39.58-old school channel

I remember when I worked in Comanche and Ford Counties that almost the entire state was on 39.58 for everything from law enforcement, fire, EMS, to public utilities. While it could get crowded, it did a darned good job in it's day as an interoperability channel. I think 39.46 was station to station. Used to hear a lot of skip out of Louisiana-sometimes you could talk to them instead of just listening to life on the bayou.

Chief45414 said:

I remember when I worked in Comanche and Ford Counties that almost the entire state was on 39.58 for everything from law enforcement, fire, EMS, to public utilities. While it could get crowded, it did a darned good job in it's day as an interoperability channel. I think 39.46 was station to station. Used to hear a lot of skip out of Louisiana-sometimes you could talk to them instead of just listening to life on the bayou.

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Around Leavenworth County KS in the '70's everything was on 39.58 for pd and sheriff. Fire was on 44.46. I had a Regency single crystal radio that I put a switch to change channels when I heard the fire trucks.

nosig55 said:

Around Leavenworth County KS in the '70's everything was on 39.58 for pd and sheriff. Fire was on 44.46. I had a Regency single crystal radio that I put a switch to change channels when I heard the fire trucks.

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And the skip could be a problem sometimes:

I was on the Leavenworth PD back in the late 70's before moving to Newton. At that time we were already on the 450 MHz UHF system for the PD. The SO was still on VHF-lowband as was the city fire. We had old MOTRAC radios (if I remember the name correctly) in the cars and CH1 was 39.58 MHz.

One quiet Sunday afternoon this VERY clear call comes over the lowband radio from a unit identifying itself with the radio number of one of the fire chiefs. A very quick and loud call for help on shots fired as there was "a sniper on top of the First National Bank building." We all heard it and the shift Sergeant immediately tried to call him back for more info but there was no answer. Well, on that particular afternoon there just happen to be 4 beat cars, a sergeant, a traffic officer, and a single detective on duty. Of course EVERBODY lights it up and rushes to the area. The traffic officer and I both carried (with the patrol division Lieutenant's knowledge, if not actual permission) "other weaponry" beyond the issued sidearm and shotgun, so we were tasked with getting on top of an adjoining building to see if we could "scope" the sniper out as it were.

There were two building nearby with good cover and tall enough to let us look down on the bank building. The traffic officer was senior, so he said he would take the one with the fire escape. I, of course, got the other one without an outside roof access! So, here I am trying to shinny up a drain pipe in a regular patrol uniform (wool pants, short sleeve cotton shirt, vest, Rocky Boots, gunbelt with radio and such, and a riot helmet strapped to my head) in 90 degree weather with a Remington 700P across my back when the sergeant comes on the radio and tells everybody to disregard and return to patrol. {Huh???}

I manage to make it back to the ground without destroying my uniform or breaking my neck and go to find out what the heck was going on. I get to the sergeant's car to find the entire shift gathered there listening to the sergeant's lowband radio. He had realized about half way thru all this that we were hearing exceptionally strong skip out of Louisiana. By that time they were deploying their SWAT team and we couldn't hear any more traffic on the incident. I never did hear if they found their sniper....

I used to have a licensed single frequency on I think it was 35.02 for paging. It could have been 32.05 also but man, that was many moons ago.
Local coverage sucked but skip signals sure came in well.

I forget who made the transmitter now but the pagers could play voice using a vibrating reed to open the squelch. They only required a single tone as well so skip stations would often open the squelch from far away users using the same system.
The only problem was if you missed the voice part, you were SOL as there was no storage feature back in those days! You just knew you were paged and had to find a pay phone to call back into the transmitter room and find out what was sent, if anything.
A lot of times, it was skip that tripped those old pagers. I was so glad when we went to a dual reed VHF High system even though it still had no audio store and forward function. If it tripped, you were pretty sure it was from your company.

Is this freq still used these days?

Matt

mgolden2 said:

Is this freq still used these days?

Matt

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KDOT has kept all the Low Band Frequencies licensed. I know that KHP has also kept theirs all licensed.

At the present time each KSICS tower has 39.58 and 39.46 on them for interop and Moto-bridge.

A couple of us still have the mobiles that work still.

Osage County had 39.58 and 39.44 up until around the early 2000's when lightning struck the tower on the courthouse roof. Never had the transmitters repaired after that.

Don't think I've laid eyes on a working lowband public safety radio since the mid 90's.... however our local school buses had them until about 2 weeks ago when they got removed and replaced with new digital 800 radios.

dgruver911 said:

Don't think I've laid eyes on a working lowband public safety radio since the mid 90's.... however our local school buses had them until about 2 weeks ago when they got removed and replaced with new digital 800 radios.

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It's just a short drive from Newton to Oklahoma. You'll see the OHP patrol cars have a low-band antenna, a Larsen NMO - no more quarter-wave whips with fender mounts. The northwest, far west, and southeast have no 800 system coverage so low-band gets used. County radios provide back-up.

Why didn't they license other lowband freqs instead of everyone just remaining on 39.580?

ISP here used to use 42.26 car-base and 42.42 base-car...it wasn't unusual to hear a Dispatcher say, "10-9, please, you were covered by skip." We would sometimes hear these other operators, never clear enough to figure out where they were from...nothing but a telescopic indoor OEM antenna at the time. Not sure when they moved to the TSYS but I miss hearing the skip, while I enjoy hearing car traffic that I could only rarely hear back then.

Iowa used have everybody on 37.10, I mean everyone including the F.B.I. State Patrol was first to move off in the mid-70's. Now the State wants to build a networked 700 MHz system with everyone on it.

I recall a number time Skip coming in from the CHP on ISP channels, (42.42, 42.12, 42.16, one time heard one longest pursuits ever on it, it was even picked by ISP post in Evansville, Jasper, Bloomington, they put the area under Signal 100 ( emergency traffic only), because they worried about inference from us.

Had the same in Ohio - so much skip that I could recognize the voices from Kansas. Some of the fire freqs. were also the same, could recognize the tone outs,plus knew where the tornado activity was

Also some shared CHP with Ohio.

kruser said:

I used to have a licensed single frequency on I think it was 35.02 for paging. It could have been 32.05 also but man, that was many moons ago.
Local coverage sucked but skip signals sure came in well.

I forget who made the transmitter now but the pagers could play voice using a vibrating reed to open the squelch. They only required a single tone as well so skip stations would often open the squelch from far away users using the same system.
The only problem was if you missed the voice part, you were SOL as there was no storage feature back in those days! You just knew you were paged and had to find a pay phone to call back into the transmitter room and find out what was sent, if anything.
A lot of times, it was skip that tripped those old pagers. I was so glad when we went to a dual reed VHF High system even though it still had no audio store and forward function. If it tripped, you were pretty sure it was from your company.

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Were they by chance Plectron pagers? They used vibrating reeds, as did most others of that era. My dad worked at the Plectron plant in Overton, Nebraska (pop. 530) when I was a kid.