Alabama state troopers

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KG4DRF

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It depends on if you are using base station or portable scanner. My Mom has a metal roof so we just got a mag-mount scanner antenna off walmart.com that gives good coverage. Pick up Huntsville/Decatur as well as B'ham/Jacksonville troopers. Biggest headache is that they all use the same frequencies just different pl tones(or leave tones on search mode to catch both). Another factor will be your elevation. We are on top of 1000+FT MTN so no blockage on receiving signal, except for their cheap state bought radios they use.
 

medic9351301

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really not much to hear lol
wrecks and traffic stops maybe a chase once in a while.
not really much talking on freqs i guess its mdts
 

KG4DRF

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IDK. Maybe for you but we hear steady traffic from them but as we hear both about 90% of North Alabama troopers and I would say 60 -70% of B'ham/Jacksonville post's traffic, have to lock out (Trooper) bank when something major going on locally here and troopers also busy.
 

KG4DRF

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If you have a full metal rooftop I would go with a mag-mount scanner antenna. If not metal would recommend asking on the antenna forum page to see what other antenna options they give.
 

KG4DRF

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Not sure. Have not seen anything posted on the radio system they use. Just know it is still analog. Guessing they decided to stay fully with it after experimenting with 800 trunking many years ago. Was surprised when we got my mother a new digital scanner that they were still using frequencies from 35 years ago.
 

AUGOLD

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I have a metal roof with a mag-mount multi-band antenna to my HP2, I pick up Opelika State 43, Alex City State 62 and Montgomery HQ 29, all Troop D. My former dispatch partner at Opelika PD is now with AST and is the Troop D PIO also. He initiated a chase at MP60 I-85 South in Opelika, Lee County, he chased this car down AL 51 to HWY 80 at the Lee Russell Co. line back onto AL 51S to Bullock County to outside Union Springs over 40 miles as the crow flies from the Opelika AST transmitter down some backcountry roads and I never lost the signal, it was a little weak at points but I could understand everything. My rig is about 17 miles as the crow flies from the transmitter for the Opelika Post, 30 miles from the Alex City transmitter and about 35 miles from the Montgomery HQ transmitter and I pick up all three sites fine.

Last night I picked up Troy/Pike County's AL Forestry VFD Fire Repeater on 453.1000 DCS 432 test paging all Pike County VHFs at least 55 miles away, Macon County uses the same frequency on it's AL Forestry UHF repeaters with 074 DCS on RX three repeaters I can't remember the TX DCS tones for the 4 Macon UHF VFD repeaters, one is in North Macon (actually just across the Lee County Line on Notasulga's water tank, two in central Macon on Tuskegee's water tank and one in West Macon in near Shorter. Pike Co has one county separating Macon from it, Bullock County.
 

CORN

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Your point is? You must be “Jim” from those milcomm email lists. He bragged about how far he could hear milcomms. Stay humble.
 

AUGOLD

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Your point is? You must be “Jim” from those milcomm email lists. He bragged about how far he could hear milcomms. Stay humble.
My name isn’t Jim, I know nothing about “milcomm email lists” the question was asked about antennas and picking up AST, I offered my own experience with my HP2 and a multi band mag mount antenna on my metal roof, to put a bit of perspective on what AST troop I have in my scan list, the distance from from my antenna to the different transmitters in Troop D and one experience of what kind of radio traffic I had personally heard and the distances in relation to the base transmitter and the distance the particular unit had traveled from the Opelika transmitter in relation to the position of where I am monitoring from so the OP can draw his own conclusions and with the locations he could possibly look into the terrain and distance in my particular area and compare it to his location and make an informed decision.

In no way am I bragging about anything only offering as much information to another user that they may find useful and do with this information as they please.

I worked in communications for a few years during my college years on a 800mhz Motorola Type 2 Smartzone system, I was studying journalism and I have an inquisitive mind so ever chance I got to interact with the person from the radio shop I did and I learned as much as possible about not only our system but others like at the time Auburn & Lee County’s VHF conventional system. I had the duty to patch OPD’s Events TG to LCSO’s Tac West VHF Repeater and to then called State Net 155.010 on Auburn University football home game days due to the multiple police officers from agencies across Alabama so they could all communicate with each other and Auburn PD’s Auburn University substation dispatchers.

I wanted to understand how all of these systems worked and I got a good education from the Motorola technician assigned to OPD’s maintenance contract.
Today I am occasionally called upon by local agencies on a conventional system that do not have a maintenance contract with any shops, these are poorly funded agencies in rural areas that do not have a large tax base to fund them very well and I do what I can in the scope of work I feel comfortable doing within my own capabilities and if it’s beyond my competency I refer them to call a radio shop that deals in whatever equipment they are using, some is a patchwork of different manufacturers and I do what I can voluntarily without pay to help these agencies out. Thankfully some of them have gotten grants to upgrade their equipment to modern equipment and systems like Mototrbo which I have no idea how they operate on a technical level only just the available information available online. It’s beyond my scope they have the funds to have a maintenance contract so I don’t worry about it. One agency in the past couple of years just installed a repeater for their municipal fire department and the chief had called me a couple of times to see if I could diagnose a problem and if I could I would if not I referred him to the Kenwood repair shop I know.

