Immigration and Customs Enforcement

[cmartellw]

Don`t normally listen to this certain favorites list, but I enabled it this afternoon and was interested where this active location was from. Has anyone else heard ICE(163.700) around any counties surrounding Sullivan county, could actually be over the Connecticut River in Windsor, Orange or even Windham VT? It sounded as if possibly a helicopter was transmitting locations of this one vehicle around a town. Street names are as follows, Flatt st, Elm, Frost, Williams, Elliot streets.

 

[ecps92]

a. Best to not discuss ACTIVE Surv Ops, wait a week or so [or selectively PM folks]
b. 163.7000 $169 is a National Operative channel for ICE

Immigration and Customs Enforcement - The RadioReference Wiki

wiki.radioreference.com

CBP Nets - The RadioReference Wiki

wiki.radioreference.com

c. Spend sometime in SEARCH 162-174, for the BP, ICE and Customs channels
Altho generally not as active as your PD/FD, they do take time to search for
and ICE has just finished building out a VT/NH Repeater network with [many still to be found]
multiple Repeaters

Don`t normally listen to this certain favorites list, but I enabled it this afternoon and was interested where this active location was from. Has anyone else heard ICE(163.700) around any counties surrounding Sullivan county, could actually be over the Connecticut River in Windsor, Orange or even Windham VT? It sounded as if possibly a helicopter was transmitting locations of this one vehicle around a town. Street names are as follows, Flatt st, Elm, Frost, Williams, Elliot streets.

 

[n1das]

This brings back memories of listening to CBP back in the late 1970s. I was in Hanover NH at the time and didn't yet have a programmable scanner to listen with. I didn't know the exact frequency but knew CBP was in the 162-164MHz range. I was listening on a Realistic Patrolman Mini VHF-Hi handheld tuneable receiver. $17.95 from RadioShack and something I could afford on a high school budget. I didn't know where the repeater I was listening to was located but I could hear it well enough. I suspect it was in VT because the hill my parents lived on faced VT. I could easily hear stuff off of Killilngton and Ascutney.

CBP (BP back then, not yet CBP) was all analog and the repeater I heard was noted for having multiple obnoxiously long squelch tails when a unit un-keyed their mic. I didn't know it at the time but I suspect I might have been hearing a repeater that was linked and traffic went through more than one link. The radios probably didn't use any reverse burst to eliminate the squelch tails. It was always 4 obnoxiously long squelch tails (noise bursts) in rapid succession when a unit un-keyed their mic, often longer than a message itself. "10-4 ####-######### #####-##########". The repeater also had a short hang time (~ 0.5 sec).

 

[NEK1213]

163.625 used to be a clear and active frequency for the USP on the Canadian line in Vermont and New Hampshire. Now it's P-25 encripted.

 

[n1das]

I think 163.625 is what I was listening to back then but I couldn't confirm it. I just remember the 4 obnoxiously long squelch tails in rapid succession on the repeater every time a unit un-keyed their mic.

 

[ecps92]

Ahh, the memories, depending on the PL Tone [o yea, the Patrolman was BPL -he he he (Before PL Scanners)] you were likely hearing a combination of
Mt Washington - 100.0 Hz
Franconia - 151.4 Hz
Vermont - 123.0 Hz

Each Repeater back then had it's own PL for the input as well

I do, when on VAC from time-time hear CLR traffic over the BP networks

This brings back memories of listening to CBP back in the late 1970s. I was in Hanover NH at the time and didn't yet have a programmable scanner to listen with. I didn't know the exact frequency but knew CBP was in the 162-164MHz range. I was listening on a Realistic Patrolman Mini VHF-Hi handheld tuneable receiver. $17.95 from RadioShack and something I could afford on a high school budget. I didn't know where the repeater I was listening to was located but I could hear it well enough. I suspect it was in VT because the hill my parents lived on faced VT. I could easily hear stuff off of Killilngton and Ascutney.

CBP (BP back then, not yet CBP) was all analog and the repeater I heard was noted for having multiple obnoxiously long squelch tails when a unit un-keyed their mic. I didn't know it at the time but I suspect I might have been hearing a repeater that was linked and traffic went through more than one link. The radios probably didn't use any reverse burst to eliminate the squelch tails. It was always 4 obnoxiously long squelch tails (noise bursts) in rapid succession when a unit un-keyed their mic, often longer than a message itself. "10-4 ####-######### #####-##########". The repeater also had a short hang time (~ 0.5 sec).

 

[nd5y]

I lived in El Paso in the late 70s-early 80s. Back then the BP only had a few channels. Some of the vehicles still had old 1960s GE radios with separate 4-channel TX/RX channel selectors. They must have had a tone selector too but I don't remember that.
Transmit was:
F1 162.825
F2 162.925
F3 163.625
F4 163.675
Receive was:
F3 163.625
F4 163.675
F5 163.725
F6 163.775

They also had a lot of 406-420 MHz point-to-point links. I'm not sure how that all worked. Some of them linked repeaters and some of them were station-to-station. A couple times I heard Tucson AZ talk to El Paso or Marfa.

The El Paso VHF repeater wasn't linked to anything but some of the other weak ones off on distant mountains made multiple squelch tails from the link system.

The main repeater in El Paso, mainly for the outlying areas, was 163.775/162.825 PL 203.5 and referfed to as "1 & 6" (channel number) or "Franklin" (Mount Franklin in the middle of El Paso).
The "Line Units" used "4 & 4" (163.675 simplex) along the river and ports of entry in town.
Then they used "3 & 3" for local tactical when needed.
There was also a digital data repeater on 163.65 for the geophone sensors along the border and around the highway checkpoints.

BP, Customs and Fort Bliss/White Sands was the best scanning ever.

 

[n1das]

Ahh, the memories, depending on the PL Tone [o yea, the Patrolman was BPL -he he he (Before PL Scanners)] you were likely hearing a combination of
Mt Washington - 100.0 Hz
Franconia - 151.4 Hz
Vermont - 123.0 Hz

Each Repeater back then had it's own PL for the input as well

I do, when on VAC from time-time hear CLR traffic over the BP networks

Yes, the memories. I was definitely hearing only one BP repeater and hearing it poorly. I had to be in a hot spot to hear it. Motorola repeaters when configured for PL Detect on the receiver use only the PL decoder to squelch the receiver. CSQ is wide open all the time underneath the decoder. Squelch behavior then becomes solely a function of how the PL decoder behaves. It has a long time constant and leaves a long squelch tail when a signal into the repeater un-keys without a reverse burst. It was always a long sputter of 3-4 bursts heard on a single repeater.

The Patrolman Mini was a handheld VHF-Hi manually tuneable receiver and powered by a 9V battery. This was during my early days of scanning and at the time it was my only way to listen to anything other than the 8 local PD & FD channels I had in my 8-channel Heathkit GR-1132 Lo/Hi/UHF crystal scanner. It was a $17.95 handheld I could afford on a high school student budget. I built the Heathkit scanner during my freshman year in high school. I suspect I was hearing a repeater in VT because the hill I lived on in Hanover NH blocked me from hearing anything from Mt Washington and Cannon Mt in Franconia. Listening to Grafton County SO on the "A" repeater on 154.77 from Cannon Mt was always a challenge with the scanner. Grafton's "B" repeater on 154.77 was local to me on Moose Mt (North Peak) in Hanover so no problem there. My location favored listening to VT stuff.

 

[n1das]

Here's a pic of the Patrolman Mini tuneable receiver I used.....Ahh, the memories.