FCC Mandates Rebanding to Narrow band by Jan-1-2013

The FCC has put down a new mandate on all public safety personal. They are to be switched over to FM Narrow band by 2013. What this means for you, you ask? Well, it means that if you have an amateur receiver with "Wide Band receive for police, emt, fire, of public works communications they will not work in 2013." You will hear nothing but static. All yaesu and icom receivers to date will not multi-band after the narrow banding in 2013. Also, the only rig's I have found so far that cover the new narrow band would be a police scanner such as the 996xt the 396xt most all new scanners should cover this band, as well as the newer gre scanners. If you have an older unit such as a pro-197 you may want to check to see if it covers narrow band. If not your in need of a new scanner. This comes at a horrible time when ham's could carry all their radio needs in one hand. Not any more. Now you have to carry two radios at once. A police scanner for narrow receive, and a ham for wide receive. Ham's seem to state they will not be trading off for the new wide band transceivers. They claim narrow band still has problems for audio quality to be worked out they are not fond of. Thus, if you monitor ham bands. Expect them to stay the same. The FCC has not put any mandates on the ham operators as of yet. Though if you have per say a yaesu 8900ft which is a very nice quad band rig running even 500 dollars as of Jan 1 2013 you can forget receiving police frequency's on your rig, as this radio only has wide band receive. Very disturbing if you ask me?

Everyone is going to have to go out and buy yet again more rigs. Seems to be getting very expensive here to keep up with the times people. Though if you want an inexpensive option kenwood does sell a 2meter radio that will do 2meter wide transceiver and narrow receive, and for only 100 dollars!


RemoteInstall-

[b]I have narrow banded vhf and uhf handhelds.