Really? The only ex-emergency service radio I've seen with AM and FM was
the 'Whitehall' which, if memory serves, was a Low Band unit and useful
for 4m. I repaired on once, quite a beast, with a mass of cables to
connect the boot unit to the control box.

Later radios tended to be pretty standard PMR sets from the likes of
Storno.

Many forces used the Marconi R675 and the Burndept 544 series which were
am/fm, Cleartome also did some but I can't remember the numbers.

The 'Met' police did have a mix of AM and FM radios at one time but they
were different units. I think the AM sets were around 150MHz. FM was
just above 2m and UHF (450 or 460 ish). I think the cars, especially
those on traffic, used AM. Certainly the personal radios were UHF FM. I
knew someone who worked in the Met comms side.

The am/fm set up was VHF only, all UHF was fm. Some forces elected to go
with fm for there vhf scheme, but there was always one am channel
available so that 'visiting' force vehicles colud comminicate if they
were on am only.

I recall a major fire locally in 1990 or so when the police and fire
couldn't talk to each other at all via radio. In the end, they had a
couple of RAYNET people relaying messages between them, one was with the
senior fire officer the other with the senior police officer. The police
didn't even have enough radios for all of their officers and relied on
RAYNET.

Indeed there never was any compatibility between Police, Fire and
Ambulance main schemes. Fire was exclusively am on vhf and Ambulances,
as I recall, were fm. Every ambulance authority did have the ERC
(Emergency Reserve) Channel for compatibility with neighbouring areas.

Jeff

On 08/02/15 10:16, Jeff wrote:

Really? The only ex-emergency service radio I've seen with AM and FM was
the 'Whitehall' which, if memory serves, was a Low Band unit and useful
for 4m. I repaired on once, quite a beast, with a mass of cables to
connect the boot unit to the control box.

Later radios tended to be pretty standard PMR sets from the likes of
Storno.

Many forces used the Marconi R675 and the Burndept 544 series which were
am/fm, Cleartome also did some but I can't remember the numbers.


Clearly it was somewhat of a 'moving feast' from force to force. I
recall a Met officer bemoaning the passing of the Storno personal radio
with a cast chassis and 'slab' battery (the Storno 500 I think). It
seems it was a useful emergency truncheon, whereas the replacements were
too fragile. (Cue some nonsense from a foot rest.)



Indeed there never was any compatibility between Police, Fire and
Ambulance main schemes. Fire was exclusively am on vhf and Ambulances,
as I recall, were fm. Every ambulance authority did have the ERC
(Emergency Reserve) Channel for compatibility with neighbouring areas.

I seriously wonder if there is now. One of the many things Airwave
promised was an integrated system, allowing all the Emergency services
to communicate if required. While I've not had the opportunity to check
this, based on other areas where 'features' seem to be vapour ware, I
wouldn't like to bet my pension on it working. No doubt there is some
committee somewhere managing it all, which some jobs worth(s) who hide
issues to score points later.


Several times, I've chatted to police officers with 'interesting'
antennas on their cars. They have generally been more than willing to
give a demo of the equipment onboard and say what it can and can't do.
in one case, I had been the passenger in a vehicle involved in an
accident and, while we were waiting for the tow trucks, the officer was
showing me the system for tracking stolen cars. By chance, it fired up
with a stolen car while he was showing me it. The stolen car got caught
up in the traffic jam the accident had caused (it was on a country road)
and another police vehicle caught it in a matter of minutes. All rather
impressive. It is one of the few bits of kit I've heard good comments
on. Conversely, the Airwave sets seem to be considered a disaster. Many
of the promised functions don't work/haven't been implemented and
officers frequently revert to conventional mobilephones. One function I
recall being shocked wasn't working, the ability to contact an officer
anywhere in the country (or even county). Amateurs can do that with
D(eath)Star. All in all, it seems to be little more than a local radio
system and not a very good one.