I do not brag about anything, I only offer my own experience if I have dealt with a similar situation and this is exactly what I did.
If you feel the need to tell people to “stay humble” you have offered zero help to the original posters question about their issues or questions and sir what exactly are you trying to accomplish play humble police?
 

KG4DRF

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My name isn’t Jim, I know nothing about “milcomm email lists” the question was asked about antennas and picking up AST, I offered my own experience with my HP2 and a multi band mag mount antenna on my metal roof, to put a bit of perspective on what AST troop I have in my scan list, the distance from from my antenna to the different transmitters in Troop D and one experience of what kind of radio traffic I had personally heard and the distances in relation to the base transmitter and the distance the particular unit had traveled from the Opelika transmitter in relation to the position of where I am monitoring from so the OP can draw his own conclusions and with the locations he could possibly look into the terrain and distance in my particular area and compare it to his location and make an informed decision.

In no way am I bragging about anything only offering as much information to another user that they may find useful and do with this information as they please.

I worked in communications for a few years during my college years on a 800mhz Motorola Type 2 Smartzone system, I was studying journalism and I have an inquisitive mind so ever chance I got to interact with the person from the radio shop I did and I learned as much as possible about not only our system but others like at the time Auburn & Lee County’s VHF conventional system. I had the duty to patch OPD’s Events TG to LCSO’s Tac West VHF Repeater and to then called State Net 155.010 on Auburn University football home game days due to the multiple police officers from agencies across Alabama so they could all communicate with each other and Auburn PD’s Auburn University substation dispatchers.

I wanted to understand how all of these systems worked and I got a good education from the Motorola technician assigned to OPD’s maintenance contract.
Today I am occasionally called upon by local agencies on a conventional system that do not have a maintenance contract with any shops, these are poorly funded agencies in rural areas that do not have a large tax base to fund them very well and I do what I can in the scope of work I feel comfortable doing within my own capabilities and if it’s beyond my competency I refer them to call a radio shop that deals in whatever equipment they are using, some is a patchwork of different manufacturers and I do what I can voluntarily without pay to help these agencies out. Thankfully some of them have gotten grants to upgrade their equipment to modern equipment and systems like Mototrbo which I have no idea how they operate on a technical level only just the available information available online. It’s beyond my scope they have the funds to have a maintenance contract so I don’t worry about it. One agency in the past couple of years just installed a repeater for their municipal fire department and the chief had called me a couple of times to see if I could diagnose a problem and if I could I would if not I referred him to the Kenwood repair shop I know.

I do not brag about anything, I only offer my own experience if I have dealt with a similar situation and this is exactly what I did.
If you feel the need to tell people to “stay humble” you have offered zero help to the original posters question about their issues or questions and sir what exactly are you trying to accomplish play humble police?
I Agree. That post did nothing to address the original question and offered no help to the poster.
As stated in my previous post on users question, antenna type and location makes all the difference in what a user can and cannot hear as well as how far away you can hear them from. Took me a lot of trial and error 35 years ago(before internet) to figure out what was needed(without breaking the bank account) to get the most out of our scanners.
 

AUGOLD

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Notasulga
KG4DRF my only intentions were to what worked for me and an example of one situation that a Trooper in the Post I monitor was involved in and locations and distance for reference if the OP is so inclined he or she could look at the area I described and compare it to the area they’re operating in and make an educated conclusion with information from the other posts and mine. I offered another example of something I’m sure was just skip and I should have said that but looking at the data and ERP of the transmitter used it may not have been skip. I remember years ago when I still carried a Motorola Minitor 2 we were a good 60 miles away from our transmitter and it was a stormy afternoon and my Minitor 2 activated and it picked up the call clear as if I was 5 miles from the transmitter. It was a call for lines down and a transformer on fire. After the original call went out I didn’t pick up another word until we got about 35 miles from the transmitter. We traveled to Tuscaloosa for a journalism awards banquet at UA, it was April in Alabama we missed the path of a tornado crossing HWY 31 by minutes just stopping to get gas and a drink about 20 miles south of Tuscaloosa. I’m sure the weather played the role in keeping the signal from going out into space and kept it going to activate that old Minitor 2 on the dash of my car. Just another experience I have had.
 

KG4DRF

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I do the same in describing what we use with my mom's scanner. You have so many out there in scanner listening the if you aren't using the most expensive scanner and antenna, then we have no clue as to what we are talking about. I have helped a few on here with the ws1040 by telling them in plain language how to manually program it instead of the technobabble that I see so many try to speak.
PS, the useless post comment was about the one first responding to your original post.
 
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