Illinois Low Band Use?

[Awesomeman92]

I know IEMA maintains their low band system statewide, and DuPage County maintains low band for OHSEM as a backup. However, there are still many counties and cities that maintain their licenses for 39.500 and the other interop low band channels that ISP obviously hasn't used in years. Does anyone know if there is any actual use of these frequencies anymore, or are there 55 counties and cities in Illinois that just never got around to deleting the frequencies from their licenses?

I came into scanning right around when ISP moved everyone to SC21 so I never got to experience the "fun" of ISP low band. From what I read when conditions were up 39.500 and 42.500 made for some good listening.

 

[RoninJoliet]

Being a old man scanning forever the "low band " was really unpredictable, in the summer months the skip was fantastic at times .... I do miss it but now the ISP districts are heard so well I wouldn't trade it... I could hardly ever hear the mobiles on car to car so now it's a real treat with Starcom

 

[N9JIG]

AFAIK the last county that used 39.50 for dispatch on a regular basis in northern IL was Ford County, this would have been some 25 years ago or so.

The towns in Kendall County used 39.50 and 39.40 the last time I was thru there about 6 or 7 years ago for C-C and backup.

Grundy County still had occasional 45.xx channels in use up til about 10 years ago but I suspect that is all gone by now.

Macoupin County communities still had low band in use at least until around 2012 or so, but I haven't been thru there since then.

I used to have an old ISP MoTrac control head with the old "Sheriff" switch on it but was made a crazy offer on it years ago by a guy restoring an ISP car and took the money. It paid for a pair of new BC780XLT's at the time. The "Sheriff" switch allowed the radio to listen to 39.50 and transmit on 42.50, county and local cars would have the reverse so that they could communicate cross-band and remain on their licensed freqs.

If anyone has pictures on these ISP radios with the Sheriff switch please share, I wish I thought to save one.

 

[VASCAR2]

The last low band frequencies used in southeastern Illinois was low band point to point on 39.46. With consolidation of the ISP district communications I think they pretty much discontinued using 39.46. When I retired in 2009 ISP still did their daily fatality check on 39.46 or 155.370 (High Band Point to Point). Hillsboro/Montgomery County kept their low band licenses up until I retired. I recently checked and they have dropped their low band licenses. A lot of inter agency communications are handled through LEADS/NCIC messaging or telephone.

The Secretary State Police kept their low band mobiles several years after ISP discontinued use of low band. There are still a few oil field companies who use low band in southern Illinois.

I can remember listening to the California Highway Patrol San Fransisco bay bridge radio traffic as well as CHP from Bakersfield, Ca. Many times you could hear the mobiles as well as the base stations on simplex because of the skip.

We used to get skip from Louisiana frequently prior to strong thunderstorms in the summer. I can also remember getting skip from Massachusetts State Police low band. Some Troopers I know went to S&W for Armorers school and were surprised to hear Mass. State Police on their District low band frequencies.

 

[sgtmatt]

I have family in the Sterling/Rock Falls area, and back in the Low band days for D1 42.520 42.500 you could only here dispatch, you might get lucky if a trooper came within like a mile of you. But where my Grandfather was located in Sterling he was quite a ways from the D1 Post so you manly got the dispatcher unless someone wound up using ISPERN.

 

[VASCAR2]

Many of the low band district frequencies were duplex where the mobile transmitted on one frequency and a different frequency for the base. District 12 used 42.52 for the base and 42.88 for the mobiles IIRC. I think early on the mobiles would switch to 42.52 for car to car traffic commonly called 3 way. This was prior to the use of 42.50 for car to car traffic. Indiana State Police operated the same way on 42.42 for the base and 42.26 for the mobiles. Every district in Indiana used the same frequency except for maybe the Indiana Toll Road. Indiana used three way for decades until they finally got a car to car frequency and radios which could scan multiple frequencies.



Back in the days prior to computer systems for NCIC or LEADS (IDATS in Indiana) there wasn’t near as much radio traffic. Indiana still had trouble with interference from skip and distant district interference.

 

[FFPM571]

IDOC Transport vans and Parole officers still have Low band radios in thier vehicles. I just saw a Ford transit with the new graphics package with a ball mount on the side and a Black 2021 Charger with a base mounted NMO mount low band. So there has to be a reason that current vehicles are still having radios installed

 

[officerdave]

we ran low band on 31.00 simplex for years. At night in the Summer, I could sit in one of our parking lots and listen to Tennessee State Parks , if skip was active. Giant tune poles on 31.00 until we went to VHF High Band and then 7/800.

