CSPD helicopter and a few misc questions?

[joef753]

I'm pretty new to all of this, picked up a Pro96 in Deceember and have been slowly programming channels in from the database using Win96. Mostly interesed in the police, fire, and medical.

On weekends, for example 30 minutes ago, I often hear/see a helo over the north end of town (Academy & Union). Does anyone know how they are identified on the radio, or even if it uses the same freqs used as by ground units? It's too quiet to be mil, flying low and using a spotlight on the street. Must be a "ghetto bird"

Also, what happened to AMR? I had a bank with all four listed under for CS, and sometime in the past week or so they have all gone to static?

One more if y'all are patient, why do so many officers use different phonetics for spelling names? I thought alpha bravo and so forth were "standard"?

Oh, and thanks to those who advised getting the -96.

 

[AngelFire91]

The helicopter uses the same Trunked Talkgroups. They have an ASTRO Spectra in the Chopper just like the cars do. They usally have it scanning all the CSPD Talkgroups just to get a feel for what is going on across the city and if they need to start heading to a part of town. occasionally you will hear on the talkgroups the dispatcher say something along the lines of "Air 1, Sand 1." Telling Air 1(the helo) to go to the Sand 1 talkgroup then once they get to Sand 1 and call up, the dispatcher over there will tell them where to go and whats going on. They really just sit on all the channels and wait for something to happen all while flying around.

If you want to hear non-PD related communications for the Helo like to air traffic conrol you can monitor 124.0mhz the chopper will sit on that for traffic avoidance and such. 124.0 is C/S Departure if they are comming in to get fuel or departing out over the city most communications will be on.

134.45 Clearence
119.9 Tower
124.0 Departure

Their callsign to air traffic control is 196, 197, or 198 PD (Papa, Delta) depending on which Helo they are using that day. The helicopters are Bell OH-58C's donated to the CSPD from the Army.

As far as the Standard phonetics, I have no clue why different PD's use different ones, I would think it's just an old custom to use whats always been used. but for peace of mind International standard Phonetics is Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc...

Hop this helps,
Kevin