In the near future, I am planning on purchasing a portable scanner where I can listen to the communication between the locomotive engineers and the dispatcher. My question is, I heard that in the future many if not all railroads will be switching to a digital signal. How long away will it be before this happens? Currently digital scanners are a lot more expensive and hopefully if it is a few years down the road, maybe they will drop in price.
I have the same questions. For several years, I've been dreaming about a new scanner. But cannot afford those with greater abilities right now, and not knowing for certain where things are headed..... So have been waiting and hoping.
Union Pacific changed to all digital radios 12-18 months ago. IIRC, because of an FCC deadline. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out other railroads have converted as well.
Hmm. If there was a deadline, I'd wonder of any exemptions or extensions. I can still hear everything on my very old pre-digital base station scanner, (BNSF and a short line), as in past years. Is this possible on what is seemingly an 'analog' radio?
Ken, the FCC may have allowed a grace period for total conversion. One to two years have been allowed in the past for other nation-wide systems, the conversion of TV transmission to digital comes to mind.
Hank- Yup. That's what I was wondering, when noting possible extension. Possibly the wrong word, compared to using "grace period" instead.
The signals are still broadcast on the same channels. Analog and digital radios worked side by side, with few issues. The only thing we noticed was worse quality at longer distances. The digital radios "seemed" like they wanted to cut out more when the signal was weaker. I'm sure analog scanners would work just fine.
Digital radio systems must receive a nearly static free signal to process the information before passing it to the speaker. Whereas analog systems will pass everything as received directly to the speaker regardless of clarity or static. Anyone who listened to international shortwave radio stations will remember all the static that made it almost impossible to understand what was being said. Also remember watching analog TVs with all the static (snow). Our brains are able to separate and understand the information from the static after listening or watching for less than a minute. Unfortunately the computers in the digital radios and TVs aren't as good as our brains, but I guess we couldn't afford them if they were....LOL
Could this be a reliability (safety?) issue in some instances? Or will it be overcome by installing more repeaters? Or? This is where Morse code had an advantage. Obviously not practical in application these days.
I believe digital systems are safer than analog systems. Digital systems will not forward received information to the speaker unless it can be processed correctly. Whereas with an analog radio, it is up to the person to interpret the intended meaning which can be difficult when that information is buried in static. The brain will fill in a word that it thinks is the closest fit, regardless how close it is to what was intended....definitely not the best result when operating a railroad. More repeaters would help, but that's an expensive solution. More sensitive receivers would be the best solution as technology advances, as is occurring with the digital TV industry.
