Railfan Technology > NXDN, Another missed opportunity.

Whistler just recently introduced a new "Digital" scanner, the model WS-1098.  It's their latest and greatest (and most expensive.)  Looks like a nice radio with some nice features.  It has ALL of the US frequencies all ready loaded into the memory.  You enter your Zip-code and it selects the local services.  It's also upgrade-able when new services are licensed.  It has a 200 channel scanlist.  P-25 type I and II, LTR, EDACS, and Motorola trunking is supported along with some other stuff.  The one thing it doesn't handle is NXDN.  With an MSRP of $679.95 you would think they could include NXDN but they didn't.   The radio can be upgrades via a software download when it's available but no one is talking NXDN, at least not at this time.  I'll be talking to company reps in May.  Maybe there might be better news at that time.

When ever someone does produce a radio with NXDN covering the 160-161 MHz at a decent price, they are going to find a real market with us rail fans. 

The Whistler scanner is rather expensive but even at that, looks like they missed an opportunity.  I guess us rail fans are too small a group and too tight with our pockets.

John

Once someone finally makes and mass
produces that 89 cent chip,you know
they'll find their way into all handy-
talkies, just to lower the costs of
production. It's sure worked that way
for our digi cameras.

John, aka K6KMJ.

Just to add a few comments, there are some Chinese radios that have had their software reversed engineered to figure out how to access the hardware.  Software has been uploaded to them to allow the radio to do things that it was not designed for.  There have been some upgrades and additional services or modes that the original software did not support.  NXDN was not one of them.  Other than the railroads, NXDN does not seem to have a large user base.  There are some industries using it but most seem to have gone to P25, Motorola, or others.  That's not saying that one is significantly better than the other, just that some industries have adopted other modes, often before NXDN was available.

In the ham radio world there are several non-compatible digital modes in use.  Icom has "D-Star," Yaesu has "System Fusion."  Kenwood doesn't have a digital offering at this time but they do make the NXDN radios for commercial usage and that's always a possible "foot in the door" and if Kenwood introduces an amateur digital radio, it might support NXDN.  Just don't hold your breath.  Alinco has a relatively inexpensive (relative to commercial grade radios) that does have NXDN but the current production only supports the 450 MHz band.

Updates when the are available, or when ever I hear about them.

John

What now is left to listen to on a scanner?  Not
much any more.  More and more info is sent to
crews' laptops (and other computer devices) via
a secure intranet.   Even MoW crews now use
computers.  And CTC has been used for quite
some time, and it eliminates the need for any
talk on a tradio.

Technology has changed everything.

Margaret_SP_fan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What now is left to listen to on a scanner?  Not
> much any more.  More and more info is sent to
> crews' laptops (and other computer devices) via
> a secure intranet.   Even MoW crews now use
> computers.  And CTC has been used for quite
> some time, and it eliminates the need for any
> talk on a tradio.
>
> Technology has changed everything.

Out in Michigan along the CN / GTW, there is a lot of
radio talk between engine crews and guys on the ground,
not to mention talk between the DS and train crews. I'd
expect to see that chatter go on for a long time. It's
got to be really handy to click a mic button and tell the
passing train that the marker was in place and that the
train looked good.

Time will tell, eh?

John.

I've heard some talk that the current major downturn in traffic may cause railroads to delay deployment of NXDN to save money, but I also got a contrarian point of view from some railroad people.  They stated that one of the impediments to NXDN implementation was the number of cab radios in older locomotives that are not NXDN-capable and that those radios would have to be completely replaced at considerable expense.  Well, a lot of these locomotives are now stored, with a lot of them likely never to return to service.  So, the downturn in traffic may actually remove part or all of a considerable obstacle to NXDN deployment. 

As for scanners, the scanner manufacturers are simply following their main market--which is not railfans.  Most scanner buyers are purchasing them to listen in on the public service frequencies.  Motorola song-and-danced--and strong-armed--most public service agencies to purchase their expensive (your tax dollars at work!) P25 digital systems.  The railroads looked at P25 and rejected it because of its high cost and generally inferior performance to NXDN.  Nationwide, public agencies have wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on P25, but are so deeply invested into P25 systems now that they don't dare migrate to a different platform  The railroads, smartly, decided that they wanted no part of that ugly scene and went a different direction.  All of that said, if one wants to listen to the public service frequencies, his or her scanner must necessarily be able to decode P25, so that is what the scanner manufacturers sell.

I am one of four hams who trade off on a weekly radio held every Sunday night at 8 pm on the 147.225 MHz repeater in Denver that is dedicated to scanner users. It's been going for over 20 years. The majority of the hams who check in (and those who listen on a scanner and submit their questions via e-mail) are interested in public safety (about 90%), and the rest of the conversations related to railroad, aviation, other businesses and AM and FM broadcast topics. I'm one of the few that discuss railroad topics - we do have a couple others but we're certainly in the minority.

