Then in the mid eighties we moved onto the ART177 for all our vehicles and come the WARC change over installed dual fit ART177and RC675 sets using the ART177 control box with an interface and then a further interface to allow scan and voting on the Scottish Police systems.
This required a number of visits to CCE who as I remember at this time was at Government Buildings Stanmore. The only name I can remember from this time is Bert Sipson there were others that I dealt with but unfortunately my memory fails me. The welcome was always good and with the added bonus of a nice cup of tea and a biscuit and a good technical chat while we waited as the sets were worked on.
Near the end of the eighties or early nineties I had some dealings with the Depot at Hannington, which is only about 5 miles from Aldermaston where I was based. It always struck me as strange that we went all the way to CCE for stuff when Hannington was so near but apparently it was to do with the way the inter departmental funding worked.
One of the memories from this time was a conversation with an engineer at Hannington about Quasi synch AM systems and how when some American engineers visited Hannington and listened to the Thames Valley Police system they could not believe it was AM this was because the system had been set up properly and was well engineered, certainly a testament to the Directorate engineers concerned.
However, times moved on and most of the maintenance of the equipment was put out to competitive tendering resulting in a variety of companies including NTL taking over the servicing of the sets.
With the introduction of TETRA (which will always be Trans European Trunked Radio Association and not Terrestrial Trunked Radio (isn't every existing trunked system?) all the old systems are being disposed of and it is the end of an era as they say.
Webmaster Note Many thanks to Dave McKay for submitting this article relating to memories of the Directorate from a user perspective.
Dave is a Sergeant with Thames Valley Police based at Reading Custody and a licensed amateur radio holder, callsign G1JWG.
Acknowledgement: Dave McKay
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