Minneapolis news choppers

[anthonymodrow]

Do you guys have the frequencys to news choppers and police choppers to listen for searches etc?

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[wogggieee]

The state patrol helicopters (Trooper 7,9) show up on whatever talkgroup the dispatcher assigns, most often L-Tac 1 in my experience but I've heard them on many other. There is an State Patrol flight talk group which is probably a good one to monitor to get a heads up of where they're going.

 

[stmills]

There is not a lot of News Copter radio traffic since there is not as much Copter usage as there used to be. I can only recall 2 instances of air to air traffic of any interest on vhf air in my 30+ years of monitoring. News room to Helicopter is a hit or miss.
KARE 450.150 & 450.850
KMSP 450.250, 450.350, 450.450- may have moved to Icom Digital
KSTP 450.550, 166.250
WCCO 450.650, 450.750, 170.150.

KSTP helicopter is from Brainard Helicopters St. Paul Airport Base
KARE, KMSP, WCCO all get there helicopter service through Scotts Helicopters in Le Sueur- often 1 copter provides a pool feed to all three stations.

 

[stmills]

Channel 5 has been active today with Newsroom to Chopper Traffic on 450.5500.

 

[anthonymodrow]

Channel 5 has been active today with Newsroom to Chopper Traffic on 450.5500.

Thanks for the info wish I didn't loose my 26 dollar program cable time to buy another lol

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[JASII]

Minneapolis News Media Frequencies

...

KARE 450.150 & 450.850
KMSP 450.250, 450.350, 450.450- may have moved to Icom Digital
KSTP 450.550, 166.250
WCCO 450.650, 450.750, 170.150

...

Has anybody here been listening to any of these lately? Which of these are still in use?

 

[anthonymodrow]

Has anybody here been listening to any of these lately? Which of these are still in use?

In a few hours I will program into my 996t

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[fwfdengine2]

Sky 11 has a unit that runs out of flying cloud airport in Eden prairie

 

[SCPD]

WCCO, KARE, and KMSP share one helicopter but they communicate with each station on their frequency. The chopper's digital signal is usually one of the stations assigned BAS frequency and the chopper uses an omni directional antenna so each station can tune it in from their various receive sites. The sharing stations can rent the helicopter for a special story but breaking news everyone gets the same video. KSTP is the only one that has a dedicated "rented" chopper for their use only. It runs around $500 or so an hour to operate one so that's why you see this done in other markets. The days of stations having a dedicated helicopter are over with news budgets being cut. With TVU and other 4G transmission methods, microwave only live trucks are becoming extinct.

KSTP 450.550
KMSP 450.250
KARE 450.850
WCCO 170.150

 

[kc0kp]

With TVU and other 4G transmission methods, microwave only live trucks are becoming extinct.

Not if the stations are smart. In the Denver market, they have been losing lots of live shots due to lack of bandwidth. In rural areas, the 4G networks are not as robust and in the metro areas, they are reaching saturation. When two or more crews show up with TVU, the already saturated cell sites are crumbling under the load. The other side effect is that public safety vehicle data terminals slow to a crawl or lose connection.
Craig