I picked IPD down here in Livingston Parish, La. on the old 39.76 one time. The Livingston Parish ( County, for the rest of the country) had the same frequency as old KQA330. I also remember cars 80,81,82 and 83 were the calls of the units while 85 were the paddy wagon.
That's the dead ringer!
The KQA-330 base station simply identified as Three-O, as in the last two numbers of the FCC call sign. For mobiles, 80 was the Chief, 82 was the traffic enforcement person, and the rest of the numbers 83 through 89 were patrol cruisers. Ironton's officers identified by what car they were in and not by badge number or any personal identification unlike the Sheriff's deputies and village police officers in Lawrence County.
It was neat to hear the dispatcher and cars communicate because, like most Ohio law enforcement agencies, it was a string of spoken analog numbers. "30-84, 30-87" "87-30" "Signal 41, 12th and Lorain" "87, 10-4" "88-30, Two Six" "30-88, OK". Unlike most of Ohio, Ironton did not use the standard BSSA radio codes back in the day but opted to make up their own. With the department on VHF and MARCS now, the unit numbering is different and I'm almost certain they're using BSSA codes.
That's amazing you could hear them in Louisiana. Ironton PD used a 60 watt GE MASTR II base station with a DB 201 folded monopole antenna mounted on a telephone pole on a hill overlooking Ironton and the Ohio River. The antenna was barely above the tree line. The radio was controlled by a dedicated phone line to the dispatch office in the basement of the (city hall) Memorial Building. Mobiles were 60 watt Motorola Mocom 70s and GE MASTR II's. They all had the countywide 100.0 hZ PL tone. The base station only had 39.76 MHz. Mobiles had IPD 39.76 MHz, Sheriff/Village PD 39.62/39.26 MHZ half duplex and 39.62 car-to-car channel, and 39.58 MHz which was Ohio's statewide low band police inter-agency channel at the time.
Four channels in your low band scanner with an outside antenna kept you well informed. Plus, when skip started rolling, there were all kinds of goodies you'd hear from all across the country. Los Angeles County California used 39.76 for one of their agencies (Sheriff?) and the Ironton cops griped about not being able to mark their own dispatcher during hot summer days when LACO was blasting away with one call after another. The good old days!
