Scrambled Air Freqs ?

[Buttonville]

While on our normal route ,on a return flight we were about 65 nm inbound to the Timmins VOR.

About 30 nm , we were asked to clear our current altitude from 11,500 to 8,000 to make way.

It was a request for MIL right of way, anyways...my friend and co pilot had my Pro97 with us , we were empty on the way back , and often we will bring the 97 just to fend off the boredom of a long flight.

Paul ( co pilot ) had found them ( MIL ) in the 300 Mhz area , none of our avionics can tune to those, so he tuned the 97 ...only to hear what sounded like Underwater white noise.

I asked Paul to turn it up , there were 2 conversations you tell by the sound ..I think something like a transmission then a reply.
Our IFR flight plan filed , showed no MIL activity , often they will show MIL aircraft working at X alt and X area, however not on that flight plan we filed.

It lasted about 10 Mins....tho I could not handle the 97 myself and could not hear it no longer , I was at that point of the flight told to contact Toronto Center ( which is normal ) .

When we do encounter MIL activity , north ont...we find US and Can Aircraft of all types performing fuel Jetisons over and area, which we will know by the flight plan prior to take off.

Anyone know if this I guess scrambled transmission is normal practice ?

Its not often in the past I bring a scanner along, just recently Paul and I have been doing it ever since we got a new position within the company we work for.

And a recent certification on the Caravan , for IFR.

Anyways , thank you if anyone can help or comment on who that was , or is it normal to hear scrambled x missions in the MIL air band ?

Thank you

Jason

 

[hawkeye32]

It could of been they were very close to ya and it may of been overloading the scanner...Tough to say...Being retired military here, some ground units or base units do have encryption,but as for air-air or Mil air as far as i know they are not encrypted..But you never know how fast things are changing in the present world...But to me sounds like the scanner got overloaded,have you had any similar problems while in flight at that altitude?

 

[VA3DBJ]

If they were using the UHF-SAT channels, there is a very good chance they were encrypted. Most of the UHF-SAT links are now encrypted (gone 'green'). The uplinks are in the 300 MHz area while the downlinks are in the 250 MHz area.

 

[Buttonville]

Yes I recall Paul telling me ( rather shouting in my David Clarks ) that the Freqs was 300 something...Mhz.

When my Digital scanner worked , it was a wild ride for the Fleetnet system after we crossed The Midland VOR ( 112.8 ) -( YEE ) , we cross at 7,500 ALT : Thats it for fleetnet , at that point control channels jump all over the place.

Ive only took the Digital up with us on our scheduled route twice now , both were very overloaded at YEE.

Paul did have a patch plug into the intercom unit....I could hear it as well in left ear , but I was about to get new vectors ( IFR ) shortly , so I wanted to be ready to copy...lucky I was...as I said they made made us clear that airspace for what ever it was was , there was nothing from FFS ( Flight Service ) when we filed the IFR flight plan ( often as I said youll see a notation to avoid an area , for fuel Jetisons ...fuel dumps ) or they are in flight re fueling , but thats all , nothing like we got , no information , just a clear ALT ...new heading ..and new Xponder code . Odd...thats when Paul grabbed the Pro97 to look in the Mil Air Bands...and thats what we heard.
I had called another pilot I know in Thunder Bay , and had mentioned that incident he said he exp those before when he was flying near Moosejaw for a small charter company.

He said we might have had to move adn monitor the scrambled stuff , as it might have been a few MIL things such as a Prime Minister is moving in the same airspace or some one of that high degree.
Or he said you will be moved for armed fighter jets.

Either way I had thought as my co pilot did , it was surely one for the log books !

Next time we take the Pro 97 ( I often forget to grab it...and Im not sure what our company policy is if I had a radio like that onboard to listen to others , our boss is stickler for privacy.

One person left me a PM , no there was never any problems we had with any instruments onboard the 208 , besides we have used an ICOM handheld AM Air Band to tranamit , in the preflight, no problems what so ever on the panel there .

Anyways , ok thank you ...Scanner Desk is more on what paul and I had kinda thought.

Thank you again