Lafayette parish

[Technoguy58]

Does anybody know if the 800mhz conventional frequencies for the City/Parish listed in the database are still being used? When I am in the area, I have not heard a peep on them in quite awhile. Also, last week, when I was in the Lafayette metro area, I heard lots of traffic on 854.3375. This was buses being used for the state Beta Club convention. Anybody know exactly who this frequency is being used by? I thought it might be a U.L. frequency but it does not show up doing a search for license.

 

[Tim-B]

The conventional 800 frequencies labelled RP/TA are all conventional repeater backups for the 800 system for times when the trunked portion of the system goes down. About 95% of the users of that system have moved to the Statewide 700 MHz system. I worked for Lafayette S.O. for two years and Lafayette P.D. for five years and I can remember only one occassion where the system went into failsoft mode so the dispatcher had us go the our agency's RP frequency. You will note that each of those frequencies also has TA next to it. This is the simplex talkaround for that frequency. I remember that Lafayette PD used 12-RP, the fire departments used 14-RP, and the S.O. used 16-RP as backups. The jail, however, always used 16-RP even when the system was working normally and they still do. You can still hear them on 16-RP. I believe the S.O. also has 18-RP and I have heard them on 19-TA (the simplex talkaround for 18-RP) when a few of them were at the same place doing off duty security. You have to be withing 3/4 of a mile or so to hear one of the TA's. Because almost all of the former users of that system are now on the 700 system you will probably not ever hear any more traffic on those frequencies except 16-RP unless both the state 700 and the trunked portion of Lafayette's 800 system are both down which is highly unlikely. That 800 system survived a direct hit by hurricanes Andrew and Lily.

 

[Tim-B]

I just put the other frequency you asked about - 854.3375 in a base scanner that I leave running all day and I am hearing traffic immediately. It definitely does not sound like any kind of public safety agency. I will keep monitoring it to see if I can figure out who they are. If I knew morse code better I could listen for an automated station ID but I don't know morse well enough to get the call sign as fast as those automated ID systems rattle it off. Hey wait, maybe I can record it and slow it down.

 

[Tim-B]

I am pretty sure 854.3375 is being used by the U.L. busses. Parking spaces are not very plentiful on campus so every semester U.L. has a parking lottery where they draw names to grant cajun field parking stickers to those who applied for one. There are many more applicants than available spaces hence the lottery. There are shuttle buses that transport the students from cajun field to the campus at a bus stop on Rex St. at its intersection with E. St. Mary. The traffic I am hearing is all a bunch of early twenty somethings driving buses and the street names they are using are all streets along the route the buses take from cajun field to the campus and back. One of them said, "every time I go down Rex St. . . ." Rex is a street that runs through the middle of campus and it has a bus stop where they load and unload students going to and from cajun field parking lot. They are also naming buildings on campus like "are you in front of Bourgeois?" So I am pretty sure this freq is being used by the drivers of the UL buses. They seem to know some ten codes and they are using them on the radio but none of them gave a station ID nor did I hear an automated morse ID. I did an FCC license search for all of LA for that freq and I found it licensed in only two places: A communications company in Shreveport that has a trunked system and Jefferson Parish's old 800 trunked system that they used before LWIN existed.