CHP VHF Low band HTs?

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popnokick

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Visiting on biz here and a CHPer came in to Starbucks with an HT on his belt. I know CHP is VHF Lowband but the antenna on that HT looked like it was also for VHF Low... Really long. Do they really carry Lowband HTs? No vehicular repeaters for VHF or UHF link to their vehicle that repeats to their Lowband channels? How well are VHF Low HTs working for them?
 

mmckenna

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Right.
CHP used to carry Motorola HT1000's on VHF high band (154.905MHz) around here with the high gain VHF whips, which were pretty long.
Recently I've seen them with 700/800MHz EF Johnson's.
They used those to connect to vehicular repeaters via VHF high band or more recently, 700MHz, to the low band radios in the vehicle.

I've never seen them carrying any low band portable radios. It's always been VHF or 700MHz.
 

jmarshl

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On a related note, CHP in Northern Cal have started switching to APX8000 portables. Southern Cal units will be getting them soon. This move increases the potential for them to operate on Motorola trunking systems.
 

f40ph

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So Cal (Barstow office) has been using dual band APX for a few weeks now. 700mhz back to the car repeated on Low Band 42mhz. Also been using CALCORD direct from the HT to fire dept units in the area.
 

SCPD

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I've lived in rural areas for 38 years now and acknowledge that many things differ between urban and rural areas. When I moved to California at the beginning of the 1980's CHP officers did not have handhelds. My neighbor was an officer and as is the practice in rural areas all officers are assigned a vehicle that they bring home, in spite of the area office being only 3 miles away. So he came home in uniform in his black and white and went 10-10 in his driveway. I would have noticed if he had a handheld and he did not have one.

The only VHF Low handhelds I saw back then were carried by California State Park Rangers, one was a friend of mine at a nearby state park. He was 6"2" and the antenna often hit his ear. I don't remember anyone from Caltrans having handhelds, but I could be wrong. I didn't have any neighbors who worked for Caltrans so my observations were not as frequent.

CHP officers started carrying VHF High handhelds when extenders were placed in their vehicles. My memory is fuzzy on when this happened, but the mid 80's come to mind.
 

SCPD

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According to the website Scotty provided the link to all the cars and officers in the state were equipped with extenders by 1981. I don't think that was true in the most remote and rural portions of the state, I think the extenders and handhelds might have been installed in every car by about 1983-1984. I find it interesting that the entire fleet was transistorized by 1966 as the first green truck I was assigned in the U.S. Forest Service had a tube radio mounted behind the seat and that was in 1975. I was then issued a green truck with no radio at all and used a "pack set." These were radios that were about a foot long, 8-10" high and 6" wide. When you took one into a fire you had to put it into those old green canvas soft packs you were issued. That left very little room for jackets, canteens and a meal.
 

AM909

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I remember extenders were common in the LA area by (at latest) 1983. I had a dedicated cheap receiver in my car as a poor-man's radar detector :)

As far as the OP's observation, it could have been a personal backup radio, though I would imagine them to only be useful in very strong coverage areas, even with those unwieldly foot-long antennas :) As someone else pointed out, there are longer-than-normal supposed "high-gain" antennas made for various other bands, too.
 

mharris

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Visiting on biz here and a CHPer came in to Starbucks with an HT on his belt. I know CHP is VHF Lowband but the antenna on that HT looked like it was also for VHF Low... Really long. Do they really carry Lowband HTs? No vehicular repeaters for VHF or UHF link to their vehicle that repeats to their Lowband channels? How well are VHF Low HTs working for them?

I would put money that he had an APX portable. When you see dual/tri band APX antenna for the first time it looks giant. It is in fact a very big antenna. Locally they have been referred to as a "baseball bat" antenna.
 

mmckenna

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I would put money that he had an APX portable. When you see dual/tri band APX antenna for the first time it looks giant. It is in fact a very big antenna. Locally they have been referred to as a "baseball bat" antenna.

