167.7875

[Dispatcher308]

Caught 167.7875 today a unit was trying to call encrypted and the female dispatcher finally said " unit calling on Alpha 1, I am in the clear and I cannot copy you encrypted, if you need to contact me call me land line."

I have an old listing that says this use to be the Baltimore Field office for the FBI.

Can anyone confirm or deny this.

Nathan

I copied this in the city this morning.

[dogman780]

Is that frequency on ham/police/air/marine?

[Dispatcher308]

Ah that would be in the US Government band. Which from what I have seen in other threads your scanner will pick up.

[dogman780]

Originally Posted by Dispatcher308

Ah that would be in the US Government band. Which from what I have seen in other threads your scanner will pick up.

Which band is the U.S Government band? The only options on my Pro-428 are ham/marine/air/police.

[mancow]

Mainly... 403-420 and 162-174 for Govt. Land Mobile use (ie: FBI, SS, ICE, BATF etc...)

[ecps92]

Then yup, you got an FBI Channel. Channel ID of "Alpha-01".

Originally Posted by Dispatcher308

Caught 167.7875 today a unit was trying to call encrypted and the female dispatcher finally said " unit calling on Alpha 1, I am in the clear and I cannot copy you encrypted, if you need to contact me call me land line."

I have an old listing that says this use to be the Baltimore Field office for the FBI.

Can anyone confirm or deny this.

Nathan

I copied this in the city this morning.

[ecps92]

and 138-144 & 148-151 Mhz

Originally Posted by mancow

Mainly... 403-420 and 162-174 for Govt. Land Mobile use (ie: FBI, SS, ICE, BATF etc...)

[nightwatch]

its fbi balt/fo its on the puddy hill tower.167.7873 is the balt/fo downtown

[dogman780]

Originally Posted by mancow

Mainly... 403-420 and 162-174 for Govt. Land Mobile use (ie: FBI, SS, ICE, BATF etc...)

Will this be on the marine/air/police/ham band though? I press in the frequency 167.7875 and it says error (big surprise there, all the interesting stuff says error) so if I want to search for this FBI frequency, will it be on the police/marine/air/ham. I don't have a "government band" or "land band" on mine.

[mancow]

It's none. You are thinking of the predefined search banks in your scanner. They don't include the Fed ranges.

You need to program it in an actual channel slot.

[ocguard]

Originally Posted by dogman780

Will this be on the marine/air/police/ham band though? I press in the frequency 167.7875 and it says error (big surprise there, all the interesting stuff says error) so if I want to search for this FBI frequency, will it be on the police/marine/air/ham. I don't have a "government band" or "land band" on mine.

dogman, get away from this terminology. Just because it's printed on your scanner's box doesn't mean it is worthwhile. If you have a frequency that you want to listen to, you program it into your scanner, and it takes, it's good. If not, you're out of luck.

I can tell you're new to scanning. Read up in the Wiki and Database sections of this website (links at the top of the page) and you'll pick up the basics. Also, read your owners manual for your scanner and play around with it. If you're getting all these error messages while trying to program it, chances are you're doing something wrong. Most radioshack models must be placed into [program] mode before direct-entering freqs. MOST frequencies in this database can be monitored by MOST scanners.

[dogman780]

Okay, I went to program 167.7875, and instead it just programmed 167.7900. Why do they put the police/marine/ham/air words on there anyway?, To confuse people? Hey, I'm not going to get banned here for being a PITA am I? I am figuring this thing out one by one. It will take some more time and probably more dumb questions.

Just do me a favor, if I ask something, try to word it as if you were explaining to somebody who knows NOTHING about scanners. For example, I don't know the difference between:

UHF
VHF
MHz (is this the same as a frequency?)
dB
S/N
uV
kHz

If somebody in another states picks up something on a certain frequency, does that mean I can pick up the same exact thing on the same frequency, or does the frequency change with distance.

Okay, not trying to get everyone p'd off here, so I'm just going to browse in the WIKI some more.

BTW, I did find FOX News. It's frequency 450.5625

[mancow]

Don't worry, you are far less annoying than those on here with many more hundred or even thousands of posts, myself likely included.

Your radio is not made to handle 12.5 khz channel spacing in that range but it's ok, it won't make much difference anyway. You will still hear it.

To try to answer some of your questions...

