WV State Police - Newly Identified Frequency

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atlong

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All,

I went through all of the FCC licenses for Jefferson County, WV on Sunday and found several UHF frequencies licensed to the state PD. I plugged them in and right off the bat got a hit.

460.0250 PL 192.8 appears to be relaying the mobile side of the Romney dispatch overnight. I haven't had a chance to monitor it during the day when the Jefferson County area is served by Charles Town Detachment. This might be a point to point link relaying the units in Jefferson & Berkeley Counties over to the Romney Detachment--just a speculation. Either way, it provides good listening for reception of the harder to receive side of their comms.

I'd be interested in hearing how others in the Eastern Panhandle receive this frequency and what you hear on it. Even from around the state, perhaps other detachments are using it.

I'll get it added to the database when I have a chance this week.

P.S. from my QTH, I can barely pick up the Metropolitan PD's (Washington, DC) control channel on that frequency.
 

wb8oif

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I am on the road around 5 AM in Charles Town and recently there has been very little if any activity on the normal Jefferson County Police frequencies. Has the law enforcement contigent moved to one of these "new" frequencies, or has everyone in Jefferson County just been really good and not needing any police activity? ;)
 

mike_s104

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wb8oif said:
I am on the road around 5 AM in Charles Town and recently there has been very little if any activity on the normal Jefferson County Police frequencies. Has the law enforcement contigent moved to one of these "new" frequencies, or has everyone in Jefferson County just been really good and not needing any police activity? ;)

have you tried:
156.03000/179.9
42.2000/192.8
42.0600/192.8

the above listed BCI Jefferson repeater is active too
 

wm8s

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Altbhough I don't see a license for it, the UHF frequency is almost certainly a remote base from the mobile side of the lowband pair for your area. Put the appropriate lowband pair (42.something [base] and 42. or 45.something [mobile]) into two channels in your radio and the UHF freq into a nearby channel and see if the traffic isn't the same.

SP (and lots of other folks) use them throughout the state to, as you guessed, link mountaintop lowband receivers back to dispatch centers. SP's remotes are on VHF midband (72-73 MHz for the remote-to-dispatch half, and 75-76 MHz for the dispatch-to-remote half), and UHF (451 or 460 for the remote-to-dispatch, and 456 or 465 for the dispatch-to-remote half). Given that the SP's half-duplex lowband system can be hard to monitor, listening to the remote bases does make things easier. One complication, though, is that a while back SP stopped wiring up the UHF remotes like repeaters (i.e., if you just listen to 451.100 [the remote base from Bee Mountain], you no longer hear South Charleston, only the mobiles); arg.

The VHF frequency you heard is the input to the BCI repeater up there, but the license says the repeater should be on 153.9350, and that the input to the 151.0400 machine is 155.6400. You might listen to those. And report back.

...R
 
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Karl

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460.025

460.025 is the mtn top relay from Cacapon Mt in Morgan County for the mobile side of the 42mhz receive site. Also 158.88 is the input to 153.935 which is at the same site. 151.04 is the output of a repeater at North Mt in Berkeley County. Hope this helps.
 

mike_s104

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so could someone explain exactly how the state PD radio system works? what radio equipment do the troopers have and/or monitor? what freqs do the headquarters monitor? to me, it seems they just threw everything together and added/fixed as needed. sounds like a big mess.

where are you guys getting all the info from?
 

wvscanner

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Mike,
I'm at lost with the SP systems as the next person. My only info here in Beckley, WV is SP HQ office always transmits on 42.100 and the car will transmits on 42.260. When they are in range they will stay with that. When they fall out of that range I know in my area they goto the Kingston repeater 451.625 to get back to HQ. Since they know to keep the mic’s on short time I never had the time to figure out if the 42.600 is the main freq from the car in this case. On the other hand I know I have heard SP 42.100 on DPS repeater 465.350 before it was struck with lighting and still hear DPS on 460.350 car’s channel.
I been by the SP HQ office before and run close call on my scanner. It was jumping around on freq. even for the same unit they were talking to.
If anyone has more insight with this in Raleigh County please let me know.

