psr600md
Member
if theres any milair people in the hill afb area .pm myself
any milair people in UT
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N7YUO
Member
I work at HAFB and I tried listening to MilAir. It was disappointing. Within 1-2 miles of the base, the comms faded out. This is what I found out:
Military air comms use UHF radios in the AM mode. They use low power of about 5 watts or less.
To get good reception, for any amount of distance, you will need a sensitive receiver and an outside antenna with plenty of gain in the receiving mode.
There are lots of expert opinions on antennas. Some say that a properly tuned antenna is best.
That may be so, but my experience has been this: 'The more metal you hang in the air, the greater the amount of signal you capture.' A full-sized ground plane or yagi antenna will definately beat a rubber duck. I gave up on MilAir monitoring.
Military air comms use UHF radios in the AM mode. They use low power of about 5 watts or less.
To get good reception, for any amount of distance, you will need a sensitive receiver and an outside antenna with plenty of gain in the receiving mode.
There are lots of expert opinions on antennas. Some say that a properly tuned antenna is best.
That may be so, but my experience has been this: 'The more metal you hang in the air, the greater the amount of signal you capture.' A full-sized ground plane or yagi antenna will definately beat a rubber duck. I gave up on MilAir monitoring.
kd7rto
Member
With the Oquirrh mountain range separating Salt Lake and Tooele Counties, they're blocked from a lot of good milair monitoring going on out over the west desert.
That's the consolation for us in Davis County. Ensign Peak blocks us from hearing a lot in the Salt Lake Valley, especially downtown Salt Lake, but we're in a much better position to hear out into the desert.
I've done a little searching of the 225-406 range recently, heard some bombing practice runs, but my list needs more work before I'm ready to share it,
Mike's comments were spot on. If all you've got is a mobile, or a home station with only a telescopic whip off the back of the receiver, you might as well not even try. For civ air or mil, a good roof mounted base antenna is absolutely essential. I've got a Cushcraft AR270 in the air right now, and it seems to be doing well. I also plan to put up a Diamond D-130J discone, to compare signal strengths.
Did you check the Database? There are a lot of freqs listed there that I've heard active this past year. I'm in Bountiful near the Woods X, NSL borders. I use an outside antenna and hear lots of traffic from the UT&TR (when they are out there).
Hooligan
Member
Military aircraft UHF radios usually transmit with about 20-30 watts, and are often VERY EASY to hear from dozens, sometimes hundreds, of miles away depending on the altitude they're flying at & what sort of receiver/antenna setup you have, etc. You don't need a massive antenna or special receiver to hear them, but having a positive mindset & not "giving-up" usually helps, just like it does with most other things in life.
From my home, I hear aircraft as they're on their final approach to Nellis AFB, which is over 100 air-miles away & with a mountain range or two in-between me & it, and since the aircraft are on final, they're only a couple thousand feet up in the air. I do have numerous specialized antennas made for 225-400MHz, but even with my Uniden BC-396XT handheld in the car, I can hear air/air stuff taking place in the Nevada Test & Training Range, using the handheld's stock antenna 100+ miles away, & with at least one mountain range in-between them & I.
Hill AFB has a decent amount of flight activity, plus as someone else mentioned, there's the huge Utah Test & Training Range military operating area with lots of aviation & ground activity.
Search 138-144MHz & 148-150.8MHz in AM mode, 25kHz steps, and search 225-400MHz also in AM mode & 25kHz steps. That'll get you off to a good start. Eventually you might want to get an antenna designed for that freq range, and also search 30-88MHz for tactical air/air & air/ground activity, etc.
From my home, I hear aircraft as they're on their final approach to Nellis AFB, which is over 100 air-miles away & with a mountain range or two in-between me & it, and since the aircraft are on final, they're only a couple thousand feet up in the air. I do have numerous specialized antennas made for 225-400MHz, but even with my Uniden BC-396XT handheld in the car, I can hear air/air stuff taking place in the Nevada Test & Training Range, using the handheld's stock antenna 100+ miles away, & with at least one mountain range in-between them & I.
Hill AFB has a decent amount of flight activity, plus as someone else mentioned, there's the huge Utah Test & Training Range military operating area with lots of aviation & ground activity.
Search 138-144MHz & 148-150.8MHz in AM mode, 25kHz steps, and search 225-400MHz also in AM mode & 25kHz steps. That'll get you off to a good start. Eventually you might want to get an antenna designed for that freq range, and also search 30-88MHz for tactical air/air & air/ground activity, etc.
kd7rto
Member
Now that's a list I do have ready for release. I put up a Cushcraft AR6 this June and Lo-band monitoring was my project for the Summer.
Most of the military traffic I heard appeared to be Blackhawk Helicopters and their ground support. A paired operation on 40.875 MHz and 49.75 MHz was the most active. 32.5, 32.8, 32.85, 34.15, 36.1, 38.9, 38.9, 40.15, 40.9, 41.55, 46.65, and 47.475 were also observed in use. A NATO CTCSS code of 150.0 was used by all of these. No scanner that I'm aware of recognizes 150.0, as it is not part of the EIA standard, instead they'll typically display it as 151.4.
Hooligan
Member
Nice! The 30-87.975MHz "Fox-Mike" spectrum gets a lot of Army aviation use because of course the Army's main combat net radio has been on that spectrum for many decades, and Army helos need to talk to Army soldiers. This is also why that in my experience, if you hear a non-Army fixed-wing aircraft on 30-88, it's an A/OA-10 coordinating with Army controllers on the ground for close air support or forward air control missions. But now that more & more Army combat units have a USAF Enlisted Terminal Air Controller or Tactical Air Control Party assigned with multi-band radios they're using UHF a lot more.
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