jbaime said:
I am new to listening to air traffic but it's pretty cool. So forgive the ignorant question from a newbie. What can you hear on those higher frequencies? Are they longer range. Do you need special equipment to hear them, like a different kind of antenna??? They seem to be duplicates of the lower air traffic frequencies. Has anyone out there listened to them and what may you have heard? Some clairification would be great!
Jon
No genuine questions from a newbie should be considered ignorant.....
You will hear mostly military aircraft communications.
No, if anything they tend to be shorter range but still line of sight.
Only special equipment is a scanner capable of operating on AM in that band (there are some WBFM and NFM signals used but relatively few and these aren't your "mainstream" monitoring). An aerial designed for the band will help but you will have limited success with a "rubber duck". The ground plane aerial discussed in the antenna section of the board can easily be made to dimensions suitable for milair (and will work on milair if designed for VHF anyway).
Some are duplicates but not all.The duplication tends to be on airfield operations frequencies such as Tower, RADAR etc. Most Combat Air Patrol and mission comms will be in the UHF milair band and not VHF civil band so as not to "hog" the relatively few civil channels available.
Yes, I listen daily with quite a few radios and hear all sorts of military traffic, transports about their normal business, overflights of US aircraft between CONUS and Europe, air to air refuelling, Forward Air Control etc etc.