UHF Ultra High Frequency
VHF Very High Frequency (longer wavelength than Uhf and less cycles per second)
MHz (is this the same as a frequency?) Well a X number of Mhz would be a frequency yes but it's telling you that the number that precedes it is how many times in millions of cycles a second the waves cycle. The base unit is Hz (Hertz). One Hz in one cycle per second.
kHz think Mhz but insted of millions the k means thousands. Your AM car radio is tuned to
580 khz then it's receiving a signal operating at 580 thousand cycles a second


Don't even worry about the rest yet.

[ocguard]

Originally Posted by dogman780

Okay, I went to program 167.7875, and instead it just programmed 167.7900. Why do they put the police/marine/ham/air words on there anyway?, To confuse people? Hey, I'm not going to get banned here for being a PITA am I? I am figuring this thing out one by one. It will take some more time and probably more dumb questions.

Just do me a favor, if I ask something, try to word it as if you were explaining to somebody who knows NOTHING about scanners. For example, I don't know the difference between:

UHF
VHF
MHz (is this the same as a frequency?)
dB
S/N
uV
kHz

If somebody in another states picks up something on a certain frequency, does that mean I can pick up the same exact thing on the same frequency, or does the frequency change with distance.

Okay, not trying to get everyone p'd off here, so I'm just going to browse in the WIKI some more.

BTW, I did find FOX News. It's frequency 450.5625

Your scanner should receive fine on 167.7900 for 167.7875. It's only 25 thousandths of a megahertz off. Your scanner just rounded the number off. No biggie. Should work fine.

They put police/air/ham/marine on the box because these are four most common types of radio traffic people like to scan. It's a marketing thing. In reality, these different designations mean very little anymore. Frequencies previously used by only police are most now part of the "public safety pool" meaning they can be used by any public safety entity. This is especially true in the world of trunking (which is a fancy name for sharing frequencies, but that's a whole other ballgame. I'll need a rainy day for that explanation.)

As for your terminology questions...
VHF and UHF are simply divisions of the radio frequency spectrum. As a general rule:
VHF (very high frequency) is from 30mhz to 300mhz. You may hear the terms VHF-Lo (aka low band) and VHF-Hi (high band) used. VHF includes the common 154MHZ freqs as well as the marine band.
UHF (Ultra-high frequency) is from 300MHZ to 3000MHZ which includes the popular family radio service freqs and other 460MHZ freqs, as well as 800MHZ freqs used by public safety for trunking.

MHZ (megahertz) is the measure of frequency (similar to how a gram is the measure of weight). The base measurement is hertz. One thousand hertz is know as kilohertz. One thousand kilohertz is known as megahertz.
db (decibel) is the measure of the power of an audible sound wave (how loud something is)
uV is a measure of modulation (how much a radio wave is affected by a sound wave)
S/N not sure, screen name maybe??

As far as the other state thing... frequencies are reused all over the country. There wouldn't be enough frequencies to go around otherwise. For the most part, FM frequencies have pretty finite limits. If you are listening to a frequency used by two users, your scanner will copy whichever signal is received best. The best example I can tell you is Marine Ch 16 which is used for maritime distress and calling. A boat and a coast guard station could be talking to one another on this channel in Florida at the same time that a two boats in Maine are talking on the same channel and not interfere with one another because their signals don't typically travel this far. Your scanner can only receive within it's capable range. Base stations and repeaters tend to have a 15-50 mile range. Your range will increase dramatically with a better antenna. If you listen from a car, get a magnet mount antenna for the roof. In a house, start with Radioshack's telescoping antenna. Down the road, think about an external antenna for your home. See what works for you.

What are you most interested in monitoring?

[mancow]

Not totally correct...

The decibel (dB) is a logarithmic unit of measurement that expresses the magnitude of a physical quantity (usually power) relative to a specified or implied reference level.


uV
microvolt - a unit of potential equal to one millionth of a volt

Signal-to-noise ratio (often abbreviated SNR or S/N) is an electrical engineering concept defined as the ratio of a signal power to the noise power corrupting the signal.
In less technical terms, signal-to-noise ratio compares the level of a desired signal (such as music) to the level of background noise. The higher the ratio, the less obtrusive the background noise is.









disclaimer: definitions stolen from various websites like Wikipedia

[dogman780]

Thanks for the help everybody. As for what would I like to monitor? Well, I like to hear in on everything. I would really like to hear the space stations and shuttles, but this will be difficult. I like to hear about whats happening on the ground, on the water, and in the air.

I think it would also be neat to hear sattelites from our country and others. I just want to monitor a little bit of everything I guess.