[FedCom] Twin Cities Monitors

[J&D Schnoor]

I am located here in the suburban Twin Cities Metropolitan area and I can't 
recall many people posting much of anything regarding federal here in 
Minnesota in the past.  But that is not the purpose of my post.

I am wondering how many federal monitors here are anxiously awaiting the 
arrival of the forthcoming GRE PSR-500 and PSR-600.  I was thinking that the 
ability to have PL/DPL decoding AND NAC decoding should be of value to 
federal monitors.  For example, say a given frequency is used both analog 
and P-25.  Simply program it once as analog with the correct PL tone, 
assuming one is used, and program a second time as digital with the correct 
NAC code.  Hopefully if they are on analog, but not in the clear, they will 
not be heard becasue of the PL tone.  If they are P-25 I hope the radio only 
passes audio if it is not encrypted.  Plus there shouldn't be a whole lot of 
inter-modulation, mixing, front end overload with the decoding ability.

I have a Uniden Bearcat BCD996T now.  With the federal frequencies that I 
monitor now that are analog, I program the PL tone, if one is used, but it 
isn't quite so simply for P-25 channels.

Slightly back to the bridge collapse, does anybody what frequencies the U.S. 
Army Corps of Engineers is now using?  I was at Lock and Dam 1 a couple of 
weeks ago and it looked to me as if the employee I spoke with had a Motorola 
VHF P-25 portable with him.