about 2 seconds.

 

[drdumont]

Your memory fails: "Takes a licking, but keeps on ticking!" It rhymes, see?

Agree on the scanning speed. Baofeng scans about 3 channels per second. BC125AT scans the entire railroad band in about 2 seconds.

Understandable. The Bearcat is a scanner. The H/Ts are Two way radios with scanning feature. I seldom bother with scanning. I just use the cheatsheet from On Track On Line and don't have issues with falsing. On last weekend's DAL-CHI, I carried my Wouxun, my Yaesu VX-5 and the newest Chinesium <$50 H/T. The Yaesu had the best sensitivity, the others a little less so, but certainly suitable to the purpose..

 

[Devil's Advocate]

For those unfamiliar with railroad communications here is a primer on what is being said and what it means.