Edinburgh Festival 2026

[timberwolf]

It’s that time again when the airwaves are chock-a-block with Festival staff on their walkie talkies. All DMR UHF (lots on the 453 to 454 MHz range.) They’re co-ordinated by a radio hire company that have given the venues talkgroups assigned to channels. For example : TG 1502 (channel 2) is Summerhall ; TG 1504 (channel 4) is the Pleasance ; TG 1507 (channel 7) is the Udderbelly. Their radio protocol is very good. If you’ve got a Baofeng 1701 on Open GD77 or a Radtel RT4D on Promiscuous, you’ll hear their cheery & dour banter ! I was lucky enough to chat with one of Edinburgh’s Retail Park’s Security Co-ordinators. I asked why they didn’t use ARC or AES encryption. Her candid reply was “the radio hire company doesn’t offer this as standard, they make it seem as if it’s a difficult job to do and they charge an absolute fortune to come on site and encrypt each radio.” To think that it takes an easy few seconds to do this using CPS. I don’t think we need to worry about the DMR radio users encrypting their comms any time soon !