Best freqs for St Louis Med helicopters?

[MarcInIllinois]

I'm stuck near Lindell and Whittier streets area (CWE?) for the next 4 days with a 396xt, and right near the major hospital complex at the east end of Forest Park. I have Arch RF-1 in there and get dispatch and the aircraft but it is also a 'birdie' channel I think as it has a lowlevel hiss and stays stuck on that channel every time it comes around.

I have 155.340 programmed but have heard nothing in 2 days, so my questions are : Is arch the only one to hear? Any way to get it to scan normally? and I thought 155.340 was the general incoming freq for transport/hospital comms?


thanks for any thoughts on this.

 

[muhockey86]

You're not going to hear much on the HEAR 155.340 channel. Cell phones are used to phone in patient reports for just about all ground transports, exception being no cell signal. The helicopters will switch over to the frequency being used by the ground ambulance for their report. Im not sure how the report gets from helicopter to hospital.

 

[N2JDS]

I hear patient reports all the time on HEAR 340. Maybe you are too close to the hospital, and the report is called 5-10 minutes away, and your antenna does not copy. But I've copied radio reports on my two way (HT1250) on 155.340 ( leave PL tone blank ) , many many times from 30 miles away. I assume from your point of reference, you may be at Barnes campus or Childrens. You should at least hear their outbound radio traffic. And unless you are in the basement, you should get plenty of traffic.

I have never heard of a helicopter crew giving patient reports via cell phone, ambulances do all the time.
Two other channels that are technically used for EMS and Hospital are 155.220 and 155.160

 

[ElGenio]

Do you know if this apply to St. Louis City EMS. I'm close to big Barnes but even closer to SLU hospital.

 

[scanman1958]

STLFD EMS uses cell phones for their reports. As does almost all ambulance services. In rural areas the HEAR radios are still used but the old MED radios (Channels 1 thru 8) are pretty much history. Except for Med 9 and 10 which are dispatch frequencies that are used in St Louis Metro, Kansas City and Chicago. I also believe there is a countywide fire dispatch near Bloomington, IL that uses Med 10 for fire dispatching. You should have no problem picking up some traffic on 155.340 as it is used quite a bit still.