Story from scanning days back in 68 or so Delco

safetypro79 · Apr 20, 2015

When I was a kid back in about 66 and started scanning with my first how are crafters civic patrol high band receiver it was a tube receiver and also was a volunteer firefighter in Ridley Township with the Holmes fire company.

I remember the Ridley Township Police Department installed as they called them "scramblers" in their Mororola Mcom series radios a small box above the control head with basically a switch and a indication light. I remember Springfield Township PD had a similar system which at that time in 1968 or so was basically a simple BFO but the police thought it was really cool because they could say over the radio go to "scramble". and course their voices would sound like Donald Duck later when I build a BFO and showed a friend of mine Fran Doyle who was a police officer in Ridley Township how I could decode their scrambled comms they were pretty excited that their scrambler system did not work in my case of reception but back then most of the time it was used to order lunch for the dispatchers or something silly and not for real sensitive communications. I don't recall if they ever used it again? I suspect not too may BFO builders back in 68 or so. So there burger order was safe with me LOL

I Remember when the DELCO Fire Board was in the second floor of the courthouse back in 69 I believe Linky Hartz a ham from Morton was one of the first dispatchers. They only dispatched about 6 pr so companies back then like rural Concordville, Lenni Heights, etc those where the days when Chester FD use to sound the air horns for box numbers for some of the old city VFD's and on a clear night you could hear them.

soberbyker · Apr 21, 2015

I don't go back as far as tubes, my first scanner held 7 crystals. High Tech stuff of the day. As for the "scramble", Upper Darby PD would say "Go to red" and you'd hear the Donald Duck voice. I knew a guy who had some sort of gizmo hooked up to a 9 volt battery that would descramble Donald enough to understand what they were saying. Like you said, most of the time nothing important, like pick up a couple sandwiches for the prisoners.

Simple good times in scanning, long gone I'm afraid.

6655321 · Apr 21, 2015

Speech Inverter

That brings back memories. I had one that was made by Don Nobile Enterprises. It used a 1496 IC as a balanced modulator. I agree, scrambled messages usually nothing of importance..

radioman2001 · Apr 21, 2015

Not quite the 60's but in 1971 there were 2 agencies in my area that ran voice inversion. Mamaroneck and Bedford PD's. While in the service I noticed how SSB was similar (design and implementation) to the voice inversion scramblers and built a decoder using diodes, transistors and transformers.
Got to see one in a Mamaroneck patrol car and saw that there was a 1in cube block of epoxy attached to a Cinch Jones plug. Each block was a different color which determined the injection frequency.

Adam-14 · Apr 25, 2015

On the subject of scrambling from years ago, I thought I'd throw in a story too.

Around 1974, Dauphin County added fire channels to low band and moved from a single channel police frequency (45.42) to a 5 channel UHF system. The majority of the police vehicles had GE pro, 4 channel scanning radios installed, along with a Bramco touch-tone decoder box and a Mieco Inc scrambler box. The scrambler box had 2 knobs, A thru E and 1 thru 5, so different variations of the voice inversion could be chosen. About 99.9% of the time, 3C was used. The single police console had 2 identical scrambler boxes - one for the receive side and one for the transmit side. The scramblers were hardly ever used, and in situations that I remember, it was mainly to tell an officer that one of our regular callers (that owned a scanner) called in about something. As the years went by, departments replaced their heavily used GE pro's and the scramblers were never reinstalled.

I remember that turning on the scrambling and saying the word "yen" would result the word "one" on the unscrambled side.

The Bramco tt decoder was used to either beep the police car horn or activate a red light on the decoder box, to alert the officer that the dispatcher was calling him or her, if they were not answering their radio. The police dispatch console had a tt pad and the 4 digit police car number was used to activate the box. The tt's went right over the air on the normal UHF police channel.

captaincab · Apr 25, 2015

Upper Darby kept their scramble up till the late 90's when they switched to county dispatch i graduated from Upper Darby High in 1998 and there was a few go to red boxes floating around various friends hands. Ridley also kept scrambling for a good bit i believe until the county switch over.

captaincab · Apr 25, 2015

I belonged to holmes fire for a short time in the late 1990's and remember the spare radio room board that was in the alarm office and listen to ridley when they switched over on the firehouse radio.

safetypro79 said:
When I was a kid back in about 66 and started scanning with my first how are crafters civic patrol high band receiver it was a tube receiver and also was a volunteer firefighter in Ridley Township with the Holmes fire company.

