ENIGMA 2000 Newsletter - Issue 30

September 2005
Articles, newsreports and Items of interest :enigma2000-owner@yahoogroups.com

SOME FEEDBACK BEFORE WE MOVE ONTO OUR ENIGMA 2000 ARTICLE

Before we move onto the latest ENIGMA 2000 Article we take pleasure in including some interesting feedback from an anon member.

Regarding the latest NL29 which I have just quickly scanned through.

I have just been reading the section on your adventures with the Iraqi embassy. [Two part article in Issues 28 and 29] You do know that Wavetek don't just make test gear but also make monitoring kit for the big boys ? A number of people have told me that they make some interesting gear. A trade magazine article a while back reviewed their GSM test unit and mentioned it also had uses in the GSM network monitoring (for call quality tests only of course).

The before & after photos in Issue 29 on page 52 interested me. Although its had to be certain the one on the left which has now gone looks like a low band folded dipole (odds on a Pye one made for the MoD which is a lovely piece of gear) probably for MOULD which is no more. The one on the right that has gone looks like a VHF one often used at taxi offices here (perhaps it is Rimmington minicabs who used to have an entry in the UK Scanning Directory). Perhaps this was for the 147/155/168 MHz VHF Racal Cougar transmissions which will now have been replaced by Airwave.

When they used to be out and about up here they appeared to use a set of repeaters and simplex channels that were shared by a number of users. I know the repeaters weren't looked after by the normal Police communications technicians but who ever it was knew their job.

Repeater inputs and outputs were swapped around on a regular basis which must have been a lot of work. But I meant I never knew for certain what frequency was being used at any particular moment.

In these parts [somewhere ‘up North’] the 147/155/168 MHz Cougar transmissions which used to come and go in bursts but when they went an anti-terror raid was usually announced in the local press. However I haven't heard any Cougar from the moment Airwave was announced ready for service in this county. I think possibly the secret types moved over to that network even before the Police started using it properly. I believe that Airwave is ready for service in London [!] with some BTP and council users already but the Met can't use it until they have made some changes in their control rooms.

[Tnx Anon].