Comments by "Bond25" (@Bond2025) on "The Secret Police Radio You Were Never Meant To Hear" video.

I used to watch the helicopter downlink and the council CCTV cameras! No one knew at the time and companies mis-sold a lot of equipment.
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The video that is 40 years too late!!! Scanners are a waste of money and time now as there is nothing of real interest to listen to. Since 2000 there has been nothing much about unless you like listening to airband or marine.
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Another interesting point is that BEFORE 02-Airwave as it was know, there were tests as far back as 1991 with a UK wide analogue system. I remember listening to tests were officers in the North West were "patched through" to officers in the Midlands. From 451MHz to whatever the other frequency was and I was able to hear both sides as it was a talkthrough conversation. This was experimented with for a while and trunking was meant to have been introduced across the UK, but funding stopped it. It was put on hold and encryption was used on radios that needed it and officers were using more and more mobile phones to take jobs and do checks so the public didn't hear. The pans to expand the national linked analogue system just fell apart, then we got TETRA. I think this was after the system called Dolphin Tetra set up throughout the UK and people got really interested in what it could do. I had a Dolphin TETRA handheld radio that worked on what is now DABradio frequencies, known as Band 3 back in 1994. That system allowed me to call a colleague anywhere in the country. It was brilliant, well ahead of Community Repeaters that were all still analogue. Mobile phones did kill off the PMR business!
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Some police used scramblers in the radios, they knew in 1988 that people were listening in. It was a crude speech inversion and they were available for most of the PMR radios in use.
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