I remember the Ridley Township Police Department installed as they called them "scramblers" in their Mororola Mcom series radios a small box above the control head with basically a switch and a indication light. I remember Springfield Township PD had a similar system which at that time in 1968 or so was basically a simple BFO but the police thought it was really cool because they could say over the radio go to "scramble". and course their voices would sound like Donald Duck later when I build a BFO and showed a friend of mine Fran Doyle who was a police officer in Ridley Township how I could decode their scrambled comms they were pretty excited that their scrambler system did not work in my case of reception but back then most of the time it was used to order lunch for the dispatchers or something silly and not for real sensitive communications. I don't recall if they ever used it again? I suspect not too may BFO builders back in 68 or so. So there burger order was safe with me LOL

I Remember when the DELCO Fire Board was in the second floor of the courthouse back in 69 I believe Linky Hartz a ham from Morton was one of the first dispatchers. They only dispatched about 6 pr so companies back then like rural Concordville, Lenni Heights, etc those where the days when Chester FD use to sound the air horns for box numbers for some of the old city VFD's and on a clear night you could hear them.

mlmummert · May 23, 2015

Does anyone have any old lists of radio channels for Delco that they would share? In other words, what all was used before the 500MHz took over?

safetypro79 · May 23, 2015

Mostly LB from what
I remember 39,82 was RT PD

46.42 46,48 was VFD's at least in Rildley Twp

Norwood Tinicum, Eddystone, Darby Twp and Prospect Park/Ridley Park were 42 something

Chester
/Upper Darby FD's/ were HB 154 like Philly back in the 70's

soberbyker · May 23, 2015

39.50, 39.78, 39.82, 39.90 and 45.54 MHz

I remember old plug in crystals with 39.50 and 39.78 would give me most of eastern DELCO Police and Upper Darby PD was 159.190 I believe.

Here's a great link on the old system and it's problems from 1979.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/87018NCJRS.pdf

.

captaincab · May 23, 2015

The county frequencies were County Fire and EMS VHF Low Band Frequency Plan
Freq
46.38 46.42 46.48 46.08
Input
(simplex) (simplex) (simplex) (simplex)
Use Tone
Lowband F-1 CS Lowband F-3 CS Fire/EMS Alerting CS County-Wide Fire Police CS

Springfield fire was 46.42 Ridley was 46.24 i believe and haverford was 46.34 once again these are all off memory.

Septa3371CSX1 · May 24, 2015

soberbyker said:
39.50, 39.78, 39.82, 39.90 and 45.54 MHz

I remember old plug in crystals with 39.50 and 39.78 would give me most of eastern DELCO Police and Upper Darby PD was 159.190 I believe.

Here's a great link on the old system and it's problems from 1979.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/87018NCJRS.pdf

.

Interesting read on that report. I'm guessing it was shortly after that report came out most of the county police agencies started moving to the 500 MHZ band. Also interesting to note that Ridley's 39.42 and Springfield's 45.56 are still in use today as DPW channels. Speaking of DPW I noticed the report suggested a channel for municipal services. Not sure if that ever happened. The ED channel suggested sounds like what became the Command Channel.

Also interesting to note how this radio recommendation was for a conventional repeated and simplex system - not some complicated trunk system. It's amazing how the times have changed and also amazing that Ed Truitt is still in charge of Delaware County Emergency Services.

mlmummert · May 25, 2015

Septa3371CSX1 said:
Interesting read on that report. I'm guessing it was shortly after that report came out most of the county police agencies started moving to the 500 MHZ band. Also interesting to note that Ridley's 39.42 and Springfield's 45.56 are still in use today as DPW channels. Speaking of DPW I noticed the report suggested a channel for municipal services. Not sure if that ever happened. The ED channel suggested sounds like what became the Command Channel.

