Douglas County Area Frequencies

[AWH4]

Hello everyone. I am new to Colorado and just recently moved to Douglas County, Highlands Ranch / Lone Tree area. I have South Metro Fire Rescue, CSP, Life Flight, programmed into my Uniden SDS200. I was wondering what other frequency are in my area that other people are listening to ? Seeing that I am fairly new to the area, I am open to suggestions on what to program into my scanner. What are my interests ? I am open to all suggestions. People that have been scanning this area for years usually know what frequency to program and which ones that are not worth programming. I know listening to law enforcement is out because of “E”, so we don’t need to discuss that. I live in an apartment, so an outside antenna is not an option, so I know this is going to limit me. I am going to buy a 800 MHZ Remtronix 830B Base Antenna from Scanner Master soon. Hoping it might help me compared to the antenna that came with the SDS200. Good idea or not ? Better back of the set antenna suggestion ? Any suggestions on getting started on what to listen to for my area will be appreciated. Thanks for all suggestions and to all that reply.

 

[KE0HIN]

I myself think CDOT snow plow operations are interesting to hear ad all of section 5 for metro section 9 for I 70 also there are a few i70 tac channels you should find in either clear creek or Cdot /CSP or statewide.
Asfor an antenna yes anything is better thn wht came with the radio, are you using sentinel to program? we can share files

 

[Spitfire8520]

Colorado has some great radio propagation thanks to the geography which allows you to hear sites, systems, and talkgroups from the surrounding counties if you are interested in listening to the stuff happening elsewhere. If this interests you, then I would suggest expanding your programming to cover a wide area to test the limits of areas you can monitor from your place.

If your monitoring interests are only for the immediate area, then there is not much else to listen to other than maybe stuff like the Douglas Weather (1091) for severe weather season, search and rescue (1001, 1003), maybe Colorado Parks and Wildlife (2372, 2373, 2378, 2379) if you are interested in stuff happening at the state parks, and Centennial Airport (3064) for SMFR response to airport calls. You may want to consider adding Douglas County Fire talkgroups as well since they cover the rest of the county that is not covered by SMFR.

The Colorado Mutual Aid talkgroups are worth having if there is a big incident happening when they are not being abused for insignificant operation, especially the Denver Metro color talkgroups, Metro Net, and the MACs. You might want to check the National Interoperability stuff for VFIRE21 thru VFIRE23 which are used for landing medical helicopters and initial attack wildland stuff. If wildland stuff interests you, then you will want to check out Colorado Federal for Forest Service and Pueblo Interagency Dispatch Center frequencies that covers initial attack wildland stuff that involves a federal agency.

 

[natedawg1604]

I would also add Aurora Fire & Falk EMS, from the Aurora Phase 2 Simulcast system. There is a caveat that you may have issues scanning on the Aurora system, if you're parked on 1 talkgroup it works much better; there are some technical limitations with how the SDS handles scanning of Phase 2 talkgroups, especially on a busy system like Aurora's.

Second, don't forget about Xcel energy, they have a P25 site that covers Douglas County and use radios pretty extensively.

Depending on your exact location and especially if you have an external antenna, you might be able to pickup the DIA simulcast system. (Sadly the coverage area for that system decreased when it converted to P25).

Also don't forget about railroads, you may be able to pick up some busy base station radios near you that BN or UP dispatchers frequently use. Also there may be a quite a bit of commercial stuff to hear on DMR & possibly some NXDN. Finally don't forget about airband, there could be a lot in your area to monitor.

 

[AWH4]

Thank you for all of the replies. I am using ARC software to program the scanner. I've had several scanners in my life time starting with the Uniden 100 XLT. Back then you didn't have software for programming the scanners, but now I couldn't think of programing manually on the keypad. I have found inter operational frequencies VFIRE21 - VFIRE23. What about the other ones VFIRE24 / VFIRE25 / VFIRE26 / VFIRE28 / VFIRE29 ? Any reason for leaving them out ? I will also add Aurora to the scanner. I should be able to receive them, they are not to far away, but with an indoor antenna, maybe not, but I'll try and see what happens. Excel energy on the P25 sounds good also. Never programed railroads, but there are trains in my area, so I will look into those frequencies also and see what it is like. This will be a good start. Again thanks to all for your recommendations

 

[Insulator]

Don't forget if you like monitoring Electric Utilities that in your area is Core Electric's TRBO system. They used to be called Intermountain Rural Electric Association. They have a big service territory in Douglas County, mountain areas and out east almost to the Limon area.
Insulator

 

[Spitfire8520]

I have found inter operational frequencies VFIRE21 - VFIRE23. What about the other ones VFIRE24 / VFIRE25 / VFIRE26 / VFIRE28 / VFIRE29 ? Any reason for leaving them out ? I will also add Aurora to the scanner. I should be able to receive them, they are not to far away, but with an indoor antenna, maybe not, but I'll try and see what happens.

You could program them in just in case, but they are not as commonly used because they are interstitial frequencies that overlap with VFIRE21, 22, and 23.

If you like being able to hear as much as possible, then I would encourage that you try out programming stuff that's further away just to see if you are able to hear them. A lot of heavy hitting sites with wide area radio coverage are located in the mountains, so there is a good chance that you can hear agencies from a couple of counties over. From your location, I would not be surprised if you could monitor agencies like West Metro (on Metro Area Radio Cooperative (MARC)), East Metro, Denver (on Denver), and even further stuff like Adams County (on Front Range Communications Consortium (FRCC)), Elbert County, Clear Creek County (law is not encrypted), Gilpin County (law is not encrypted), and maybe even Boulder County (law is not encrypted).

A lot of the Denver Metro area counties have an associated Wiki articles that contains useful monitoring information if you would like to browse those at Colorado Counties article.

Don't forget if you like monitoring Electric Utilities that in your area is Core Electric's TRBO system. They used to be called Intermountain Rural Electric Association. They have a big service territory in Douglas County, mountain areas and out east almost to the Limon area.
Insulator

If they are interesting in neighboring utilities. Highlands Ranch/Lone Tree are part of Xcel's service area.