Hocking and Perry Counties

[radioscan]

Spent a few days in Hocking Hills and made a few observations.

I did not hear a peep out of any the VHF low band frequencies listed
under Hocking County, can anyone confirm whether they are still in use?

Perry County Sheriff/Law Operations are making heavy use of their SO-63 MARCS Talkgroup (63600), especially at night.

ODNR Enforcement for Hocking Hills was unencrypted the entire three days
I was there. I heard them on both their PR-R23-E talkgroup and the PR-R23-M talkgroup as well.
As I posted in another thread, they are using 774.3375 226 DPL for their MARCS VRE.

 

[ibagli]

Did Perry County SO uses its conventional channels at all? I'm a little too far away to get them reliably, and they use MARCS so much that I can't tell if I'm too far away to hear them at all or if there's just nothing to receive.

 

[radioscan]

No I didn't, and never thought to check for some reason. I only had Hocking and Vinton County frequencies plugged in.
I heard very very little from Vinton County, just an occasional fire dispatch.

 

[medic611]

Hocking has abandoned the Low Band other than for paging of some tornado siren ( Laurelville) on 33.86 The remainer is all on VHF High with listed frequencies. ODNR only has MARCS radios, however a few VHF walkies are carried by officers for EMS response or Sheriff response calls. HCSO does use MARCS on regular basis, however in areas with poor coverage VHF is the primary channel. Perry what what I understand has only 1 deputy on duty typically , however I believe the UHF patching is also used.

 

[W8UU]

You'd be hard pressed to find anyone on low band in Southeast Ohio any more. Gallipolis Fire Department on 39.62 MHz is about the only regular user I can think of. So sad, because low band worked so well down here. Too much channel congestion back in the day, but that wouldn't be an issue nowadays. You can almost see the tumbleweeds rolling across the once busy 39 MHz police frequencies!

Vinton County SO is using MARCS heavily. Athens County SO just switched over to MARCS for everything, but they still have access to their 151 MHz repeater system. I think Vinton still uses their 460.35 MHz repeaters for Fire and EMS dispatch. I haven't heard much on Vinton's 462.975 MHz channel for a while.

This is a great time of the year to visit the Hocking Hills, Mark. Hope you enjoyed your visit!

Rick, W8UU

 

[radioscan]

I really miss the days when you could listen to practically every law enforcement agency in southern Ohio on 39.5800.

It was great there. The fall colors were not that impressive this year from the prolonged drought we've been having, but the peace and quiet was very welcome.