Northstar VHF??

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RadioDitch

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Noticed on a certain piece of apparatus today that the VHF radio includes a channel for Northstar. It's completely seperate from the SPEN and JEMS channels. Any ideas? Some kind of patch?
 

GTR8000

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It's not uncommon for counties/agencies to have designated "Landing Zone" frequencies. Nearly all medevacs have radios that are capable of tuning to just about any conventional frequency/tone across multiple bands. Is it possible that even though the channel in this apparatus was labeled "NorthSTAR", it's really just that county/agency's LZ frequency? It might help to know what agency you're referring to.
 

KC2JS

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I agree with Alarmguy. My guess is that it is REMCS 5 which NS used to get toned out on when they were based at UMDNJ.
 

station32

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Also another common one is 154.265 it is a statewide common fire interop channel all southern county's use is and call it south jersey fire net and here in mercer call it statewide and seen it used up north for medevac.
 

Bronco90

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Also another common one is 154.265 it is a statewide common fire interop channel all southern county's use is and call it south jersey fire net and here in mercer call it statewide and seen it used up north for medevac.

So you think that SJ FireNet can be heard up here in the north, maybe on a repeater or something. I hear a lot of medevac calls for LZ on that freq and was gonna program it in somewhere but then thought, naaa it won't reach up here. Well I'll give it a try unless someone knows it won't, hope it does because it seems like about 7 or 8 out of ten calls seem to use that freq. Thanks.
 

robbinsj2

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The south Jersey fire net / "statewide" is simplex and not repeated. It's highly doubtful you'll hear the ground units but depending upon the LZ location and your local terrain, you may have a line-of-sight on the medevac until they're all but on the ground.

I'd encourage you to keep that channel in your scan list. I've also heard local counties using that for muster and convoy use on mobilizations, task force / strike team assignments, etc. Many counties emit a PL (and do or don't squelch to it), so leave it in tone search for a possible clue as to whom you're hearing.

Jim
 

RadioDitch

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Thanks guys. It's our local township EMS agency. There are no trunked or digital capable radios in the rig. Just 1 VHF and 1 UHF, so that makes sense it might be REMCS 5. Guess I might have to pull out the old frequency counter...
 

station32

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I said that in south jersey they call it south jersey fire net and in mercer we call it statewide but i have also heard northstar get told that will be the LZ frequency in some places up north. Sorry for the miss understanding.
Joe
 

scannersnstuff

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the thing is, if they had the old northstar dispatch fq. <155.295 remcs 5> in the apparatus, about the only thing they could use it for would be to listen to the dispatch. outside agencies could not coordinate with the helicopter over that frequency. i believe occasionally northstar would use it to talk to remcs. usually when there was a problem with the 800 trunked system. i don't know if anyone remembers when remcs used to tone out northstar using 2 set's of 2 tone sequential paging. it was the tone pair both a&b, and b&a reversed. some of their pager's got programmed backward's.
 

robbinsj2

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i don't know if anyone remembers when remcs used to tone out northstar using 2 set's of 2 tone sequential paging. it was the tone pair both a&b, and b&a reversed. some of their pager's got programmed backward's.
Hunh, they decided that was a better solution than reprogramming (rearranging reeds in) the pagers? I had guessed one set of tones for the flight crew and another for the medical crew.
 
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