Low Band in the Puget Sound?

[W7MTH]

Been scanning the area for many years and have never heard any lowband traffic.
Nothing locally, and not even any skip despite the fact that 10/11m are quite frequently open.
Are there any agencies that use lowband in this area still?
Has anyone received any lowband skip or dx in this area?

 

[ww7ch]

Active licenses are slowly starting to thin out for lowband, at least in WA.

Camp Murray is still using CEMNET and I know the PUDs in Clallam and Lewis Counties are still using lowband, they get active this time of year when power outages are more frequent. USDA NRCS is also using lowband for meteor scatter communication for telemetry for remote SNOTEL (snowpack telemetry) sites. FCC data shows there are several others but it's far fewer than there used to be.

Lowband skip isn't heard as often as it used to be - not because of less band openings, but because fewer people throughout the country (and world) are using it compared to, say, back in the early 90s. Was kinda fun listening to the scanner back in those days and picking up stuff from down in the southeast with the thick southern accents. The skip would come and go so quick that it was hard to track down where signals were originating from, especially with those who didn't use their callsigns on-air...

 

[ko6jw_2]

The Seattle Fire Department used 33.70Mhz at one time decades ago. I was visiting their fire boat station and commented to the captain that Los Angeles City Fire was on the same frequency. He replied, " I talk to them sometimes ." No PL in those days.

 

[devicelab]

It depends on how technical you want to get. VHF Low in the PS is almost nothing but the PS isn't very large relatively speaking. VHF Low can travel for thousands of miles. There's a ton of VHF Low in the Pac NW. Oregon still uses it heavily compared to other states. A lot of utility companies maintain a VHF Low frequency but there are other users.

In the spring/summer, I'm picking up VHF Low from PA/NY and many other states. I've confirmed OR/WA/ID/MT using VHF Low during those peak conditions as well. And, of course, the US Military uses it daily.

 

[mikepdx]

Don't forget Weyerhauser. Many, many
low band repeaters used regularly in
both Oregon & Washington.
Around 48-49 Mhz if I recall correctly.

 

[jeremym70]

Don't forget Weyerhauser. Many, many
low band repeaters used regularly in
both Oregon & Washington.
Around 48-49 Mhz if I recall correctly.

Weyco switched to VHF high band in Washington a couple of years ago, Oregon was next, probably completed by now. They pared down their number of repeater sites and number of repeaters per site to save money I imagine? They do a lot of their dispatching and truck ordering by tablet through cellular or satellite connection.

 

[im800mhz]

I've seen a couple of site and fcc applications for alternative networking for crypto.