Hurricane Hunting on HF

[MacombMonitor]

With the hurricane season approaching, I thought this would be of interest!

You can obtain a complete list of U.S. Coast Guard marine frequencies in the May 2006 issue of Monitoring Times Magazine. It's on page 52, under the Milcom section, by Larry Van Horn.

 

[bravo14]

Where do I find the magazine at? That would be a good thing to listen.

 

[MacombMonitor]

Where do I find the magazine at? That would be a good thing to listen.

Monitoring Times Magazine
http://www.monitoringtimes.com/

They offer a down-loadable version, or hard copy mailed to your house. It's also available at numerous magazine distributors/news stands.


Bill Crocker

 

[nexus]

keep in mind you don't need to buy the magazine to obtain these frequencies. All of that information is available on the internet if you google it.

Just try searching for Hurricane Hunter Frequencies. or Utility Frequencies. Now MT might have some updated info if the available websites haven't updated, but most freqs haven't changed.

 

[motomeso]

Speaking of Hurricanes, how are things in your town Nexus? Are things slowly starting to return to normal or will they never be the same?

Hopefully they rebuilt the McDonalds.

 

[nexus]

Speaking of Hurricanes, how are things in your town Nexus? Are things slowly starting to return to normal or will they never be the same?

Hopefully they rebuilt the McDonalds.

Things are moving very slowly. They're still arguing over FEMA flood zones and determining how new houses will be built. Some of the casinos have opened back up. There still is a long way to go. I've not seen any serious rebuilding yet. Mostly only houses and buildings that could be repaired have been worked on. The beaches are still mostly closed to the public.

There were 2 McDonalds over here heh. Only one was washed away. Any stores that could open back up have already opened up. There is progress but only in cleaning up and reopening roads/stores etc. It might be a few years before all of the neighborhoods that were destroyed be rebuilt. New problems dealing with HIGH CRIME in FEMA trailer parks are rampant. See FEMA ended up sticking all of the bad people with all of the good people and most if not all of the bad people are taking advantage. There is tons of theft and break in's, shootings and stuff occuring across the coast at the trailer parks.

Thanks for asking though.

 

[motomeso]

Thanks for asking though.

Thanks for the update, I am glad to hear that you aren't in one of those trailer parks. I imagine things must be really tough down there for the people devastated by Katrina even now after 8 months have passed.

 

[dkpierce]

This is a good source for up to date hurricane related frequencies.

http://www.ominous-valve.com/hurricne.txt

 

[ka3jjz]

Yes, that link - among others - exists on the Utility Monitoring wiki page. If anyone comes up with other useful sites, feel free to add them - that's what it's for. 73s Mike

 

[nexus]

VE3NSV:

Yeah I'm very thankful that the houses were not destroyed. Lost my job with the internet provider but now I work for a police department. It is still pretty difficult for people because as long as I've lived here storms never took THIS LONG to recover from. Then again they never did the level of distruction these did with 28 foot tidal surges.

As a side note, I wasn't dissing MT, I think MT is a great magazine, and I'd buy it if we had a book store opened again. All of them were destroyed. I use to buy it at the Barnes and Noble here. Just that info is online too.

 

[OpSec]

Sounds like the MS Nat'l Guard needs to head back in there and secure the place.

 

[fuzzymoto]

So what sort of range do these frequencies have?

I checked out the link (http://www.ominous-valve.com/hurricne.txt) and I was wondering if ANY of these will reach Pennsylvania?

Also...perhaps a dumb question but I also noticed the frequency ranges seem to be well above the 1300.0000 that my BR330T can tune in. What sort of receiver can tune in all the way up to the mentioned 26812.0 (highest freq mentioned)? How low would such a receiver be able to tune (my BR30T will go down .1Mhz)? I assume SSB would also be a necessity in such a receiver? Would these frequencies travel farther, i.e. to PA? I guess what I'm asking is what receiver gets that high a frequency and if I had it would I hear much in Pennsylvania??

