[ARC5] Long Range Low Band FM Contacts

[Glen Zook]

Back in the 1970s, when the Richardson, Texas, Police Department was using 37.140 MHz for dispatch, often, in the summer, the mobile units would have problems copying the base station.  However, one of the New York City boroughs was on the same frequency and their base station was coming in strong to the mobiles.  Conversely, the New York mobiles could copy the Richardson base station but they could not copy their own base station!  The solution was for the Richardson department to relay their calls through the New York base station and the New York department would relay their calls through Richardson.

One summer day, when the Plano, Texas (another suburb of Dallas), Police Department was handling radio traffic for animal control, they put out a call to a specific animal control officer ("dog catcher") on a 47 MHz frequency and were immediately answered.  Plano gave the address and the animal control officer said that he would be enroute.  A few minutes later the officer called dispatch and said that he could not find the address.  So, the Plano dispatcher told him certain cross streets, etc.  Several minutes later the animal control officer came back on and said that he just could not find the address.  The discussion between the Plano dispatcher and the animal control officer started getting heated when the animal control officer finally said, "there ain't no such address in Fort Lauderdale"!

Not only was the same frequency used by both Plano and Fort Lauderdale, the animal control officers had the same tactical call and the streets in that part of the city both had similar streets!

Also, I understand that during the desert war in Africa in 1940 and 1941, that United States amateur radio operators were copying German tank traffic on the 10-meter band.

Glen, K9STH

Website:  http://k9sth.com


--- On Thu, 1/27/11, Robert Eleazer <releazer at earthlink.net> wrote:

A friend of mine who was in the USAF in the 50's was stationed in West Germany and one day was relaxing under a tree during a field exercise, monitoring a PRC-10.  He heard messages from the Georgia Highway Patrol.
 
Another friend was helping to fight a brushfire down around Ft. Pierce, Florida and it was getting out of hand.  He sent out a call for help, as the fire was threatening a LORAN station.
 
He got a reply right away, "We can help and can respond with 26 units."
 
 He replied "Great!  Where are you at?"
 
The answer came back, "Chicago."
 
I also read where in the 1970's the British Army was conducting exercises in Scotland and were suffering from interference from a hospital paging system.
 
The hospital was in New York City.