Heard on FRS. What was it?

[k9rzz]

So, I was in the wrenching on the car in the garage with the scanner on in the background, when I hear something like: " ... red over black semi truck, turning right on 35th street, two Arabic women sitting on porch at 37th st, .... , UPS truck parked on side of road 40th street, ... ". He faded out, then came back again with similar transmissions describing what he saw, but now he was on a major cross street going west instead of north. Freq. was 462.6375Mhz. I could hear him just over 1/2 mile away and when he let up on the mic., it sounded like a typical FRS walke talkie with the silly roger beep.

The only thing that comes to mind as to what this might be would be the Google Maps car, but why would they be doing something like that?

Other ideas??

 

[KampingAnthony1AolCo]

With the FRS god knows who it might be. It could be cops for all you know.

 

[WB4CS]

Maybe someone that was bored (or a kid) that was riding around in a car talking to themselves?

I've heard some weird stuff on FRS before. But nothing is more annoying than a pair of kids with some FRS radios that just key/unkey over and over and over so they can hear that stupid roger beep, or use the "call" function over and over just to make noise.

Bad enough when you hear someone on the ham bands with a chinacrap Baofang with the roger beep on. I usually tell them, "When you figure out how to turn off that stupid roger beep, I'll be glad to talk to you." Elitist I know, but that's how I roll

 

[signal500]

Heard on FRS. What was it?

So, I was in the wrenching on the car in the garage with the scanner on in the background, when I hear something like: " ... red over black semi truck, turning right on 35th street, two Arabic women sitting on porch at 37th st, .... , UPS truck parked on side of road 40th street, ... ". He faded out, then came back again with similar transmissions describing what he saw, but now he was on a major cross street going west instead of north. Freq. was 462.6375Mhz. I could hear him just over 1/2 mile away and when he let up on the mic., it sounded like a typical FRS walke talkie with the silly roger beep.

The only thing that comes to mind as to what this might be would be the Google Maps car, but why would they be doing something like that?

Other ideas??

Sounds like a private detective agency doing surveillance using FRS radios. I have heard the same thing many times over the years on FRS / GMRS / MURS frequencies.

 

[MeddleMan]

I like the Roger beep

I think you may have heard a neighborhood watch station.

 

[k9rzz]

Good suggestion, but he wasn't on residential streets, they were main thoroughfares (4 lanes with median). Once he got out of range, that was it. Gone. That's why I thought of Google maps car - corroborating what's going into the camera with what he sees. Very weird.

 

[Hatchett]

I would say radio range testing. AKA real world (ground truth) product testing.

They probably have a couple example receive sites/radios running while a mobile runs around the city driving away, and towards the example receive sites testing how far they can drive before they drop out.

You have the location and a piece of ancillary information to test intelligibility.

I have heard some business band radio company representatives doing that exact same thing when a local company was having coverage issues in the area around 20 years ago. But in this case I would say it was product testing for a product that will hit the shelves soon.

May have even been the FCC testing the usable range for different wattage levels on the FRS frequencies in the city environment in preparation for revising FRS/GMRS power levels.

 

[DaveNF2G]

I heard someone on a local 2 meter repeater the other day with MDC1200 squawks at the end of each transmission. He mentioned that he had just acquired the radio and wanted to know how to turn off the feature. Sometimes such noises cannot be helped (at least temporarily).