Jeffery Smith
Scanning Beckley
 

mike_s104

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wvscanner said:
Mike,
I'm at lost with the SP systems as the next person. My only info here in Beckley, WV is SP HQ office always transmits on 42.100 and the car will transmits on 42.260. When they are in range they will stay with that. When they fall out of that range I know in my area they goto the Kingston repeater 451.625 to get back to HQ. Since they know to keep the mic’s on short time I never had the time to figure out if the 42.600 is the main freq from the car in this case. On the other hand I know I have heard SP 42.100 on DPS repeater 465.350 before it was struck with lighting and still hear DPS on 460.350 car’s channel.
I been by the SP HQ office before and run close call on my scanner. It was jumping around on freq. even for the same unit they were talking to.
If anyone has more insight with this in Raleigh County please let me know.

Jeffery Smith
Scanning Beckley


I understand there are a lot of mountains and as a result valleys in the state but DAMN...know some of those pictures on hamsexy where the wacker has about 15 mics? I bet a few are actually the WV State Police trooper cars. what a freaking mess. "oh, I'm 40 miles from HQ, I need to grab mic #8. in 5 more miles I need to go to #6 or is it #9?"

why don't they just move back a few decades and use HF. maybe throw in morse code while they're at it.
 
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wm8s

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The system isn't that complicated (assuming that it hasn't changed since I was familiar with it). AFAIK, troopers use both the SP's own system and whatever local systems are available (since 911 centers more and more directly dispatch troopers, a lot different from the good ole days where that would have gone over like a lead brick). The latter (cruisers working local systems) is no different than the radios in other cruisers. The former (SP's own system) isn't really that complex.

SP's own system consists primarily of the VHF lowband patrol channels used by the patrol Troops 1-6. They are half-duplex: base transmits on one freq (almost [?] always the lower of the pair), and mobiles transmit on the other, with no automatic repeating (i.e., so you have to listen to both). Because of our beautiful terrain, SP detachments that dispatch are linked to the patrol channels through assorted mountain tops by remote bases (as I described in my previous email, on VHF midband and UHF).

Many cruisers also (at least used to) have mobile repeaters, using VHF highband simplex channels to repeat back through the cruiser's lowband radio. And along with the mobile repeater frequencies, there are also a handful of car-to-car VHF highband channels.

Troop 7 (Turnpike) uses a VHF highband repeater. It used to have (I think) two slaved transmitters on the same frequency -- 155.430 -- that were linked with some combination of wire and 900 MHz links (there were places where you could hear the 155.43 transmitters phase beat with together... neat effect.. weeeooooeeeooowwooowww). That freq is also used as a talkaround channel, when it's called "DIRECT." Tamarack has a UHF repeater linked (one-way, I think) to Troop 7 F-1 (I suspect so that the Tamarack folks can listen to the Turnpike repeater on their UHF HTs). T7 also used to use UHF mobile repeaters, and the Turnpike Authority had a pair of VHF high simplex channels, although I haven't heard anybody on them for ages.

[<funnystory> .. I was told at a meeting once by a Moto rep who will remain nameless that Troop 7 started to put a second repeater system on the air. It was intended to be [I think] 3 repeaters that were SecureNet protected. He told me that the funding dried up, though, so the system was never implemented. But I told him that one of the repeaters [the one in Charleston] _was_ on the air (it can be keyed up). His -- surprised -- response was that he thinks nobody knows this. I told him I had NEVER heard anyone on it, although I listen to it regularly. Plus, its input is adjacent to the output of Raleigh County SO 1, so whenever RCSO switches to SecureNet, the Turnpike's "phantom" repeater will sporadically key up. I bet if you used that repeater, _nobody_ would ever hear you. If he got this right, it says a lot about Moto equipment... been up for years and nobody even knows about it.

And that reminds me of another funny story related to another thread here. One time ages ago, I went with an OES tech to work on one of the IFLOWS voice transmitters that the 911 center reported hadn't been working for some number of months or years. We pulled the transmitter away from the wall and discovered that somehow the audio/mic wire, which was made with 2-pair telco wire, had become stripped and twisted, so that all four circuits were shorted together. That transmitter had been on the air {and still was when I got there} for almost a YEAR without missing a beat! Go, Moto! </funnystory>]

Troop 8 (BCI) also uses a system of standalone VHF highband repeaters and a number of tactical simplex channels. AFAIK, the detachments also have radios on the BCI repeaters, as I hear the BCI guys talking with each other and the detachments occasionally.

