'Digital' radios on CSX?

There has been talk about CSX switching to 'digital' radios by next year. No details so far.
What has anyone else heard?

yes its happening by 2013 FCC ruling

The radios are portable Kenwoods that are being programmed now. No other info yet.
What is this about 2013?

Digital should not affect monitoring by scanner unless they encrypt the transmissions. Also heard that ARR is going narrowband too? Older scanners with only 6 digit entry CAN monitor narrowband. For examle if the new narrow freq. is 160.1275, just enter in 160.127. Our county 911 just switched over to narrowband about 2 years ago, and everyone was freeking out because their scanners only had 3 digits after the decimel. It works, but will be more suseptable to static when recieving.

Untill I find out the model number(s), I don't know if this is just 'narrowband FM' or narrowband digital that a regular scanner won't receive at all.

The rumor about railroads going digital is a bunch of baloney. They *may* see limited use with digital and encryption, such as railroad police applications, but you'll never see it on mainline trains - not for a LONG time anyway. There's too much infrastructure to be replaced, and too many problems to be solved - and who's going to foot the billions upon billions of dollars for all this? The railroads are fine with the current system, so it wouldn't be them.

In regards to the 2013 date, that is when the railroads must be compliant with the new narrow-band frequencies. It'll still be good ol' analog transmissions though, so your current scanner should work just fine when that time rolls around.

The "rumor" came directly from the Radio Shop. I questioned the "digital" part after hearing "narrowband" in the conversation. I fealt he didn't know what "digital" really was, but untill I see the actual radios I won't know for sure.
Frankly, I wouldn't let these guys install a magnet mount antenna on my car.

I concur with Conrail4evr. Transitioning to digital is EXPENSIVE. And outside of some law enforcement applications with encryption, not necessary. I don't see CSX spending that kind of money to replace good old analog infrastructure that works perfectly fine with digital systems.

The model number of the handhelds that will be used first is the Kenwood NX-200. They are around $650 a pop;

featuring 6.25 kHz digital narrowband operation.

DIGITAL-GENERAL
NXDN Digital Air Interface
AMBE+2 VOCODER
6.25 & 12.5 kHz Channels
Over-the- Air Alias
Paging Call
Emergency Call
NXDN
Scrambler
Status Messaging*
Remote Stun/Kill*
Short & Long Data Messages
GPS Location with Voice*

DIGITAL-CONVENTIONAL MODE
63 Radio Access Numbers (RAN)
Individual & Group Selective Call
All Group Call
Mixed FM/Digital Operation

DIGITAL-TRUNKING MODE
Individual Private Call
Group Call
All Group Call
Priority Monitor ID 1 & 2
Late Entry
Broadcast Call
Remote Group Add*
Multi-Site IP Network Compatible*

You can get the brochure here (select model from drop down list);
http://www.kenwoodusa.com/Support/Land_ ... Brochures/#_

(I hope the radios work better than Kenwoods website. It's not W3C compatable, so it doesn't fully work using Opera.)

Conrail4evr wrote:The rumor about railroads going digital is a bunch of baloney. They *may* see limited use with digital and encryption, such as railroad police applications, but you'll never see it on mainline trains - not for a LONG time anyway. There's too much infrastructure to be replaced, and too many problems to be solved - and who's going to foot the billions upon billions of dollars for all this? The railroads are fine with the current system, so it wouldn't be them.

In regards to the 2013 date, that is when the railroads must be compliant with the new narrow-band frequencies. It'll still be good ol' analog transmissions though, so your current scanner should work just fine when that time rolls around.

A standard scanner will pick up the new frequencies in the narrowband setup by tuning in the frequency above or below it, however you will not have the same range in picking up the narrowband frequencies as you would the standard ones.

I have seen the handheld. Very small with small number pad buttons. They are set up by "zones", where each zone has a number of channels for each area. If you read the specs closely, GPS is mentioned. So the question comes up, can these be tracked?

No one else has anything on this 2013 date?

videobruce wrote:No one else has anything on this 2013 date?

Here is a link to what I believe if the latest FCC order which mandates that "industrial" users (which includes railroads) reduce
bandwidth to 12.5kHz or less by 2013 and public safety users by 2018.

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/a ... 7-39A1.pdf

These dates are the latest in a long history of the FCC moving the dates out as each deadline has approached so 2013 could also be extended.

This whole "refarming" of frequencies to attempt to create more channels by narrowing allowable bandwidths is a case of
lawyers and politicians doing a lot of hocus pocus that violates the laws of physics to give the illusion of solving a problem.

