Thanks Marten for the explanation.  In WNY some have been using trunk 
tracking, but terrain will not support a trunk tracking system.  It works 
well if you have a flat county.  Local fire departments are reluctant to 
switch due to the cost of replacement radios.  Gary KB2YAA
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Martin McCormick" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 3:31 PM
Subject: Re: Uniden bcd996 Serial Control


Gary Tillinghast writes:
> Please explain rebanding? Gary

Years ago, UHF television went from 470 to 890 MHZ so
the UHF channels went from 14 to 82 or 83 in one huge contiguous
band with each channel being 6 MHZ wide like all TV channels in
this part of the world.

Around the mid seventies, there were not too many T.V.
stations in the upper UHF channels so what few there were were
moved to lower channels and the top 13 channels were re-farmed
to public safety and commercial use such that this band started
at 800 MHZ. This meant that the compressed UHF T.V. band now
ended at Channel 69, I think.

After the transition to digital television last year,
the channels from 53 to 69 were supposed to be made free for
more public safety frequencies, etc. Now the band starts around
750 or so MHZ. I am not exactly sure where it starts, but the
idea is to one day create a sort of unified public safety and
first-responders band so that it will be easier to make radios
on a huge scale that are pretty much the same all over the
United states.

The Nexttel systems are moving a little higher in
frequency and the Motorola SmartZone systems are moving down a
little because they tended to clobber each other.

the rebanding issue will mean that the lookup tables that work
for Motorola systems today will be made obsolete when all these
changes are final.

Presently, for example, you can put your trunking
scanner in to the search mode on a Motorola SmartZone system and
trunk-track the conversations on the system without having to
enter anything other than the Control Channel. When the tables
go out of date, the radio will miss transmissions because it is
looking on the wrong frequency.

That's what the rebanding is all about.

Here in Oklahoma, it has not happened yet but it is
supposed to eventually. The whole project is way behind but it
will eventually happen.

If you own a trunk tracking scanner that can not be
updated, it will be still perfectly good for traditional
dedicated frequency and PL tone operation. It just won't work in
trunking mode any longer for the Motorola systems.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group