173.5875 Milwaukee

Hi all,

I caught 173.5875 P25 NAC300 today during my recordings.

I wasn't able to copy enough traffic to firmly identify it, but the signal was very strong. I live two miles from MKE Airport, so I'm assuming this is USAF Fire/Rescue there, but you never know. The traffic sounded like it could be fire, definitely public safety of some sort.

I'm going to sit on it and try to verify, unless someone beats me to it.

Josh

You thinking it's for the airport that shares the runway and taxi ways with the air force fire services for military craft or actual base frequency for fire dispatch or ops? It's been ages since I heard any usaf chatter on vhf. Makes me wanna keep eye out this way on vhf for any use.

I'm thinking it's the 128th Air Refueling Wing Fire Department primary dispatch/operations channel, (a separate entity from the Milwaukee Airport Fire Department, which operates on the County Trunked System).

Here's a video on YouTube from the 128th ARW Fire Dept - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7kGyGCSBr4

Update...

Recordings over the past 24 hours have confirmed this to at least be used in part by 128th Air Refueling Wing Security Forces. One transmission in particular was a unit advising that restricted area checks were complete, and that everything was Code 10. Searching online I found this link Wright Patterson Air Force Base, OH - The RadioReference Wiki here on RR that shows Code 10 being used by another base to mean "all clear", which fits the context of the transmission. Since 173.5875 is normally used by USAF Fire/Rescue nationwide, and since this frequency was previously identified as 128th Fire/Rescue with a tone of 156.7 instead of P25 NAC300, I'm assuming that this channel is now shared between security forces and the base fire dept. I'm going to keep recording for a few more days to see if I can catch fire traffic as well before I submit to the database.

Josh

128th Fire/Rescue moved to 41872 on the Milwaukee County Trunked Radio System. Pretty boring stuff, and mainly active between 7am & 12pm

Got it. Thanks.

I've had hits on that TGID before and wondered who it was.

I have submitted 41872 and 173.5875 to the database.

It might be a mobile vehicular repeater that translates whatever the main mobile radio if hearing to a portable and visa versa. Low power, and often not coordinated or licensed.

That's always a possibility, but just to be clear, 173.5875 is definitely being used by security forces. MKESCAN advised that fire is now on 41872, which makes sense based on previous hits I've had on that tg plus the fact that security is now on this frequency.