A major issue for the railroads is that the "new" frequencies created are 7.5kHz apart but the 2013 "narrow" bandwidth is
12.5 kHz. It is like saying you added new lanes to an existing road with 15' lanes by painting 7.5' wide lanes while allowing 12.5' wide vehicles.

The FCC's goal is to require users to ultimately reduce their bandwidth to 6.25 kHz which is not compatible
with existing analog technology but there are digital technologies under development. The radios CSX is buying are
capable of present "wide" analog, the currently 2013 mandated "narrow" analog or digital and the future 6.25 digital.

AAR has been making representations to the FCC about the problems of railroads migrating to the new standards while
keeping a nationwide system of compatible radios for run through operations viable. The major railroads and AAR submitted
a plan to the FCC for all railroad radio licenses to be assigned to AAR that would administer and coordinate the conversions
without each railroad needing to coordiante their changes and file independently with the FCC. This very sensible
proposal was shot down by politcal pressure from public safety and commercial radio systems that covet access to the AAR
standard frequencies. The FCC early in this "refarming" process eliminated exclusive railroad use of the AAR channels but
required other users to "coordinate" with AAR who can object to but not veto these requests.

The AAR request was similar to the airline industry where "company" frequencies are exclusively availble to airlines and the licenses are held by "ARINC" that provides frequencies from the pool to individual airlines as needed. The FCC rejected a similar situation for the railroads.

So, transition by 2013 for the railroads is going to be a complicated mess and it is likely deadlines or other factors will
change before then.

CSX is covering all options by purchasing radios now that can comply with any currently proposed technology.

How they will implement these options remains to be seen.

videobruce wrote:I have seen the handheld. Very small with small number pad buttons. They are set up by "zones", where each zone has a number of channels for each area. If you read the specs closely, GPS is mentioned. So the question comes up, can these be tracked?

No one else has anything on this 2013 date?

Where I used to work, we had Kenwood TK380's (5 year old radios now), and they were tracked. They were tracked to within 2 feet IIRC. Our ambulances were tracked too, but I think the tracking was actually done by satelite triangulation, and then the data was transmitted by radio to our dispatchers. Sounded like an EOT sqwalk. The portables are probably the same way, they're just all contained in one unit. Lol, the truck locators even told our dispatchers what direction the truck was facing, so when we would be posting 1/2 way for our other station, we would turn the truck a 1/4 turn every 15 mins. or so just to screw with them. We'd disconnect the satelite reciever from the radio before we'd leave a hospital, etc. too and make pit stops elsewhere when they were running us thin and we were hungry. It still showed us at the hospital until we screwed the wire back onto the radio, and then we'd just appear 3 or 4 miles away from where they just saw us. Should'a bought the M...NOT!!! I love Kenwood. Every bit the same quality, and 1/2 the price.

Not that it should make much difference on the in cab radio because the RR dispatchers (Class 1's at least) can see where a train is via the CPs, but they may be able to tell your speed too. Our dispatchers could. It would send a blip onto their screen if we went above (I think) 75 MPH, but they could see our speed and location at anytime just by pinging each truck. A supervisor was the 1st to get busted. DUMBA$$!!! Ours were set to update every 4 minutes by default though.

I wasn't referring to trianglation, but to having a GPS unit inside the radio.

I understand about the reduced bandwidth. Sounds good on paper, but even at 15k separation (channel spacing), there is bleed through from a adjacent frequency.

I heard a demo of the Kenwood radio technology in 6.25 Digital mode and it does sound decent under good conditions.

Fire departments have encountered serious problems with digital radios in fireground operations. The problem is that digital voice encoder circuits can't deal with loud background noise. A firefighter wearing an air-pac and in the noise of a fire scene sounds awful but can be understood with an analog radio. A digital radio produces only unintelligible noise under the same conditions.

Kenwood and Icom both offer radios capable of true 6.25 digital but I am not sure if they use a compatible format.

Motorola's present solution is a system that complies with the FCC alternative of 2 simultaneous conversations in a 12.5 kHz bandwidth. This involves trunked technology where a central controller and repeater system assigns a talk time slot and channel when you press the PTT button. I would not want do any switching or train movements where you have to push the button and hope you get the beep to talk in time to yell STOP before something awful happens.

I can't see a rush to digital by railroads unless there is an AAR standard and it is proven technology. This may be driven in the future if 6.25 technology is mandated.

I don't know if these radios actually include GPS but there would also have to be base station, network infrastructure and dispatcher software to support monitoring of the data. GPS will be part of ATCS technology but I am not aware of any general plan to integrate GPS with railroad voice communications.