How do I find out some of the Federal frequencies?

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k9-cop

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Is there a web site or does anyone have a list of Federal Frequencies. I am looking for BLM, Forest Service, etc...... or any other ones people would like to share. UHF and VHF.
 

loumaag

Silent Key - Aug 2014
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k9-cop said:
Is there a web site or does anyone have a list of Federal Frequencies. I am looking for BLM, Forest Service, etc...... or any other ones people would like to share. UHF and VHF.
You can start by looking at the appropriate place in the RR Wiki. There are more and some local to each area can be found in the appropriate pages in the database (link above).
 

kd7rto

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Bountiful, Ut
My question is if there are new nationwide frequency lists for the various alphabet soup agencies? Since all of them (except Customs) have gone to P-25 in my area, most of the old frequencies have gone silent. The US Marshall's Service, for example, was very active on 163.2, but now I hear nothing.

Frequencies I am now hearing P-25 on (almost all encrypted) are: 143.1125, 163.7, 163.95, 165.2875 (BATF), 166.1375, 167.1625, 167.2125, 167.3125, 167.3375, 167.3625, 167.4625, 167.4875, 167.7125, 167.7375, 167.7625, 167.9625, 168.825, 168.875, 168.925, 170.7, 170.675, 170.75, 171.0125, 171.9625, 172.9, 407.725, 417.7625, 418.1625, 418.5625, and 418.9625.
 

SCPD

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Beware that a lot of sites have a good portion of misinformation about NPS, USFS, BLM, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife frequencies. For example in the Utah "forestry" listing they show 168.550 as "NIIMS initial attack" or something similar and "NIIMS air to ground" for 167.950. 168.550 is actually smokejumper tactical and used also for incident calling and 167.950 is the BLM's air to ground and is officially listed as "Air Tactics 5" nationwide. For southern California and Arizona there is fairly good information in the "Scannerstuff" directories.

See http://www.scannerstuff.com

Around 1981 or 1982 President Reagan signed an order and classified frequency infomation for all federal agencies. Bob Grove had just published a directory in 1980 that listed information for all the agencies in a very cryptic manner (abbreaviations without any vowels, e.g. scnnrstff for scannerstuff) and I"ve used it to begin some searches for frequency use. It is long out of print and the infomation is approaching 30 years old so it usefulness is being diminshed every day.

Another good source for NPS, USFS, etc. was in the back of the Police Call books. Myself and many others were able to track down a lot of infomation on these agencies and have Gene Hughes include it in his books. But Gene hung it up as far as publishing Police Call and the RR database has not caught up with what he had in those books. Additionally there have been a lot of changes in Federal frequency use after the requirement for the Feds to switch to narrowband on 1/2005. Some of that Police Call info is now invalid, but none the less is a good starting point. Police call had a great list showing the overall allocation of frequencies by agency and this was usefull when starting a search, keeping in mind that local exceptions to this nationwide allocation exist in many places.

Google searches can result in some good information also, but often lead you to sites where the people just don't understand the subject matter and they list all kinds of repeater input frequencies with notations like "Rangers" and "Operations" which don't accurately describe the use of the frequency. Repeater input frequenices are OK but if you don't realize that they aren't the output, you may not ever hear anything on them unless you are very close to the mobiles or bases transmitting on them, and you may not hear the other side of the conversation because you don't know what the output frequency is. One trick I have used is to find federal frequencies is to take the list of frequency allocations in the old Police Calls and insert a frequency in a Google search. Try putting in 168.625, the national natural resource Air Guard, in a Google search. You would be surprised at the results. Then try other typical USFS and BLM frequenies such as 169.775, 169.400, 171.475, and 168.775, for example, and the results can be very interesting.

Websites like this are very valuable for trading what we each find and getting it into the database. I hope to make a lot of submissions to it using the information I have and doing so this winter if time allows. Some of the sources I had as a retired USFS employee have now dried up as the information is being released on a "official use only - need to know basis only" manner and former co-workers of mine cannot run me copies of the stuff. Additionally many of my former co-workers are retiring just like I did. The bottom line is that federal frequency information is getting harder to come by and that is the intention of the federal government, like it or agree with that or not.
 
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