 

[FFPM571]

we ran low band on 31.00 simplex for years. At night in the Summer, I could sit in one of our parking lots and listen to Tennessee State Parks , if skip was active. Giant tune poles on 31.00 until we went to VHF High Band and then 7/800.

DuPage Co FPD ..... I remember hearing South Carolina on Dist 2 Low band a few times early in the summer mornings on a Crystal Regency scanner

 

[werinshades]

ISP District 3 (North burbs) was on 42.56, District 4 (South burbs) were on 42.34, when ISP took over Chicago Expressways and District-Chicago was created, they used 42.66, then went to the EDACS system, then to SC 21.

 

[Awesomeman92]

ISP District 3 (North burbs) was on 42.56, District 4 (South burbs) were on 42.34, when ISP took over Chicago Expressways and District-Chicago was created, they used 42.66, then went to the EDACS system, then to SC 21.

Was D15 ever regularly on low band? I vaguely remember as a kid seeing cars at the former toll booth on westbound 90 just past 53/290 with low band whips on them, but with D15 covering so many different districts it could've been for mutual aid and probably was at that point since this would've been between the late 90's and mid 2000's roughly. They would've been on 800 conventional by then.

 

[werinshades]

Was D15 ever regularly on low band? I vaguely remember as a kid seeing cars at the former toll booth on westbound 90 just past 53/290 with low band whips on them, but with D15 covering so many different districts it could've been for mutual aid and probably was at that point since this would've been between the late 90's and mid 2000's roughly. They would've been on 800 conventional by then.

The tollway purchased an analog 800Mhz. system before Starcom and don't recall them on low band.

 

[N9JIG]

Was D15 ever regularly on low band? I vaguely remember as a kid seeing cars at the former toll booth on westbound 90 just past 53/290 with low band whips on them, but with D15 covering so many different districts it could've been for mutual aid and probably was at that point since this would've been between the late 90's and mid 2000's roughly. They would've been on 800 conventional by then.

Before StarCom21 they had their own 800 MHz. analog linear repeater system. It was unusual in that there were 4 Zones for both Patrol and Maintenance. The two North Zones shared a pair of repeater outputs that had a common repeater input. Each output had several different towers to provide coverage all along the road.

Before this 800 system they operated on 453 MHz. repeaters. I bought an old GE PE portable that had been a Tollway radio that was surplussed after the switch to 800. I think (but am not sure) that the UHF system had a fairly similar arrangement to the 800.

Before the UHF system they could have been on lowband, either 42.66 or perhaps even 42.50 when it was still the main ISP channel statewide. That was before I started listening to them, I started when they were still on 453.xxx during the 1970's.

During the UHF days District 15 used 42.66 as the Car to Car channel and for Toll Evasion details. They had low band radios with all the ISP district channels in northern IL in them (ISP Districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 16), the districts in which tollways were located. Of course they also had 42.50 in these radios.

After the switch to 800 analog they removed the low band radios from most of the District 15 cars and used 155.925 for their C-C and details as well as a few other VHF channels (154.650 was one). These radios also had the local ISP District's Highband channels in them as well, replacing the lowband for that purpose.

Later on 42.66 was used by ISP District 4 as their "Expressway Channel" (LF3) when ISP took over the Chicago area expressways (District 3 used 42.88 for this) and kept 42.34 as the LF1 (42.56 for District 3) until the EDACS system came around and that pretty much killed off lowband for ISP in what became District Chicago when 3 & 4 merged.

As an aside, that was actually the second time Districts 3 and 4 had been merged. During the late 1970's into the early 80's 3 and 4 were merged into what was then called District 17. This was never really completed and eventually they were separated again. I don't know if they ever used "17" as radio identifiers during this time. I was told at the time that as far as they got was to have a single District Commander and used "L17" as the teletype identifier for messages to be sent to all of Cook County instead of needing to use 2 separate ID's ("L03" and "L04") for messages to go out to all of the Cook County agencies. Dispatch remained at Crestwood and Harlem-Irving but was supposed to be consolidated at the River Road office in Des Plaines (at the time used by DCI and later the ICC police) but that did not occur.

 

[FFPM571]

This answers the question about IDOC Low band use... In the Low band skip monitoring thread. This is as of July 2021 37.36 Illinois DOC, Taylorville

 

[Starcom21]

I still hear IEMA and have heard an occasional use with IDOC. Haven't heard any activing on 39.5 or 39.46 in years. No ISP low band. VHF is still active as back-up or during other activities. 151.16 and 155.505 on portables are being used again in southern IL for vehicular repeaters back to starcom mobile radio

39.46, 39.5, 42.5 or 42.34, liviing in Macoupin County, we would regularly pick up California Highway Patrol during skip.