Also interesting to note how this radio recommendation was for a conventional repeated and simplex system - not some complicated trunk system. It's amazing how the times have changed and also amazing that Ed Truitt is still in charge of Delaware County Emergency Services.

Yeah but to be fair, the Trunked systems didn't really exist in 1979.

6655321 · May 25, 2015

Upper Darby frequencies

159.0900 MHZ was main and 154.9500 MHZ was Channel two. I remember when the county was beginning to use the 500 MHz system and while it was being tested, a few agencies were using it. Once a van being used for observation on a suspect was encircled by locals who wanted the vehicle moved so a neighbor could park there. An urgent call to DELCOM requested a marked unit to resolve the problem.

Does anyone know what frequencies/bands Philadelphia police used before going to UHF (453MHz)?

Thanks....

soberbyker · May 25, 2015

6655321 said:
159.0900 MHZ was main and 154.9500 MHZ was Channel two. I remember when the county was beginning to use the 500 MHz system and while it was being tested, a few agencies were using it. Once a van being used for observation on a suspect was encircled by locals who wanted the vehicle moved so a neighbor could park there. An urgent call to DELCOM requested a marked unit to resolve the problem.

Does anyone know what frequencies/bands Philadelphia police used before going to UHF (453MHz)?

Thanks....

http://forums.radioreference.com/pennsylvania-radio-discussion-forum/253231-old-philadelphia-police-uhf-fire-vhf-frequencies.html#post1854288

.

Steveradio · May 27, 2015

Lehigh County we had the good old 33.72, 33.52, 33.48, 33.98

We used to get Texas on a daily basis, along with hearing anything else local.

Was also able to pik up Philly Fire clear as day 154.235 and the 170.150 Medical Bands its amazing on how quiet the systems have gotten.

jimv · May 27, 2015

Septa3371CSX1 said:
Interesting read on that report. I'm guessing it was shortly after that report came out most of the county police agencies started moving to the 500 MHZ band. Also interesting to note that Ridley's 39.42 and Springfield's 45.56 are still in use today as DPW channels. Speaking of DPW I noticed the report suggested a channel for municipal services. Not sure if that ever happened. The ED channel suggested sounds like what became the Command Channel.

Also interesting to note how this radio recommendation was for a conventional repeated and simplex system - not some complicated trunk system. It's amazing how the times have changed and also amazing that Ed Truitt is still in charge of Delaware County Emergency Services.

In my honest and personal opinion, Mr. Truitt should be thanked for his many many many many years of service to Delaware County, PA...but it's time for a change. Delco severely needs an upgrade to their public safety LMR radio system. However, in trying to keep on topic with this thread I offer this regarding Delco Fire's low band frequency usage back in the 70's and 80's:

46.48 Delco dispatch exclusive of Millbourne, Upper Darby, Chester, Broomall, Springfield (also dispatched Swarthmore), Norwood (also dispatched Ridley Park, Prospect Park, Essington, Lester), Ridley, Haverford, Eddystone

46.38 F1
46.42 F2 (also Springfield, Broomall, Eddystone [Broomall dispatched on their PD 453 Mhz channel]
46.40 Zone D for Springfield, Swarthmore, and Broomall
46.36 Zone A for "lower end" companies: Darby, Lansdowne, Yeadon, etc.
46.16: Can't remember
46.18: Can't remember
154.19: UD F1
154.325: UD F2
154.43: Chester City but with a different PL than Camden County
33.??: Milbourne

Delco Fire Board: KDK-667 & KRI-611
Norwood: KRF-375
Ridley: KFT-582
Springfield: KBA-863

jimv · May 27, 2015

Also:

46.22: Haverford
46.24: Ridley

saber2k5 · May 28, 2015

46.16 was the EMS freq
46.18 was FP

soberbyker · May 28, 2015

jimv said:
~snip~

33.??: Milbourne

~snip~

33.52 I ran with Millbourne many moon ago, driver/pump operator & fire police.

Story from scanning days back in 68 or so Delco

Scanning since 1967

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