We've got a female officer her that's rather short in stature. The high gain VHF whip was jamming up under her arm pit. They finally had to order a "standard" antenna for her.
 

popnokick

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Prob an APX antenna. Was 16-18" long and uniform diameter over whole length (no taper). Reminded me of the old VHF low rubber ducks... or even the old CB handheld rubber antennas (not quite that long though).
 

jmarshl

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The APX antennas are long. We joke that you could use it like a pocket fisherman. My APX7000 VHF/700/800 MHz has a 8" antenna that also covers GPS. The standard half wave 800 MHz antenna is 7 inches long and our officers feel that is too long.
 

cmdrwill

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We've got a female officer her that's rather short in stature. The high gain VHF whip was jamming up under her arm pit. They finally had to order a "standard" antenna for her.

And the police car that had blocks on the brake peddle.
 

gvranchosbill

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In the 1980's i was at a event in San Jose Ca and a motor officer had a portable radio that was on the CHP brown channel, it looked like a motorola with a telescopic whip antenna and i heard San Jose CHP disp coming through the speaker. There was no extender radio on his motorcycle. I cant tell you when in 1980's.
 

SCPD

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In the 1980's i was at a event in San Jose Ca and a motor officer had a portable radio that was on the CHP brown channel, it looked like a motorola with a telescopic whip antenna and i heard San Jose CHP disp coming through the speaker. There was no extender radio on his motorcycle. I cant tell you when in 1980's.

That is and interesting observation Bill. When you say there wasn't an extender radio on his motorcycle I assume you mean there wasn't a mobile radio of any type on it. That is something I don't remember from the early years of my life in southern California. In those days every law enforcement motor unit I saw had a combined Motorola speaker/control head and a raised bracket for the microphone. The motor officers had to have the radio volume turned up very high for them to hear it through their helmets. In fact, hearing that audio when my parents drove me places is one reason I became interested in radio.

Having a handheld on a motor units probably allowed the officer to have an earphone and not have the volume up so high. Handhelds were not used in rural areas due to the distance and topography of electronic sites. Of course, motor units aren't used in most rural areas anyway.

I remember that very few handhelds were in use in the 1970's. I wasn't issued one in the Forest Service until 1979 or 1980 and that was primarily because I spent a fair amount of time on foot in wilderness areas alone. The radios we had when I was in fire management in the early and mid 70's were so large that it precluded their use for tactical communications. We didn't have any tac frequencies in our radios and only the Fire Management Officer on each district had a radio capable of communicating on "air net."

The LAPD didn't have handhelds for each officer until about 1980 or 1981 when the "ROVER" system was constructed. The very first extender handhelds used by the CHP were these huge GE radios. It wasn't so much that they were wide and thick, it was their length. They also did not have separate mikes either.
 
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cmdrwill

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I have a CHP motorcycle radio, 1970-80 vintage, and it does have the VHF Extender in it. Two Maxar radios in the case.

Also still have a couple Micor CHP radios. No control heads.
 

krazybob

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I realize this thread is 6 months old I thought I would chime in. When I was in the Army as a military policeman stationed in Germany we were on 46 MHz. We had Motorola low band hand held in converter com that connected us to a 5 foot whip antenna. The base station was the Motorola Centres on system. Even though the HT's were only 5 Watts they had fantastic range! Our Patrol area was huge and we never went out of range. All MP stations were on the same frequency and if you couldn't reach your home base you can always reach another. Nationwide.

In the 1980's the Motorola extender was changed to the VRS, which is a small add-on pack with a single frequency repeater that switches rapidly between transmit and receive so that the officer could always break in. Those have since been replaced by 700 MHz digital VRS that frankly sounds like crap.

Lastly, remember that CHP uses a custom microphone the toggles for simplex or repeater depending on whether it is pressed up or down. Now that there are really no manufacturers of low band equipment it is just a matter of time in the money before CHP goes to an 700/800MHz trunk system. Big mistake. Or they will switch to the statewide VHF system that Fish and Wildlife and Park Rangers use.

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mmckenna

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Kenwood still makes 100 watt low band radios. Not sure how much longer they'll keep it up, but they have a pretty good customer base. Last I looked, CHP was using Kenwood TK-690 mobiles. Kenwood is also still producing/selling low band repeaters and base stations. Since most of the other large companies have bailed on low band, I figure Kenwood has a pretty good market.
Still, I haven't seen Kenwood roll low band into their newer product lines, TK-5x10, NX-5x00, etc. I did ask the Kenwood guys at IWCE last year and they did say they were working on it, but not sure if that translates into "going to produce it".
 
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