Grand Strand Monitoring Notes

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brian

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I spent last week vacationing on the south end of the Grand Strand, and thanks to a tolerant and patient family, I was afforded plenty of good scanning time. There are so many interesting things to listen to down there. Here are some observations:

- 800, 800, 800 - Pretty much all public safety in Horry, Georgetown, Williamsburg, Marion, Florence, are on 800. You must have a good (preferrably several) trunk-tracking radio for the area.

- For my location between Murrells Inlet and Pawley's Island, the "new" site for 3813 in the southern part of Horry County makes monitoring that system much more pleasant. Likewise, Palmetto 800 Site 39 (Georgetown Simulcast) in that same location in Burgess carries SCHP and Georgetown comms well into Myrtle Beach proper. I never heard a peep from Site 38 Conway or Site 61 North Myrtle Beach from my location.

- The Horry County TRS shares several frequencies with Beaufort County's analog TRS. Several times during the week, those frequencies were not monitorable because of interference from Beaufort County. Likewise, 857.9625 is an active channel on both 3813 and Palmetto 800 Site 9 (Charleston Simulcast) and was regularly scratchy.

- Palmetto 800 sites 38 (Conway) and 51 (Jasper) share a primary control channel frequency (868.8625). A number of times, I thought I was receiving the Conway site, but when I noted Jasper County talkgroups showing up with the wildcard, I discovered I was in fact receiving site 51.

- The Charleston County analog system is still on the air (859.2375, 2822) but with only one available voice channel, you won't hear much of anything on it anymore. The McClellanville site of Palmetto P25 was monitorable from my location.

- MB Communication's SMR TRSs in Georgtown and Surfside are still active, as is the Waccamaw Wireless system in Garden City. I confirmed active control channels for those three systems.

- The Myrtle Beach TRS seemed to be off the air now, I was not able to find a control channel from my location at any point during the week.

- Palmetto 800 site 26 Awendaw was again a black hole of traffic through northern Charleston Co. No SCHP, no Utilities, no Berkeley County, nothing was heard during my 45 minutes of monitoring the site twice during the week.

- VHF is still alive with Fire Department tone-outs, so that's good news for those using 2M rigs.

- I have lists of active but as-yet unidentified talkgroups for Horry County TRS, SC Public Service Authority TRS and the three SMR systems that I will soon post to the wiki. Others who visit or are local can perhaps help identify their uses.

- I captured many site aliases for the SC PSA system on the trip. I will update the database with those soon.

- US Coast Guard was active on Marine 21A (157.050 Analog) and 413.000 (P25). It seemed like the field units on 413.000 were encrypted while the transmissions from the base were not. Information about the use of that and other frequencies is welcome.

- I enjoyed hearing activity on the MilAir band from Shaw AFB on Thursday.

Comments and follow-ups are welcome.
 

SCPD

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Myrtle Beach Trip of Brians

Sound like you had a fun trip! I have not been to Myrtle since the Hwy 31 fire and I went back for a mini vacation Monday and Tuesday. i took my FT-60 and my XTS2500. The Horry fire and Rescue was on 800 simulcasting the dispatch channel on 154.400. I listened to that some and heard some of the different Fire/Rescue Tac channels. On Palmetto 800 I locked into the Georgetown Simulcast and picked up various HP channels in the area. The FT-60 was a sub boat anchor. Heard a few of the nearby cleaning crews, etc. FCC database good for verification of who was what. Interesting noted is that someone is sellin HYT portables at the beach as I saw several out and about. I did not hear any ham activity on the beachfront at 40ft Enjoyed your report!
 

bruthru

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Mount Sidney VA
Thanks

Going to Myrtle Beach on vacation the first part of August.Hope to do some scanning while I'm there.Been scanning off and on for the last few years but all the digital stuff is slowly knocking me out of it.

Thanks for the info.
 

fpo701

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Thanks for the info. I'll be down in 4 Weeks, 17 Hours, 17 Minutes, 31 Seconds (but who's counting).

I'd love to know why Myrtle Beach fire always says "standby for emergency traffic" before setting off tones. Isn't the obnoxiously loud tone notification enough that there's emergency traffic?
 
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