Thanks

 

[eorange]

Also...perhaps a dumb question but I also noticed the frequency ranges seem to be well above the 1300.0000 that my BR330T can tune in. What sort of receiver can tune in all the way up to the mentioned 26812.0 (highest freq mentioned)?

HF frequencies range from a few hundred kHz to 30 MHz.

The convention for HF freqs is to list them in kHz, with the decimal point a few places to the right of where we're used to seeing them for MHz freqs.

So, 26812.0 kHz = 26.812 MHz, and
5732.0 kHz = 5.732 Mhz

And yes, depending on daily propagation conditions, you will have no problem hearing transmissions on these freqs. HF signals can propagate a long way. 5732 is one of my favorites, and I regularly hear Coast Guard aircraft checking in off the coast of Flordia and the Gulf Coast to CAMSLANT in Virginia.

Hope this helps.

 

[fuzzymoto]

I was just getting used to Mhz....it was the decimal place that fooled me. So the 490.0 they mention is really 0.4900Mhz? So my scanner CAN tune these. I get all sorts of foreign radio stations in the 6.0000 to 10.0000 ranges but I've never heard anything mentioned in the link for military, marine, air, uhrricane/weather... am I too far away, not listening in the right places/times or is it all on SSB?

I'll see if I hear anything on 5.7320 but mine rounds it up to 5.7300 (I'll have to play with that one)---perhaps I can't tune it in!!


Thanks....this whole HF, Khz, Mhz and meters thing still confounds me....

 

[eorange]

1 kilo Hz (kHz) = 1000 Hz
1 mega Hz (MHz) = 1,000,000 Hz

...and

1000.0 kHz = 1.000 MHz. Notice that by shifting the decimal point to the LEFT by 3 places, we've converted kHz to MHz. Remember this!

An HF listing of 5732.0 means 5732.0 kHz. So if we shift the decimal point to the LEFT by 3 places, the frequency is also represented at 5.732 MHz. Same exact frequency, but different units. It just so happens that scanners like to have their frequencies entered in MHz...so now you see that conversion is useful.

HF propagation is better at night than during the day because the sun no longer does bad things to the ionosphere that inhibit propagation. Also, most of the freqs listed use USB and not AM. Unfortunately, the BR330T does not support upper or lower sideband (aka SSB) - only AM and FM - so you won't be able to hear these HF transmissions with that scanner.

 

[fuzzymoto]

I get the decimal shift. What confused me is in HF they used a decimal place at the end of the number and didn't mention khz instead of Mhz. I guess once you've been doing this for a while you'd just know. For me I wasn't sure if it was 26.0000 or 26000.0000.

I was aware that the 330T doesn't do SSB (I wish it did). I am a little interested in the HF stuff, perhaps enough to try it out....but I'm still not sure what I'll hear or if I'd like it. It also looks like my 330T can't tune 5.372 without rounding it up to 5.7300 anyway...

I can't seem to set the step size to get it to do this so far...

 

[fuzzymoto]

I take it these are manual receivers and not scanners....i.e. can a receiver scan the range of frequencies including upper and lower SSB or is there too much noise? I assume you manually tune into freqs?

 

[eorange]

Correct. My VR-500 is my main handheld scanner with memories, priorities, etc. It also covers the HF range with USB/LSB, but I rarely scan those frequencies because of noise, plus I like to open the squelch because sometime the signals are faintly audible, but not enough to break the squelch.

I will put some key HF freqs in memory, and use memory to recall those freqs, but not scan those memories.

My Kenwood R-1000 has no memories - just a big VFO knob.

 

[fuzzymoto]

Sounds like fun assuming I pick up interesting stuff. No easy way to try it out I guess short of diving in and spending the $$ for a receiver and antenna. I'm not sure I'd like it but the military/aircraft/weather events stuff sounds like fun. What do you hear on your favorite freqs you save in memory?

 

[eorange]

The USAF Global High Freq System, COTHEN/USCG, and the HF nav freqs for oceanic flights.