Our family has had several farms around Varna for decades, so I used to spend a lot of time there as a kid. We used to ride our horses and bikes all over. Spent a lot of time at a soda counter in Lacon as well as playing at the river landing there. Before they pulled up the tracks we used to try to out run the train coming in out of Toluca.
BTW, they still have that big slag pile in Toluca, I haven't been there in a few years?
Back to the radio stuff...
The 154.800 Sheriff repeaters repeat the mobiles traffic on a stronger transmitter, one in Lacon at the west edge of the county and the other in Varna for the east. They use the same frequency pairs. Since there was not a single site that could cover the entire county they needed to use 2 different sites. If you program your scanner without a PL then you only need it in there once, you will hear whichever tower you are closer to. (Probably the Varna tower from Toluca)
On the west side of the river, on the bluff above Sparland, I found a spot that overlooks the whole river valley and is a great place to hear scanner traffic from all over. I was able to hear Chicago PD and FD, Joliet, Aurora and Naperville trunked systems, Springfield and Peoria, as well as Kankakee and Champaign from there.
As for "Secret" frequencies, the best way to find them is to search for them. Since law enforcement is allowed to use just about any freq they want on a non-interference basis with low power for surveillence if you hear it then you may be too close! Put is a couple search ranges in your scanner and lock out the knowns and let it go a few days and see what happens. Start with VHF High band.