We've had many discussions about monitoring the public safety systems. Many are P-25 systems with the remainder of other agencies using EDACS, but many of them are converting to a P-25 system for compatibility with adjacent agencies. We do discuss various models of scanners and the Whistler WS-1085 and newer WS-1098 radios have been a topic of conversation. I've considered buying a WS-1098 but I'm wondering how I can transfer the lists I have in my current scanners (GRE PSR-500 & 600) since I have sent many years to the WS-1098.

Given all of the foregoing, monitoring NXDN systems seem to be on a back burner for scanner builders. I don't know if the newer radios can have their firmware modified to accept NXDN modulation but hopefully Uniden or Whistler will eventually off NXDN on one of their offerings... If you're interested in following the conversation about what scanner manufacturers are doing, go to Radio Reference (www.radioreference.com) and under forums and then scroll down to Scanner Manufacturers where the discussion are listed by particular manufactures. The most recent updates can usually be found there... 

James Nelson
Thornton, CO
www.flickr.com/mojaveflyer

Mojaveflyer and WW, great comments.  I know that public service is the primary use for scanners and us rail fans are a small group.  I suspect it will be years until there is an inexpensive radio that speaks NXDN.  At least the railroads are still using analog FM for most road operations.  I did hear some digital on one of the previously analog channels used by the Louisville and Indiana Rail Corp a few months ago.  I live just far enough away that I can't check it from my home.  Scanning through the 95 AAR channels as I drive through town, I don't hear any digital signals.

John

Thanks John. In the last several years I've heard digital traffic on some of BNSF's PBX channels here in Denver but only sporadically and not recently. I get a list of new radio licences every week and see both UP and BNSF have been changing the broadcast formats to include digital formats. I believe both railroads have the infrastructure to go to NXDN but the mobiles (read locomotives) aren't all set up to receive...

James Nelson
Thornton, CO
www.flickr.com/mojaveflyer

Very interesting discussion. I guess we are fortunate (?) in north Calif that the mountains, tunnels and canyons seem to frequently preclude use of digital modes.  I hear the dispatcher talking with MOW folks who can't receive cell phone/Internet signals in some areas, so the track warrants and such are passed by voice radio frequently.  MOW staff use laptops to get their track and time in the Valley and try to use it in the mountains when they can.  Near tunnels and in steep terrain, they resort to VHF FM voice.  Even the CTC at the Control Points several times has to go via hard-wired phone lines because 900 mHz signals cannot make it thru the canyon terrain.

No digital traffic heard at all on VHF channels so far anywhere north of Redding, CA.  Guess that is good for us railfans here until the scanner folks put NXDN on their equipment.

Rick2582 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Very interesting discussion. I guess we are
> fortunate (?) in north Calif that the mountains,
> tunnels and canyons seem to frequently preclude
> use of digital modes.  I hear the dispatcher
> talking with MOW folks who can't receive cell
> phone/Internet signals in some areas, so the track
> warrants and such are passed by voice radio
> frequently.  MOW staff use laptops to get their
> track and time in the Valley and try to use it in
> the mountains when they can.  Near tunnels and in
> steep terrain, they resort to VHF FM voice. 
> Even the CTC at the Control Points several
> times has to go via hard-wired phone lines
> because 900 mHz signals cannot make it thru the
> canyon terrain.
>
> No digital traffic heard at all on VHF channels so
> far anywhere north of Redding, CA.  Guess that
> is good for us railfans here until the scanner
> folks put NXDN on their equipment.

NXDN does not perform markedly worse than analog in mountainous areas.  The main thing that NXDN users complain about is that, when one reaches the limits of its reception distance, the audio will simply go from near perfect reception to nothing with no forewarning.  That is unnerving to radio users accustomed to an analog signal slowly getting weaker over distance--it gives some warning when you get to the fringe of its reception range.  I've used both analog and NXDN system--and in the mountains, at that--the performance that I've observed is exactly as I've described here.  How far can a VHF NXDN signal go?  From a mountaintop repeater with line of sight, I had conversations with mobile units nearly 80 air miles from the repeater--about the same distance that I could achieve with wide-band analog.  The one place where NXDN can be occasionally troublesome is not at long distance, but very close distance.  I've seen two portables 100 yards apart that could have a conversation with each other through a repeater 20 miles away, but could not talk to each other portable-to-portable on a simplex channel.

There is also a big difference between digital (or analog) between 160 mHz VHF and 900 mHz UHF.  One thing that I learned from a very knowledgeable radio tech is that conifer needles are just about the same length as the wave of a 900 mHz radio signal.  As a result, those millions of needles in a coniferous forest can just absorb most of  a 900 mHz signal.  That is whey cell phones tend to perform very poorly in forested areas.  With 160 mHz VHF, the problem is that the signal wave is pretty wide, so, if you are inside a vehicle and try to transmit (or receive) with a radio with the antenna in the interior of the vehicle, not much of the signal can get through the window.  That's why cell phones will work in buildings and vehicles, the signal is "narrow" enough to get through windows, door openings, etc.  The reason that the railroads often use a 450 mHz UHF signal between repeaters is because that signal provides a good combination of being able to "bend," but also is very good at line-of-sight.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/16 13:57 by WW.