The Executive Protection Troop has its own VHF highband repeater at the Governor's Mansion, and also a handful of tactical simplex channels.

What am I forgetting?? I hope this is all correct; if it's not, I hope someone who actually knows will correct me. Finally, this is all subject to eventual change given the State's plans to migrate to P25 UHF.

...R
 

w4rez

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wm8s said:
I bet if you used that repeater, _nobody_ would ever hear you. If he got this right, it says a lot about Moto equipment... been up for years and nobody even knows about it.

This sort of reminds me back when I used to work as a security guard in Mingo County for Marrowbone Development/Triad Mining. Our radios were issued by the mines. There were 3 repeaters (one dedicated to phone patches), and a number of simplex channels. Me and one of the guards got to noticing that one of the repeaters *never* got used by anybody. We asked around, and even the mine foreman that handled routine radio servicing had no idea where the repeater was or what it was supposed to be for. So, after about 6 months of hearing this repeater remain completely silent other than when I would kerchunk it, we began to use it as sort of a tactical channel. For the next year (until I quit) we continued to do this and nobody ever butted in or complained.

This was 12 years ago and I bet that repeater is still online and I bet there's still nobody using it.
 

MOTOROLANUT

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State Police

The WV DPS are currently using Ge Orions Low Band 35-50, Ge Orion High Bands 150-170,
and Ge Orion UHF 450-470, these enable them to access repeaters plus BCI frequencies and go direct to many cities across WV. Some older Cruisers still have Ge Ranger and MDX radios in them. But in Harrison and a few other counties they are making the P-25 switch with Motorola XTL-5000's on the new interoperable project. Orion's low band has the integrated system head which allows the use of a siren and light operation from it. I have a buddy whose new WVSP Durango has the new Vertex VHF high and UHF radios in it which replaces the two Orions or MDX's.
 

mike_s104

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MOTOROLANUT said:
The WV DPS are currently using Ge Orions Low Band 35-50, Ge Orion High Bands 150-170,
and Ge Orion UHF 450-470, these enable them to access repeaters plus BCI frequencies and go direct to many cities across WV. Some older Cruisers still have Ge Ranger and MDX radios in them. But in Harrison and a few other counties they are making the P-25 switch with Motorola XTL-5000's on the new interoperable project. Orion's low band has the integrated system head which allows the use of a siren and light operation from it. I have a buddy whose new WVSP Durango has the new Vertex VHF high and UHF radios in it which replaces the two Orions or MDX's.

what no GE Orion HF and 800MHz units? I think they need the P25 system more then some of the counties and cities.
 

wb8oif

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wm8s, I think the older Motorola radios would work forever! For that matter alot of the commcercial gear from the 70s and earlier seemed to have better MTBF. Just look how many ham repeater sites still use Moto and GE "vintage" gear. Hell, my GE Prog-line radio is still chugging along fat, dumb and happy. :-D

Bob
 

wm8s

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wb8oif said:
He[ck], my GE Prog-line radio is still chugging along fat, dumb and happy. :-D

When I was a kid, I had a GE Prog line with two crystals, one for the local repeater and one for .52. I noticed one day that I'd been talking on the repeater for a while with the lights out in my room, but my room still seemed brighter than I expected. When I looked down, the rig's final was glowing like a 60W light bulb. I had accidentally hooked the rig up to my 40-m dipole, and I'm sure the SWR was 1.0E+20 to 1. It did not faze the radio one bit, and I used that thing for many more years before I built a repeater of my own out of it. [That's almost as bad as I the time I left my real 60W lightbulb/dummy load hooked up to my HF rig, and still worked a guy on 75M in Bluefield, 100 miles away.]

OK... trying to undo a little of my thread hijacking... anybody ever see the radios that SP uses on VHF mid band? They are made in Scandavia; the beasts look like they would transmit into a dead short.

..R
 
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