First there were the analog systems, then the trunked analog systems, then the metrowide digital system and now the statewide digital system. This is one hack of an administrative nightmare, it’s a good thing we’ve got tons of committees working on this. In any event the following are some useful links for exploring Minnesota’s digital system(s).
Scanfan is always a good palce to start when you’re talking about metro area Minnesota scanning. Unfortunatly their server got hosed early this year and they lost a lot of good stuff, it’s slowly coming back though. They have a lot of the metro municipality/county analog frequencies listed on their site.
One of the members of Scanfan created this nifty database of talkgroups and frequencies for the metro digital system, they’ve also added some analog frequencies. The whole database is searchable and downloadable and it’s a pretty nice project.
If you’re looking for detailed technical information, policies and diagrams of the metro digital system the place to start is at the Metropolitan Radio Board website. They have nice transmitter location diagrams, system explanation and all the other juicy technical details of this engineering marvel.
The newer statewide board, “Allied Radio Matrix for Emergency Response” (ARMER), is picking up where the metro board left off and taking the system statewide. They too have a webpage with some useful information, though not as thorough as the metro board.
Some additional information on the workings of the digital system and more talkgroup IDs can be found at the MN_Metroscan website. Another local scanner/ham enthusiast with a good webpage of digital talkgroups and analog frequencies in the metro area is ECMscanning. RadioReference.com also has a page with some information on the ARMER system.
As for myself, after some debate over GRE (RadioShack) vs. Uniden and mobile vs. handheld I went ahead and purchased the Pro-2096 and the “purple” PC programming cable and plan to purchase the Win96 programming software which is widely regarded as the best.
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