Emergency Services Dead Air - Where did they go?

Looking for some advice please. I live in Kirkwood, MO 63122 and have had a feed called "Kirkwood Police and Fire". It's been up for some time. The City of Kirkwood has used 155.250 as long as I can remember.

It seems they are no longer broadcasting in this frequency. I looked in the FCC database to see if they made any recent license requests or anything else that might explain things. I of course tried Google. I also searched our local newspapers to see if I could find anything about a new system purchase. Nothing.

Any suggestions on how to find out what has happened?
I'll just call them eventually and ask but I thought I would check here first. I don't know how forthcoming they will be with radio info.

I sure hope they haven't upgraded to something that I can't listen to.

jhartman said:

Looking for some advice please. I live in Kirkwood, MO 63122 and have had a feed called "Kirkwood Police and Fire". It's been up for some time. The City of Kirkwood has used 155.250 as long as I can remember.

It seems they are no longer broadcasting in this frequency. I looked in the FCC database to see if they made any recent license requests or anything else that might explain things. I of course tried Google. I also searched our local newspapers to see if I could find anything about a new system purchase. Nothing.

Any suggestions on how to find out what has happened?
I'll just call them eventually and ask but I thought I would check here first. I don't know how forthcoming they will be with radio info.

I sure hope they haven't upgraded to something that I can't listen to.

Click to expand...

More than likely they switched to digital. See here:
St. Louis Area Trunked Emergency Radio - SLATER (P25) Trunking System, St Louis Metro Area, Multi-State - Scanner Frequencies

Thanks for the lightning fast reply! What a drag. I just bought a Home Patrol I not that long ago and it looks like it doesn't support the P25 Phase II. UGH>

You may want to check into the Missouri Forum a little farther down the page. Someone local to you may have more information.

jhartman said:

Thanks for the lightning fast reply! What a drag. I just bought a Home Patrol I not that long ago and it looks like it doesn't support the P25 Phase II. UGH>

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None of the talkgroups are listed as being Phase II (they'd have a "T" in the mode column).

Thread moved to Missouri forum.

Based on what I've seen in the SLATER thread, none of the talkgroups appear to be Phase II at this time (I'm on the other side of the State, so someone local may want to confirm). That being said, your Home Patrol should work just fine on the non-encrypted dispatch channels.

PVPD730 said:

Based on what I've seen in the SLATER thread, none of the talkgroups appear to be Phase II at this time (I'm on the other side of the State, so someone local may want to confirm). That being said, your Home Patrol should work just fine on the non-encrypted dispatch channels.

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That is correct. The systems or sites that make up the Slater system is Phase II capable but all is Phase 1 so as was mentioned, your HP1 will get them.

You may need to play with antennas as each site has multiple towers so the simulcast distortion can be bad with this system.

I'd try the stock antenna first as Slater has a decent signal and if you get a decent signal from only one tower, you should be fine.
Oh, Kirkwood should be on Site 102 which is STL County Urban South.

It can become overwhelming as with Slater, you will hear darn near the entire county if you don't program the system correctly. If you are only after Kirkwood stuff, you would only put those talkgroups into a Kirkwood favorite or whatever you want to call it and make sure ID Search is off.

I'd make a Kirkwood only favorite list with ID search off and then a Slater favorite with everything and ID Search on so you can see what you can hear.
And yes, some of the stuff is encrypted but most is in the clear.
I can pickup Kirkwood PD up here like I was sitting outside their station.
Of course Kirkwood always used a repeater so I always did get a good signal from them but not as good as Slater can provide.

Kirkwood also has several other talkgroups used by their power department and water department. They even have a talkgroup used for non powered street signs.
Those could be listed as a public works channel but in the radio, I think they are called a City channel.
PD would be Kirkwood PD Dispatch and they could use an in the clear city channel for PD use also by night.
I think Kirkwood also has an encrypted talkgroup that will be in the 556xx talkgroup range. That one you won't get. They seem to be mostly in the clear though.
See PVPD730's post for a link to the database page for slater.
The list is by no means complete but several Kirkwood things are listed.
You would only want the Dispatch TG though as the others (used by PD) would be considered tactical in nature and against the TOS if using Broadcastify for your feed.

You recall when Kirkwood used DES encryption on their analog channel when they took over the Meacham Park area?

Thanks to everybody that replied. The words of wisdom and help are really appreciated. I don't know that I ever heard Kirkwood use encryption on their analog channel. Not surprising. Glad they didn't choose to use it excessively.
I'm also very happy to hear that I can use my Home Patrol 1, I've got other radios on the wish list higher then another scanner at the moment. I'll get to work figuring out how to make this work. It's never done much but sit there on the Kirkwood analog freq hooked up to a Raspberry Pi steaming here, since I got it. I'll have to dig into the manual.
You guys are a big help, Thanks, Jeff

jhartman said:

Thanks to everybody that replied. The words of wisdom and help are really appreciated. I don't know that I ever heard Kirkwood use encryption on their analog channel. Not surprising. Glad they didn't choose to use it excessively.
I'm also very happy to hear that I can use my Home Patrol 1, I've got other radios on the wish list higher then another scanner at the moment. I'll get to work figuring out how to make this work. It's never done much but sit there on the Kirkwood analog freq hooked up to a Raspberry Pi steaming here, since I got it. I'll have to dig into the manual.
You guys are a big help, Thanks, Jeff

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Yep, from what I recall, they only used DES encryption when they took over Meacham park area (not sure if Meacham is the correct spelling) and then they only used it when working a patrol in the area. Gosh, I can't even remember how long ago that was when they took over that area. It used to be patrolled by county PD as it was an unincorporated area but it sat between Sunset Hills, I-44 and Kirkwood so it was under patrolled and maybe the reason things went downhill as bad as they did. Then Kirkwood annexed the park area into their city and they had problems with the residents so they installed DES units in some of their patrol cars and the dispatch console. They seemed to really slow down the use of DES once they gained decent control but you would still hear it every now and then.
It sounded like pure white noise and was also what was used on some fed frequencies in the 420 MHz range.
I never did figure out how the dispatcher knew to use DES for replies when an officer called in with DES turned on. Perhaps the dispatch console was two radios but I can't recall the dispatcher accidently replying in the clear.