Tower... more specifically low band north east Ohio

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Firefox89

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My dispatch center which receives 46.14 for Lake/Geauga county is able to receive transmissions from Jamestown / Chitaqua area NY, how tall of a tower is needed to be able to receive this traffic? I would love to be able to have that far of a scanning capability.
 

wa8pyr

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My dispatch center which receives 46.14 for Lake/Geauga county is able to receive transmissions from Jamestown / Chitaqua area NY, how tall of a tower is needed to be able to receive this traffic? I would love to be able to have that far of a scanning capability.

Kind of surprising, I thought Lake/Geauga used tone squelch to prevent that kind of thing.

It depends upon weather conditions and terrain. Under normal circumstances low band antennas are usually placed no more than 100 feet off the ground but earth curvature and intervening terrain prevent users that distance apart from hearing one another.

However, low band is more likely to exhibit tendencies to "skip" off/through the atmosphere and be heard at considerably greater distances. This is most often related to certain weather conditions.

There's a web page out there with a calculator which allows you to put in frequency and antenna height which will calculate the line-of-sight distance at which they can hear one another reliably. I forget the address but a Google search should find it.
 

owenbricker

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I could receive Chitaqua county almost daily on 46.14 down in Mansfield with an antenna specialists base commander antenna mounted 80 feet up, my average low band reception was about 150-200 miles. loved it! makes me want to put up another tower, but low band is on the way out.
 

wmlovell

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I recall about 20 years ago hearing Washington Co. PA Dispatch on 46.40 on my Fire Pager in Geauga County with the right weather conditions. ...and one day, I learned that they could also hear us when I was screwing around after our dispatch didn't answer, so to be a smarty, I called Washington Control, and they answered. ...and that earned me a meeting in the Chief's office.

We also had to compete for air time with a cab company in Puerto Rico, on occasion. No idea what they were saying, but they always sounded angry. Then we got PL.
 

jim202

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When I was living in MA. the fire dept. there was on 46.14 MHz. I took a vacation to Michigan and was hearing both my home town in MA. and Orange County, CA. clear as a bell. Even talked back to my home town with the fire radio in my truck.

Going across the Causeway bridge over lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana, I was able to talk over a number of 6 meter ham repeaters up in Canada almost every day during the summer. Kind of surprised me the first time it happened. Then I got use to it and even made some friends via the skip conditions.

Problem is today, the 6 meter activity has really took a nose dive in the activity that is now there. The band still opens up and you have the skip. But with no one there, your talking to yourself. The 6 meter band is awesome. Again when I was living up in MA. I was able to talk with a couple of hams in Puerto Rico on a regular basis.

Use to know Sam Harris, W1BU real good. Even helped him repair some of his antennas at his home in MA. He took a job at the Arecibo Observatory and was maintaining the big antenna and transmitters there. He has since become a silent key, but he was a big name on 6 meters back then.

Don't write off the low band. It works for good distances under normal conditions. Gives great propagation when the skip is there.

The commercial side of the picture is a whole different picture. Motorola figured out many years ago that they can't make any money there. The people that are on low band have no need to update their radios. It isn't like the rest of the bands where these radio vendors cause everyone to keep buying new radios because they stop support of the radios they currently have.

You don't need a trunking system on low band because the density of the users won't support it and it's not needed. So I guess you could say that the radio vendors have basically killed any low band activity. They have all but stopped coming up with any new low band radios. Yes, you can still purchase a low band radio, but your options on the different radio vendors is getting limited. They have all figured out there is no money there and are pushing everyone to go to 700 / 800 MHz. There they can sell a pile of radios.

Sorry I have got long winded, but you asked some questions and I just figured I would pass along some personal comments on what has been happening. I still enjoy 6 meters for local activity. But the proliferation of all the computer devices is causing a bunch of noise to cause the noise floor to go way up. This can cause some locations to no be able to hear much except a real strong signal. This is the cause of many 6 meter repeaters to be taken off the air.

Jim
 

wa8pyr

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I could receive Chitaqua county almost daily on 46.14 down in Mansfield with an antenna specialists base commander antenna mounted 80 feet up, my average low band reception was about 150-200 miles. loved it! makes me want to put up another tower, but low band is on the way out.

The fire department I used to work for used 33.92 and on many mornings when conditions were right we would hear a county in California doing their morning station radio checks ("Station 1... Station 1 clear"... "Station 2"... "Station 2 clear"... and so on). After they finished with all 8 or 9 stations, we would call with "Station 161 clear" and they would respond back "OK, thank you Ohio."

Fun times.
 

owenbricker

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The fire department I used to work for used 33.92 and on many mornings when conditions were right we would hear a county in California doing their morning station radio checks ("Station 1... Station 1 clear"... "Station 2"... "Station 2 clear"... and so on). After they finished with all 8 or 9 stations, we would call with "Station 161 clear" and they would respond back "OK, thank you Ohio."

Fun times.
Station 161 on 33.92 is that Truro twp. Franklin County? Had all the low band fire in Ohio on all the time 1982-2006 until a bad storm toppled the tower, lucky it did not land across the street.
 
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