162.6125 MHz

[Spleen]

I thought this was listed as the Capitol Repeater, but I'm hearing fire/EMS dispatches to Baltimore City and County locations....they have some sort of sharing arrangement going now?

 

[doctordave]

Not getting any of this in Northern Balt Co....still copying Balt Co/City alerts on that freq?

 

[Spleen]

Just heard a DC txmission that is telling all units to switch back to channel whatever for "the event in the Capitol", and now hearing engines calling in that their back in their respective houses...a dispatch just went out to an address that was entirely unfamiliar...I'll turn on the vox and see if I can record some dispatches tonight....but this afternoon, a lot of the addresses were definitely Baltimore County and at least one inside the City line.

 

[Spleen]

Just now, the Capitol Repeater dispatcher and the EMS/Fire folks are walking all over each other. Right after the Capitol dispatcher stopped talking, an EMS dispatch went out for a hazcon because of a accident off of York Road...

 

[doctordave]

Peculiar. I understand (from the SCAN-DC listserv) that a drill was planned for tonight at the FBI HQ. Maybe the USCP are field testing various comm patches into other jurisdictions? I have never before heard non-USCP transmissions on that particular freq.

 

[Spleen]

Just dispatched for an OD to 9404 Belair Road.

Engine 441 (Hereford) just reported back in station. This is definitely Baltimore County (at least)-related transmissions.

 

[doctordave]

Strange....still nothing from my location....are you monitoring from Balt City?

 

[Spleen]

Yes...Mt. Vernon neighborhood, can almost spit on The Belvedere from here (and wish I could put an antenna on top of it).

 

[doctordave]

Can you capture a PL tone on the transmissions? Anything like this on the other USCP freqs?

 

[Spleen]

Hafta turn off RecAll to use the CTCSS decoder....I'll post the .mp3 here in the meantime...

 

[Spleen]

No PL from the "local" transmissions. Decoder does work, because it was picking up the proper PL from the Capitol repeater..

 

[ka3jjz]

I'm hearing it too- not real strong, but then on indoor antennas, what do you expect? There's a CW ID on it, too. I don't hold out any hope that it's a callsign that can be searched on the FCC db, tho...I'm going to listen to the traffic in a bit (it's been on all morning) and see what I got.

73s Mike

 

[TinEar]

Record the CW for me Mike if you get a chance.

 

[ka3jjz]

Record the CW for me Mike if you get a chance.

Yep, I got at least part of it; evidently they're using either a remote base or seperate repeater to do this simulcast, and they don't have the audio levels for the IDer quite right; I think only a couple of letters actually came out. 36 hours with no sleep doesn't make for a very good way to concentrate on something so fleeting.

However, I did notice that the traffic this morning was all Capitol related; there was absoletely nothing for Baltimore city or county. I'm wondering if someone is getting a little intermod mixing in with this repeater. I'm going to listen to it a bit more tomorrow and see what develops.

73s from a sleepy editor....Mike

 

[doctordave]

Speaking of USCP - NINN is reporting that several packages w/ suspicious white powder were located within the Capital Building tonight- and this is creating quite a stir. These sorts of things happen frequently (a handful of times per week in MD alone), so it may turn out to be quite benign.

 

[Spleen]

I knocked it down 2.5 KHz and got a minute increase in quality....it's a relatively broadband signal though....in this attachment, the Morse occurs at the 4:06 point, but ka3jjz is on the money re: the crappy quality of the ID, I can't make heads or tails of it without some way to slow down the playback...

 

[TinEar]

We've got a problem. The Morse is sent twice during that recording. The first time at 29 seconds and the second at 4 minutes, 6 seconds into the recording. Both times the callsign is clearly sent as KGD238. The problem is that the FCC database says there is no such callsign. I'm positive of what was sent so....either it's a new callsign that hasn't made it into the database yet and that should never happen...or they made a mistake when they set up the Morse broadcast by plugging in an incorrect number or letter. That's a better possibility since we've seen that happen a few times.

 

[ericcarlson]

Both times the callsign is clearly sent as KGD238. The problem is that the FCC database says there is no such callsign.

The FCC database does not have federal licenses in it. A Google search shows that callsign is associated with the US Capitol Police.

-Eric

 

[TinEar]

Very good Eric. Now, we need to figure why a Capitol Police callsign was transmitted in the midst of a fire dispatch channel. Or perhaps it wasn't. I'm assuming the above traffic is intermod and, as we know, intermod could mix several signals in a big stew that shows up as this did - especially since the above reports indicate several different public safety services were heard. Give us more of this stuff Spleen and Mike and whomever can hear it.

 

[Spleen]

Not much chance to monitor today...turned it on about 1900 and grabbed this....recorded as a .wav file this time in case one of y'all wanna run it through a PL or CW decoder...

I think I might fire up the Shoutcast tonight and let it run, so you guys can listen/record without tying up a radio. Most likely it will run until midnight or so, be down for a couple of hours while I run Far Cry, then I'll pop it back on before I crash.

http://66.93.55.167:8000/listen.pls