[MilCom] 36.70 MHz in use at LCK

[Tom Swisher]

Thought I'd post this up here for all you who enjoy
tracking down skip.

Yesterday while riding around the base at Rickenbacker
IAP for familiarization (I work for the airport
authority), I happened to catch a chopper pilot and
his base talking to each other on 36.70 MHz with my
BCD396T. It's been several years since I heard
anything on this channel, or since the Probe/Pro2035
combination even logged a hit on it.

Unfortunately the scanner stopped after the exchange
of callsigns/aircraft tail number so I was unable to
confirm that info; however, Army choppers at LCK
generally ID as "Army xxx" (xxx being the tail
number).

The aircraft side of the communication was nice and
clear; the base side was scratchy, which wasn't
surprising since I was way to heck and gone on the
other side of the base and using a little dinky
handheld scanner antenna.

A couple of interesting things about my tour
yesterday... one is that getting so close I was able
to see that the National Guard buildings all sport
multiple antennae, mainly UHF-Air band types. There
are a few VHF-Low models around, and even a couple of
Barker & Williamson BWDS-65N broadband folded dipoles.
Obviously I'm going to have to start doing a little HF
ALE monitoring, as I suspect that's what they're using
the HF antennae for.

The other is that the old base commo buildings
(Military and MARS) still stand, right down to the
antenna masts at the Base Commo building. I was unable
to do much exploring around Base Commo, though, as it
was a rainy, wet, muggy day and the skeeters around
the place were almost as big as birds (possibly due to
the toxic waste dump a few hundred yards away)...

Tom WA8PYR

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