North Jersey PD and FD Frequencies From 50 Years ago

[mshumeyk]

This weekend on a whim I plugged the old Garden State Parkway high band radio system callsign KEE283 into Google and got this link to Radio TV Experimenter Magazine from 1969. Pages 99-103 contain a listing of Northern NJ PD and FD frequencies in use back then. Coincidentally that was around the same time I started "monitoring". (Scanners were not yet available). You'll notice complete absence of UHF frequencies and also note that quite a few frequencies are used by multiple agencies across the region. For example, I monitored 155.37 for Park Ridge/TriBoro Radio and also picked up Mt. Vernon, NY, Nutley, NJ and Matawan NJ on the same frequency.

The PDF is fairly large and best viewed on a laptop or desktop. The magazine also contains listings of TV stations at the time, as well as Lafayette Radio ads for low and high band tunable radios.



https://www.americanradiohistory.co...rimenter/Radio-TV-Experimenter-1969-04-05.pdf

 

[KK4JUG]

Wow!! A Heathkit 14W FM/FM Stereo Receiver kit for $79.95. I gotta get one of those and get into this stereo thing.

 

[de784]

Wow that's interesting. Those were the days could hear parkway state police from a good distance. Belleville would get interference from another town I believe it was the palasides.

 

[Bob1955]

This weekend on a whim I plugged the old Garden State Parkway high band radio system callsign KEE283 into Google and got this link to Radio TV Experimenter Magazine from 1969. Pages 99-103 contain a listing of Northern NJ PD and FD frequencies in use back then. Coincidentally that was around the same time I started "monitoring". (Scanners were not yet available). You'll notice complete absence of UHF frequencies and also note that quite a few frequencies are used by multiple agencies across the region. For example, I monitored 155.37 for Park Ridge/TriBoro Radio and also picked up Mt. Vernon, NY, Nutley, NJ and Matawan NJ on the same frequency.

The PDF is fairly large and best viewed on a laptop or desktop. The magazine also contains listings of TV stations at the time, as well as Lafayette Radio ads for low and high band tunable radios.



https://www.americanradiohistory.co...rimenter/Radio-TV-Experimenter-1969-04-05.pdf

I remember when Garden State Parkway Police was on 155.505 which is the same frequency still for New York State Police Troop K out of Poughkeepsie and everything on the East side of The Hudson River except Long Island. And yes, the old Mt. Vernon Police frequency was 155.370. Those were the days.

 

[doctordialtone]

the old Mt. Vernon Police frequency was 155.370. Those were the days.

155.37 is now Middletown, CT PD.

They're installing a new system on UHF.

 

[mshumeyk]

de784 you are correct on both points. Prior to the Parkway splitting Holmdel troopers to 155.505 and keeping Bloomfield on 154.905, all transmissions of troop cars, tow trucks and toll plazas for the entire length of the Parkway were multicast on 154.905 with just two transmitters, one on Telegraph Hill by the Holmdel Barracks and the other somewhere in the Atlantic City area. You could receive the transmissions even if far away from the Parkway. I lived in Belleville in the late 70's and early 80's. Their 155.61 frequency was shared with Ft Lee, Fairview, and Cliffside Park and I wish they had made PL equipped scanners back then so I would have only heard the Belleville PD.

 

[Bob1955]

155.37 is now Middletown, CT PD.

They're installing a new system on UHF.

Thanks Doctordialtone.
What part of CT are you from? I'm only 12 miles from the Greenwich, CT borderline in Westchester County, NY. I know CSP is all digital.

 

[doctordialtone]

Thanks Doctordialtone.
What part of CT are you from?

Near Middletown. I monitor CSP.

 

[Bob1955]

Near Middletown. I monitor CSP.

What brand scanners do you own? I am now using a Baofeng UV-82 but considering buying a Bearcat BCD-996P2 from Bearcat Warehouse. I had a Bearcat BCT-15X and sold that in 2017. They are expecting a new load coming in end of March 2019 with all the factory software updates for $341.90....they have the BEST prices. Your thoughts? I'm not going for the SDS-200.

 

[KK4JUG]

Bob, don't rule out the newer scanners for future use if they move up to systems with simulcast, digital, etc.

