What Could I Find Up There - 894-960 & 1240-1300 MHz...?

[Neutrino222]

Is there anything interesting up in the 894-960 & 1240-1300 MHz range? If so, what kind of antenna would be best for the types of signals up there?

 

[mmckenna]

There are some LMR users up on the 900MHz band. Some might be analog, but many are switching to digital. There's also a reshuffling of the band expected as a large company wants to build out a nationwide LTE network to handle machine to machine type work. Other than the 1.2GHz amateur band, you probably won't find much your scanner can do anything with. You're either looking at cellular/LTE stuff or wide band data, or just odd data traffic.

As for antennas, to get something that will cover all that, you probably have backed yourself into the discone corner. Zero gain, but the right one will give you some level of performance on those bands. You do need to pay close attention to your feedline since most coax used by hobbyists gets really lossy up that high.

 

[donc13]

894-960 Mostly fixed mobile, wireless (like my weather station to its console) and amateur radio.

1240-1300 amateur radio, aeronautical radiolocation, earth exploration satellites and space research.

 

[merlin]

The 33 Cm and 1296 Mhz ham bands. Some pipeline telemetry and other point to point telemetry.
Some satellite downlinks.
> Antennas: up to 1000 Mhz a discone is acceptable but you would be helped with an LNA at the antenna and high quality feed line.
Generally above 1 Ghz, an integrated LNA/downconverter is used at the antenna and a lot of space/ satellite is circularly polarized
A helix or pad antenna is typical for that.
Amateur EME would be interesting, but you will need lots of gain, a dish perhaps and decoders for the types of emissions.
Cheers.

 

[ecps92]

roughly you will have
935-940 business band - some old Analog Conventional, many a legacy LTR, many DMR modes
940-945 Paging (Skytel etc)

Is there anything interesting up in the 894-960 & 1240-1300 MHz range? If so, what kind of antenna would be best for the types of signals up there?

 

[bearcatrp]

What scanner/receiver are you using to go above 1Ghz.

 

[Neutrino222]

What scanner/receiver are you using to go above 1Ghz.

SDS100 & Whistler TRX-1. I think the SDS has more sensitivity than the TRX-1.

 

[bearcatrp]

Get a receiver that goes up to 3 GHz, handheld or desktop. Then you’ll be really up there. I Search periodically with my R8600.

 

[wtp]

if i recall,
in the 1240 to 1300 band there is some audio from hams, the rest from 960 up to 1300 is digital.

 

[StoliRaz]

Ahhh, the 1240 band, I don't think I've ever heard a single thing up there. I've started calling it my ASMR band. White noise helps me fall asleep 🥱

 

[kb5udf]

In the 902-928 range are radios as the Motorola DTR series (digital, frequency hoping, spread spread spectrum). These are commonly used in businesses and retail outlets. It takes one to actually listen to one, assuming they are using a public talkgroup.

Also in that same range, you might stumble across an old analog cordless phone, but those are probably mostly gone.

LMR uses at least down south include utilities companies, chemical/petrochemical plants and some large hotel/resorts, often in trunked systems.

 

[Neutrino222]

In the 902-928 range are radios as the Motorola DTR series (digital, frequency hoping, spread spread spectrum). These are commonly used in businesses and retail outlets. It takes one to actually listen to one, assuming they are using a public talkgroup.

Also in that same range, you might stumble across an old analog cordless phone, but those are probably mostly gone.

LMR uses at least down south include utilities companies, chemical/petrochemical plants and some large hotel/resorts, often in trunked systems.

Are you from the UK?

 

[kb5udf]

Nope, Southern US.

 

[jwt873]

On the ham front.. Check out repeaterbook.com There might be some 23cm repeaters in your area.

 

[sprman1955]

Here in TN i have not heard a thing on the 33 and 23cm bands tho they list repeaters active there.

 

[GlobalNorth]

There may still be some 900 MHz cordless phones around.

 

[kruser]

There may still be some 900 MHz cordless phones around.

There are also wireless speakers and headphones using analog with a WFM bandwidth on maybe 6 frequencies near the middle of the 902 - 928 ISM band. They are wideband so they can carry a typical stereo signal.
RCA has three stereo frequencies available centered at 912.000, 912.500 and 913.000 MHz WFM for their wireless headphones and speakers.
Sony has three stereo freqs available centered at 915.500, 916.000 and 916.500 MHz WFM for their wireless headphones.
Probably other manufacturers as well.
They each have a channel selector switch that selects one of the three frequencies so the user could have more than one set of the devices in a home.

FCC rules require these single frequency type devices to shut down their transmitters RF output if there is no audio input signal for about 60 seconds or so. If there is a constant audio input to the transmitter, they will transmit continuously. I'm not sure what the power output limit is but it is likely very low plus they only allow the devices included antenna which are usually inside their housings. RCA's wireless speaker transmitter does have a small wire antenna sticking out the top.

FHSS type devices do share the above frequencies so if you have say a weather station with a FHSS transmitter while using your wireless headphones or speakers and get too far away from the audio transmitter, you will hear the short data blips from the weather station as it's transmitter hops through its frequencies.
There are also FHSS data radios used a lot by large farms in places like Montana in the 902-928 ISM band. They are allowed 1 watt output at their antenna connector and often use yagi beams for the large farms. I think these data radios used what was called the "free band". Being FHSS devices though, you won't hear much more than a very short blip of data on a scanner.

 

[RichardKramer]

I have several pairs of RS 900MHz intercoms that use 910, 911, 912, 913 MHz wbfm. I use them to relay a/c & Fedcomm signals from my basement radio room to the rest of the house. The range is about a block away; on a scanner w/o wbfm the signal sounds very garbled. I keep them programmed in the scanner when mobile and I've heard 2 other areas where those freqs were being used.

 

[IC-R20]

I listen to my local FM stations on the 950 MHz range. It's often better quality and zero noise, specially when using my crappy laptop power supply. Never fear new Dell is on the way to be delivered tomorrow :3 will be nice to finally have a dedicated graphic card.

 

[k7ng]

Ham repeater outputs mostly 927-928 MHz. Almost all NFM. Various other ham activities around 915 MHz. Almost everything else in the 902-928 range is difficult to receive and is essentially valueless. The 23cm ham band (1240-1300) - well there might be some activity in some locales but years ago when I had equipment for that band, the San Francisco bay area, surprisingly enough, was pretty dead.