Receiving Military Aircraft

[Bamapik]

There’s lots of military helicopters and planes in the Madison AL area. I have a Uniden bearcat 895xlt base scanner connected to a magnetic whip antenna but not hearing much except for commercial aircraft. Are these possibly on digital?

 

[millam]

Redstone Arsenal Airfield Airfield Link to Redstone airfields info. Look at the frequencies and
maybe listen to see if your radio will receive them. Its ATIS 120.65 should be transmitting 24/7.

I replayed Adsbscope for yesterday and all I saw locally was a AH-64 and a TEX-2 flying
out of Redstone field, slow time probably. Redstone is the only military field close to
Madison I think. Using a whip probably won't get you much in the way of traffic, my 2 cents.

I live 20 air miles from Fort Rucker, but I have an antenna 40' ft up, hear a lot here.

Mil
2:15 PM CST 6 Feb, Go Auburn

 

[MiCon]

I'm not familiar with your area so I looked on Google Maps. It appears that the only military airfield within hearing range of Madison is Redstone AAF, which appears to be a small AAF with just a few helicopters.

If I lived in your area, the first thing I'd do is get an antenna on the roof.

Next, I'd look on RR for Madison County > Redstone AAF and Huntsville Int'l for whatever milcom freqs are listed. I'd also check airnav.com for both locations. That should at least get you started with tower and App/ Dep frequencies. Then I'd look on-line for your local ARTCC frequencies. It seems to me that you stand a better chance of hearing high altitude transient military a/c than local traffic.

Lastly, I'd spend a couple of weeks searching 138.0 ~ 142.975 (You'll find that most comms will be AM, but some will be FM), and 225. ~ 379.975 AM.

I could be wrong, but my experience is that military helicopter air-to-air comms can be low band FM, VHF AM, and UHF AM.

Again, my experience is that most military helo's use VHF for ATC, as they fly low & slow and are surrounded by civilian air traffic.

Good hunting.
<>< Mike