Washington DC: All Police Radio Communication GONE

reply to post by schrodingers dog


That does sound more plausible...new software go-lives are notorious for issues. Something always goes wrong...I'm surprised they only had only a 3 hour downtime.

Good info

P.S. See...I'm not all that bad

There could have been at least two reasons as to why it actually went off.

The first reason could be that the transmitter at dispatch office could have short circuited and turned off. This would, in turn, cause the complete loss of radio communications both to and from the base. For communications to have been restored would have meant either replacing the transmitter. Or it could have meant switching over to a secondary system that would have been able to cope with it.

The second reason could be that the UHF repeater itself went out. If it was a simplex type of repeater, whatever was being transmitted and received on the same channel. If it was a duplex repeater, you would transmit on one channel and receive on another channel. More than likely, this is a duplex system that experienced the problem. However, I don't believe that this would cause a total loss of communications.

The transmitter going out is the most likely canidate for this failure.

reply to post by gimmefootball400


A third reason:

Communications systems often rely on GPS, at least partially - and are subject to jamming and spoofing.
Sat-nav Systems (GPS) Under Increasing Threat from 'Jammers'

...small jamming devices are increasingly available on the internet.

Low-power, hand-held versions that cost less than £100 can run for hours on a battery and confuse sat-nav receivers tens of kilometres away. Higher-power versions can do far worse, and at both GPS and mobile phone frequencies.

What is more, receivers can be "spoofed" - not simply blinded by a strong, noisy signal, but fooled into thinking their location or the time is different because of fraudulent broadcast GPS signals.