Any Listeners In Huntsville for TDCJ?

[twobytwo]

I noticed some new licenses for Walker County, seems there is a repeater (seperate license) for each prison unit. Also if any units share repeaters and what they are. The info in the db seems to be outdated Wondering if this can be confirmed. Also do units in Houston Co, Madison Co, and Anderson Co within radio range of units in Walker Co?

 

[intuity]

From what I recall, each unit has its own repeater that all of the unit-local handhelds use. For several years I lived outside of New Waverly near Phelps, and I easily could pick up Wynne, Ellis, Hunt, Byrd, and Goree, as well as Polunsky, with a Motorola Spectra that I had programmed with all of the frequencies. Reception was generally better at night for the further units like Polunsky, on a 1/4 wave whip that I mounted on top of a power pole outside of my shack, about 30' AGL but I could easily pick up the closer units day and night using a 5/8 wave mag-mount whip stuck to the side of my shack on a piece of sheet steel.

I would suggest scanning around 150-158 mhz with a scanner to see what you can find, that yielded most of the frequencies I programmed; they aren't hard to find.

 

[twobytwo]

Thanks for the reply,intuity. I was programming the units to keep in the scanner for future use when needed.

 

[rattlerbb01]

From what I recall, each unit has its own repeater that all of the unit-local handhelds use. For several years I lived outside of New Waverly near Phelps, and I easily could pick up Wynne, Ellis, Hunt, Byrd, and Goree, as well as Polunsky, with a Motorola Spectra that I had programmed with all of the frequencies. Reception was generally better at night for the further units like Polunsky, on a 1/4 wave whip that I mounted on top of a power pole outside of my shack, about 30' AGL but I could easily pick up the closer units day and night using a 5/8 wave mag-mount whip stuck to the side of my shack on a piece of sheet steel.

I would suggest scanning around 150-158 mhz with a scanner to see what you can find, that yielded most of the frequencies I programmed; they aren't hard to find.

When I worked in the Huntsville area from 02-05, the building operations were all on VHF simplex except for Estelle High Security and Holiday. Estelle was 153.755, Ellis on 154.085, Goree on 154.115, Wynne on 153.785, and the Walls was on something different in the 151’s. Channel 1 (Huntsville Rept) was used for the city units in the field and Channel 2 (Ferguson Rept) was used by the units near the Trinity River for field ops. If you were going on a run, you used Ch 5 Common.
Nowadays it appears that they finally wised up and out repeaters on every unit for building security. The difference communicating up and down the hall in Estelle and Ferguson with simplex VHF and then going to the high security unit or Luther when it had its own repeater was night and day. The north end of the big units could not talk to the south end. Messages were relayed by the mobile radios in the control picket. It sucked. Luther’s repeater gave us clear comms throughout the property.