 

[sgtmatt]

My Uncle is a Retired D1 Master Sgt, his first car was an 89 caprice, I can still vivadly remember the huge bull whip antenna he had on the side of his car.

 

[N9JIG]

Back in the early 1980's I was on a trip to southern Illinois and stopped by what was then District 13-A's post south of Cairo near Fort Defiance and was taking pictures of the post. A trooper stopped by and chatted, and when he saw my radios he called over another trooper who was a radio nut too.

This trooper's car had 2 low-band whips, one was cut for 42 MHz. of course but he also had one for 6M as well as an extra VHF 1/4 wave for 2M. We swapped cards and war stories (I didn't have many yet at the time...) and they gave me a tour of the post's small comm center. The second trooper said he had to get special permission for his ham radios in his squad from the sub-post lieutenant and the state radio lab, they installed the antennas for him.

Fast forward 10 or so years later and Ted and I stopped by the building again. By then District 13-A had become District 22 and the post relocated up the road at Ullin. The building, which had originally (before being used by D13-A) been the headquarters for the bridge authority that had built and collected the tolls for the two river bridges right there was being remodeled to a restaurant. We stopped in and spoke to the people working there, the owner told us they leased the building from the state with a development grant. They had found a table in the basement and when they removed it they discovered that it had been made from the wooden sign with the toll fees that had been posted at one time, whomever made the table had flipped it over and attached legs to the sign.

I offered to buy the sign but they kept it as wall art. They had also cleared away the overgrown bushes around the building and exposed the brass plates with the Bridge Commission info on them from the 1930's when the bridges were built. The low-band antenna was still on a pole close to the road, it might have still been used as a remote site for Ullin.

The restaurant didn't last long and as far as I know the building stands empty now.

I tell this story mostly to say this: The ISP radio lab told me that the last post to switch operations to StarCom21 from low-band was District 22 due to coverage issues. They told me that they were still operating on 42.90 close to a year after everyone else was on SC21. They used their "HF2" (154.680) during this time as well but low-band still worked better since they had mobile extenders and HF2 would not work well in many areas. Eventually they got switched over to SC21 and pulled the low-band stuff out but still used HF2 off and on for a while.

 

[FFPM571]

Back in the early 1980's I was on a trip to southern Illinois and stopped by what was then District 13-A's post south of Cairo near Fort Defiance and was taking pictures of the post. A trooper stopped by and chatted, and when he saw my radios he called over another trooper who was a radio nut too.

This trooper's car had 2 low-band whips, one was cut for 42 MHz. of course but he also had one for 6M as well as an extra VHF 1/4 wave for 2M. We swapped cards and war stories (I didn't have many yet at the time...) and they gave me a tour of the post's small comm center. The second trooper said he had to get special permission for his ham radios in his squad from the sub-post lieutenant and the state radio lab, they installed the antennas for him.

Fast forward 10 or so years later and Ted and I stopped by the building again. By then District 13-A had become District 22 and the post relocated up the road at Ullin. The building, which had originally (before being used by D13-A) been the headquarters for the bridge authority that had built and collected the tolls for the two river bridges right there was being remodeled to a restaurant. We stopped in and spoke to the people working there, the owner told us they leased the building from the state with a development grant. They had found a table in the basement and when they removed it they discovered that it had been made from the wooden sign with the toll fees that had been posted at one time, whomever made the table had flipped it over and attached legs to the sign.

I offered to buy the sign but they kept it as wall art. They had also cleared away the overgrown bushes around the building and exposed the brass plates with the Bridge Commission info on them from the 1930's when the bridges were built. The low-band antenna was still on a pole close to the road, it might have still been used as a remote site for Ullin.

The shop I worked at supplied Sheriffs vehicles to Hardin, Pope and Pulaski counties. I did some programming of their VHF radios along with ISPERN , IREACH was D-22 HF-2. The local troopers still used it.

 

[apco25]

DuPage Co FPD ..... I remember hearing South Carolina on Dist 2 Low band a few times early in the summer mornings on a Crystal Regency scanner

DUPAGE FPD low band has been deprecated for MANY years. They have one seldom used VHF repeater for operations and simplex event channel left.

 

[FFPM571]

DUPAGE FPD low band has been deprecated for MANY years. They have one seldom used VHF repeater for operations and simplex event channel left.

I remember going into Radco when they were in Unic Lombard and their techs complaining about having to work on their radios and DuPage co Highway dept .. I think they went VHF about 1990?