MSHP Transmitter Tower Site??

[topgun1986]

I hope to purchase a Pro 2096 or Pro 197 for my home office, shortly to pick up Missouri and Illinois Highway patrol talkgroups.

1) How could I determine how far their closest transmitter towers are from my location? I am west of Cape Girardeau, out in the Gordonville area.

2) Is there a certain antenna best suited for this situation, like an omni-directional or directional?

 

[signal500]

MSHP Transmitter Tower Site

I hope to purchase a Pro 2096 or Pro 197 for my home office, shortly to pick up Missouri and Illinois Highway patrol talkgroups.

1) How could I determine how far their closest transmitter towers are from my location? I am west of Cape Girardeau, out in the Gordonville area.

2) Is there a certain antenna best suited for this situation, like an omni-directional or directional?

If you go to the RR database and click on the call sign of any troop you will be able to find the location of the transmitter sites. Missouri is moving away from low band and moving to MOSWIN VHF high band, P25 Phase 1.

KAA270 (MISSOURI, STATE OF) FCC Callsign Details

Poplar Bluff Site Details (Missouri Statewide Wireless Interoperable Network (MOSWIN))

Here are two good websites I use to figure the distance between my location and transmitter sites:

Latitude and Longitude of a Point
Distance Between Cities Places On Map Distance Calculator

If you would just like to monitor certain sites east of your location then a directional antenna (yagi) would work well. If you would like to monitor all sites within a 360 degree radius then omni-directional would be a good choice.

 

[topgun1986]

Thanks for the tips! Now I've located my closest MSHP transmit tower, which is 16 miles away. Now I start the search for a 160-170 MHz antenna that I can aim in that direction. Just realized Illinois State Police is P25 Phase 2 (not Phase 1 like Missouri) so that's on the back burner for now.