 

[spongella]

Thanks for the link to that vintage magazine, the ads bring back memories. I used to get Edmund Scientific catalogs in high school which had a treasure trove of scientific gadgets; microscopes, telescopes, radiometers (looked like a light bulb with a thing that spun inside continuously). I think they are still in business.

 

[radioman2001]

Love that listing, I used to listen to a lot of different agencies using a AM/FM multiband tunable, and a Lafayete tunable. 155.370 became Westchester County's mutual aid channel in 1975 when Mt Vernon went UHF like White Plains, and GSP had in the mid to late 70's an alternating simulcast system similar to NY Thruway. 2 channels that alternated every 10 miles or so and were simulcasted. The only problem along the GCP was with temperature inversion weather they would interfere with themselves. Same happened with NY Thruway, and that's one of the reasons why they went UHF.

 

[doctordialtone]

My first VHF-LOW radio was a Lafayette. Looked like a transistor radio with thumb-wheel tuning. Color black.

Connecticut State PD was on low band at the time. 1966ish...

 

[902]

Wow that's interesting. Those were the days could hear parkway state police from a good distance. Belleville would get interference from another town I believe it was the palasides.

Maybe filling in a few blanks:

"388" was co-channel with Fairview, Cliffside Park, and Fort Lee. But then, they were also co-channel with South River, Spotswood, Great Neck, Kings Point, and Port Washington. It was manageable until one of the Long Island departments was allowed to build a repeater, then there was a lot of blocking. Also, in 1979, Fairview built a new system (along with PL) on top of their relatively new senior citizen's building. Cliffside Park also had their 155.610 base station on their senior citizen's building 18 stories up, but fairly low power and with a low gain antenna.

Eventually Belleville left to go to 800, I believe from the ITT Nutley microwave tower, which is no more. Fairview installed a bunch of voting receivers just to be able to hear portables through the interference. Cliffside Park left the frequency for T-Band in 1994. Fort Lee left early, in 1977 when, under the Mayor Nest administration, "Donny" Bridenburg (FL-56) built the original "COMCEN," to a vacated NYPD VHF channel (155.670) when NYPD moved to T-Band.

I neglected to mention Edgewater. They were also on 155.610, but I rarely heard them. Those were industrial days, and the population was sparse compared to what it has become now. Things would catch fire and every once in a while blow up down there, so they, and Cliffside Park (which also shared part of Palisades Amusement Park with mostly Fort Lee and a piece of an undercliff parking lot in Edgewater) were the only two paid fire departments in that corner of Bergen County. Their big frequency was 33.86, and that was just about everyone in East Bergen (except Ridgefield, who was on 33.88), Lodi, Garfield, Mahwah, Upper Saddle River, etc.

 

[mshumeyk]

Thanks to all for sharing the additional info on "the old days". I started with tunable monitors, which usually didn't have great selectivity, which allowed (or forced) you to hear adjacent channel traffic. For example, when I monitored the shared NW Bergen route 17 corridor PD channel 37.08 I also picked up Rockland County on 37.18 as well as the garbage channel of 37.10 which was used by NW Bergen DPW's, PD's like Saddle Brook, Millburn, and Westchester towns like Ossining and Croton. And how could I forget to mention the low band skip? When conditions were right, usually in the summer, 37.08 was crowded with traffic from the Tallahassee Florida Sheriff as well as Sheriff's in Arkansas with names like "Baxter" and "Loanoke." There were no PL's in use back then so occasionally our local cops would exchange a few word with their distant LE brothers.

 

[w2xq]

What a hoot. I hadn't seen the RADIO TV EXPERIMENTER: Hobbyist magazine from the 50's and 60's website before. I found a PDF of the Feb-Mar 1968 issue with my "Shortwave for the Non-SWL" (p.55) article within. And the trip through White's Radio Log is a walk down memory lane. Cool beans.

