Comms Quality

[brianWE]

Quite a few "foreign" HWP cars on the N Coast at the moment.
"Traffic" and "North" call-signs.
A couple of them seem to have really bad audio....very "tinny" sound with lots of interference. Understandable, though, mostly.

I suspect they are operating cross-band. that is, UHF radios linking into the VHF system. Gets really bad when they are off the Pacific Highway where (I think) the link repeaters are more numerous.

Am I missing something?

BTW, a week or so ago, a visiting HWP car was having problems with comms....came back and was much clearer. Said he had switched to VHF.
Do some HWP cars have both VHF and UHF while others rely on cross-banding???

[brianWE]

Getting worse....last "Traffic' transmission was very bad... sounded like altenator noise drowning everything. Message was unintelligible.
Operator instructed all cars to turn off in-car repeaters.

WTF are they?

Extenders for portables???

[Farsouthscanner]

As far as I know the in car repeaters are like small repeaters in the car (well der) so when officers are inside a house for example they can talk to the car out the front and then the car relays the messge to the main channel repeater as vehicle radios often have better recpeption than portables. I could be wrong though and I didn't think anyone used them in NSW or Aus for that matter.
Mark

[E=MC2]

Gday all, from what I have seen here in Sydney all Hwy Cars have both VHF / UHF as these car's are deployed throughout the state over Christmas, Snow season, long weekends and the like. You may see North Shore 250 up doing work on the Pacific Hwy at Kempsey on the Easter long weekend and Northern Beach 200 down at the snow doing radar work over winter. The repeater system you are talking about is called a cross band repeater system, say NS 202 is in cross band repeater mode the car radio is in tx mode all the time ie while txing the VKG operator and then txing NS 202 portable. I have seen a lot of the full time rural Hwy cars have 27Mhz and UHF CB radio also as do some of the city Hwy cars. 73z E=MC2

[brianWE]

Thanks, both!!

I have heard references to the in-car repeaters a couple of times, now, so, I guess, NSW does have them.
Gotta admit, though, portable comms are still crappy a lot of the time and crews, often, have to go back to cars to use car radios to be heard properly.


Yes, many rural cars have CB radios.
Have used CB to talk to police to report road hazards once or twice.
Once heard two truckies on Ch29...using every four-letter word available.
Familiar voice came on and asked them to cool it. Was a local HWP officer. He was abused roundly.
Minutes later, same HWP voice came on doing checks on two trucks and their drivers.