I was out driving last night and I have the Franklin County 800 direct channels in my scan list. I'm scooting up Etna Rd and starting hearing a P25 control channel on 856.5125 which is direct C. I wasn't far from the AEP tower in Etna and thought it might have just been intermod. Sitting at home in Pickerington it's coming in again and stronger. It drifts in and out. It's not strong enough for the scanner to decode anything in trunking discovery. It just sounds like a control channel with no activity and kinda sounds like the AEP control. I broke out my SDR and I could barely see it with a bunch of gain. As I rotated my mag mount antenna in my hand it seemed stronger pointing north. I haven't yet checked the FCC search, only the frequency search on RR and several AEP sites are licensed but they are far off. It could be skip but I'm told 800 MHz doesn't skip.
New P25 Control Channel
- Thread starter amcferrin90
- Start date
There is definitely skip (tropospheric ducting) on 800 mhz. Myself and friends have pulled in 800 mhz sites (we are in East Ohio), from Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky during tropo events.
This is the time of year for tropo. And it's hot out and you've got the wildfire stuff from Canada doing funky things.
VHF Real Time Propagation
An interactive map that shows real time, worldwide VHF activity highlighting enhaned propagation typical to tropospheric ducting.
vhf.dxview.org
And yes I realize the map shown below is a VHF map basing propagation on APRS, and yes as you go up in frequency you typically need a stronger tropo event. But this is definitely sufficient tropo for you to be pulling in signals from farther away than usual.
Attachments
I'm also hearing new stuff on GMRS. I figured it was that. I know a licensee that gets a couple of their trunked channels knocked offline from illegal carriers. I've told him with the timing of those instances that it was probably skip. He swears it's not. I just knew other bands had openings at the same time.
If one is in the really red area, there is a good chance they would be experiencing significant tropo enhancement between their location and somewhere many hundred miles or more away all the way up to 800 mhz and more. You're likely right - it is possible during enhanced tropo events for strong far away signals to override / stomp on much closer signals, or to at least cause enough interference for a poor decode. NACs, Color Codes, etc don't fix actual RF interference - might stop mobile radio traffic from coming through a repeater, but repeater inputs and outputs all can be interfered with by strong far away signals during tropo.
216DawgPound
Member
I've been picking up London, Ontario on their 800 system on my SDS100 from Independence, Ohio. Also getting lots on 420 range as well. The SDS100 has a stock antenna. Go figure.
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