New vendor awarded $8.5M to service Coast Guard’s failing VHF sites

This is in reference to VHF Marine Remote sites in Alaska:

https://www.ktoo.org/2020/01/06/new-vendor-awarded-8-5-million-to-service-coast-guards-failing-vhf-sites/

The Passing of Uniden's Paul Opitz

Word began spreading last night about the death of Paul Opitz, otherwise known as "UPMan" on the scanner forums on Radio Reference.

Paul was the product manager for radio scanners at the Uniden Corporation in the U.S. He was instrumental in the design and development of all the recent models of radio scanners made and sold by Uniden.

https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/sad-news-about-paul-opitz-upman.399210/

Paul discovered he had cancer very suddenly in 2017 and decided to blog about it. It shows how determined he was to fight and provided some interesting insight to the man that many radio hobbyists knew, but had never met;

http://massivelyuninformed.me/category/throat-blog/?order=asc

Memorial information for Mr. Rodney Paul Opitz, R.I.P. -

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/fort-worth-tx/rodney-opitz-8977535

January 2020 TSM Corrections

Well, I somehow managed to fat-finger some frequencies in the January 2020 edition of Federal Wavelengths and wanted to post some corrections.

In my January column I spoke about where to look for federal radio traffic. Here are the ranges as I intended to list them:

Most of the active federal radio systems near you are going to be in two distinct bands of radio frequencies. The federal VHF Hi-band runs from 162.0 MHz to 174.0 MHz, with the channels being assigned in 12.5 kHz steps. The federal UHF band runs from 406.0 MHz to 420.0 MHz, also in 12.5 kHz steps. There are some additional ranges of frequencies that are sometimes used by federal and military operations that might be active in your area. The VHF lo-band from 30 MHz to 50 MHz is often used by military aircraft and ground units in the FM analog mode. The ranges of 138.0 MHz through 144.0 MHz and 148.0 MHz through 150.875 MHz are often used by military land mobile and aircraft operations. They can be AM (for aircraft) or FM (for land mobile) mode and may be digital as well. There is a small piece of radio spectrum above the federal UHF band that runs from 400.0 MHz to 406.0 MHz, that is normally assigned to radio astronomy use, but there are exceptions for military and federal use. There have been several examples of federal operations being heard in this range of frequencies, but it’s rare."

Army Flights Over DC

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-13/army-s-secret-flights-over-washington-now-an-enduring-mission

Another 380 MHz Trunked System and Garage Doors

Another story has  emerged about people having trouble with their garage door remote controls likely due to interference from a government 380 MHz trunked radio system:

https://www.fauquiernow.com/fauquier_news/article/fauquier-feds-admit-radios-interfere-with-garage-door-openers-11-5-2019

These systems have been blamed in other areas for causing issues, but since the garage door openers are FCC Part 15 devices, they have to accept any interference from licensed users. The door opener remotes are often built with poor selectivity and get de-sensed from the legitimate radio systems nearby.

VHF P-25 DoD System Near Pittsburgh?

A recent posting over on Radio Reference indicates that a new VHF P-25 multi-site radio system is being heard in the Pittsburgh area, in southwestern Pennsylvania.

System information was posted as shown below:

Pittsburgh Area VHF P-25 DoD System?

Network: BEE00.8A8

Bandplan #4:

Base=136.

Offset=+0.9

Spacing=12.5

BW=12.5 

Site: 1.1 NAC=8A0

Neighbors: 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 

Channel 4-179: 138.2375 CC 

Channel 4-215: 138.6875 CC SCC 

Site: 1.2 NAC=8A0

Neighbors:1.1, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 

Channel 4-163: 138.0375 CC SCC 

Channel 4-205: 138.5625 CC SCC VOICE 

Channel 4-255: 139.1875 VOICE DATA 

Channel 4-495: 142.1875 VOICE DATA 

Site: 1.3 NAC=8A0

Neighbors: 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.5 

Channel 4-181: 138.2625 CC 

Channel 4-217: 138.7125 SCC 

Channel 4-291: 139.6375 VOICE 

Channel 4-519: 142.4875 VOICE 

Site: 1.4 NAC=8A0

Neighbors: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5 

Channel 4-203: 138.5375 CC 

Channel 4-243: 139.0375 SCC 

Site: 1.5 NAC=8A0

Neighbors: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 

Channel 4-201: 138.5125 CC 

Channel 4-219: 138.7375 CC SCC

Anyone have any information on the system being heard and where it might be?

There is already a VHF P-25 system at the Pittsburgh Air Reserve Station at the Pittsburgh International Airport. This system is part of a US Air Force system covering many bases:

Site 1-015

Pittsburgh Air Reserve Station  Allegheny, PA      

138.5875          

140.6625               

141.4875               

143.0125               

143.0625        

 

-->
-->

FBI Communications Compromised by Russian Agents

This story began circulating recently on the Internet - an interesting read:

https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-russia-carried-out-a-stunning-breach-of-fbi-communications-system-escalating-the-spy-game-on-us-soil-090024212.html