Fort McCoy, Volk Field & Oxford Prison

[edge99]

I was just looking at a state map and noticed how close Fort McCoy, Volk Field & the Oxford Prison are to each other in westcentral Wisconsin. With all of these federal installations being in such a small area I am wondering why there aren't more reports on frequency use and activity.

 

[OpSec]

Prolly because there aren't many people who are "radio active" in that area. I've not seen anyone from that area post here, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. I've spent a lot of time up there, and I haven't seen a lot of home stations with visible antennas or a lot of vehicles with more than CB antennas.

 

[edmondcops]

I go camping in the Black River Falls area every summer, but haven't taken a scanner. The purpose of camping is to get away from that stuff for a couple of weeks. But maybe I'll take one this year and listen a time or two.

 

[bc780l]

Check:
Oxford: http://www.radioreference.com/modules.php?name=RR&sid=1418
FtMcCoy: http://www.radioreference.com/modules.php?name=RR&sid=5201
and: http://www.radioreference.com/modules.php?name=RR&aid=2594
Volk: http://www.radioreference.com/modules.php?name=RR&aid=2647

The new Ft McCoy trunking system clearly needs some talk groups. The others have not been updated for a while, so might be nice to camp out for a while, eh? I always liked the artillery going overhead when I was trying to do something else up there ...

 

[kc9fnm]

Another possibility is that McCoy, Volk and Oxford are three major employers up there. I don't know about you but there are many nights I get home from work and the last thing I want to do is listen to WORK.

As for Fort McCoy keep scanning, a few changes are coming in the near future.

 

[ar640ab]

Fort McCoy TRS

http://web.archive.org/web/19991011045241/www.monmouth.army.mil/bstrs/sites/mccoy.htm

According to the site above, there are two Fort McCoy TRS frequencies that haven't been identified yet.

 

[SCPD]

The only problem is finding the frequencies, especially a VHF military TRS. You have to scan the entire Mil LMR VHF (16x.xxxx-17x.xxxx) range and hope you hear a voice transmission, since you cannot search for for a license. I don't think anyone building this system will give us any info .
Is this system a pure P25 or mixed mode (analog and digital)? I will bet there will be some type of encryption either DES or AES.

 

[R8000]

Oxford Prison uses a 4 channel UHF smartnet system that's Astro.

Lower UHF band (403-430) stuff.

They use all Quantars , but with the tx combiner and unity gain antenna with downtilt, I doubt you'd hear them very far.

System was setup to cover the prison campus and not much further. Building penetration was the goal, and it works well for em.

Lots of SP stuff there. Stuff I had never seen before.