 

[902]

Thanks to all for sharing the additional info on "the old days". I started with tunable monitors, which usually didn't have great selectivity, which allowed (or forced) you to hear adjacent channel traffic. For example, when I monitored the shared NW Bergen route 17 corridor PD channel 37.08 I also picked up Rockland County on 37.18 as well as the garbage channel of 37.10 which was used by NW Bergen DPW's, PD's like Saddle Brook, Millburn, and Westchester towns like Ossining and Croton. And how could I forget to mention the low band skip? When conditions were right, usually in the summer, 37.08 was crowded with traffic from the Tallahassee Florida Sheriff as well as Sheriff's in Arkansas with names like "Baxter" and "Loanoke." There were no PL's in use back then so occasionally our local cops would exchange a few word with their distant LE brothers.

"Back in the day," circa 1993, we were attempting to re-purpose Leonia's old 37 MHz equipment into the East Bergen Emergency Management's operations. They vacated low band for high band. One of the things we were experimenting with was a hard-patch between 37.16 MHz and the Ridgefield/Cliffside Park DPW frequencies (155.9550), except with 127.3 Hz CTCSS, and Bergen County was also experimenting with 37.40 for municipal OEM liaison. Long story short, those days seem to be before all these statewide trunked systems. As the communications chief at the time, I had a Syntor-X mobile in my Blazer. I would have that on scan in carrier squelch and be monitoring all of that traffic, too. My imagination recalls traffic like something Sheriff J.W. Pepper in the James Bond movies would have said back then. Living in the south now, it's not like that anymore... at least where I'm at.

33.86 was great for skip, too. Under normal conditions, we'd have the southwestern Connecticut fire department bases coming through - sometimes Chester County, PA, but we could also hear skip from California and Buenos Aires, Argentina (LQN867 - my all-time low band monitoring record in 1980). The firehouse primary radio was an RCA base with a Motrac backup. My receiver at home at the time was a Bearcat 210 with a CB antenna cut to the 33 MHz fire channels, and an Ameco Nuivistor preamp. Sadly, Cliffside took the 33.86 MHz antennas down from their tower to make room for the 500 MHz fire and police repeaters. Fort Lee took their stacked 33.86 trombone antennas off their Inwood Terrace tower much earlier, around 1987. I still have my red Plectron tube receiver that Cliffside used to set off when I first joined; no one wanted it back when I moved. Those days, if you left your receiver on overnight, you might have heard some of the old timers DXing, trying to talk to the other radiomen who seemed to drift through the frequency.

I also still have my Hallicrafters S-94 Civic Patrol tunable low band receiver. There used to be ships and railroad radio traffic on low band! It's silkscreened on the dial! I'm still trying to locate a copy of the FCC's Rules and Regulations relating to two-way radio at the time, but the oldest I can pull is 1976.

 

[mshumeyk]

902, thanks for sharing your memories. Back then we lived in Saddle River and my brother was a member of the Saddle River Valley Rescue so in addition to my old Regency crystal scanners and eventually my Bearcat 210 we had a Plectron receiver connected to a CB ground plane on monitor most of the time so we would hear all of the 33.86 FD transmissions from NW, Central and East Bergen. We also regularly would receiver Pike County, PA and Chester County PA, in addition to occasional skip as you described. I recall one occasion when California skip was occurring plugging in some of the California Highway Patrol frequencies on my 210 and receiving transmissions from a CHP motorcycle in the Sacramento area. With online scanners these days it seems like no big deal but back then I was totally amazed.

 

[coolrich55]

de784 you are correct on both points. Prior to the Parkway splitting Holmdel troopers to 155.505 and keeping Bloomfield on 154.905, all transmissions of troop cars, tow trucks and toll plazas for the entire length of the Parkway were multicast on 154.905 with just two transmitters, one on Telegraph Hill by the Holmdel Barracks and the other somewhere in the Atlantic City area. You could receive the transmissions even if far away from the Parkway. I lived in Belleville in the late 70's and early 80's. Their 155.61 frequency was shared with Ft Lee, Fairview, and Cliffside Park and I wish they had made PL equipped scanners back then so I would have only heard the Belleville PD.

Interesting that those two frequencies you mention were the old frequencies for the Rhode Island state police.

 

[Danny37]

462.950 was a common EMS frequency in the tristate area. There's probably 4 or 5 volly EMS squads in NYC alone that use that frequency at low power with different PL/DPL not to mention Empress EMS in westchester that's running at pretty decent power.