But it seems the Met had belt and braces all the time and despite the doom-mongers they can deal better with their neighbours than I had thought.
This is the police and of course if you buy something and then replace it with something new and potentially better there are no points given for taking out the old and throwing it away and if you sell it the money goes to the Home Office. Put it on the shelf, you never know when you might need it!
So, yes they can do digital, but at the flick of a switch the old analogue is there too..... Surrey and Sussex are analogue.
It surprised me.
And of course the next question is how can Surrey trade downlink with Thames Valley? Both systems are made by ECS...... but.....
So next year NPAS has a lot of work to do to enable its fleet of spares to be able to fly here and there filling in..... radios..... downlinks..... maps.... none of them fit too well. This side of 2015 I cannot see a spare NPAS aircraft normally based in the north west being sent down to Sussex as a spare wholly upon its inability to talk to anyone, find its way or send them images!
The three spare aircraft are going to have to be regionalised simply to give them a chance operate meaningfully. No point installing a full street map of Darlington in an aircraft flying over Bournemouth 95% of the time.
So spare aircraft could be as rare as hens teeth!
