Australian Police - HF radio alive and well!

Post by **geoffro316** » Fri May 24, 2013 8:33 pm

Just wanted to let all the HF enthusiasts know that the shortwave bands are alive and well with Police communications from all over Australia! The good thing with HF is that you can listen to interstate Comms no matter where you are!

Recently I went through the ACMA online database and collated all the HF frequencies currently licenced to Australia's Police services then programmed them into my Codan HF radio to see if they were actually in use or not. As a result, I've heard transmissions on 13 out of the 26 frequencies i found over a period of about a month. I've monitored voice Comms, selcall and ALE transmissions during this time from my mobile setup in my car on the Gold Coast from most states in Australia. Selcall is used when a unit wants to initiate contact with another whilst ALE (Automatic Link Establishment) transmissions occur about every 10 to 15 minutes to ensure the best frequencies are selected for voice Comms (I guess this is kind of like Voting, but for HF).

Some of the callsigns I've monitored so far are "Cobar 23, Cobar Station, Darling River 10, VKC Melbourne, Airwing 900 and Communications 624".

The frequencies I've found active so far are;

3752 kHz Licenced to NSW Police Force
4560 kHz Licenced to NSW, WA and NT Police
4780 kHz Licenced to Qld and Vic Police
5180 kHz Licenced to NT Police
5833 kHz Licenced to Qld, NT and SA Police
6905 kHz Licenced to NSW and Qld Police
6985 kHz Licenced to NT Police
7657 kHz Licenced to ACT, NT and Vic Police
7660 kHz Licenced to NSW and WA Police
7800 kHz Licenced to SA Police
10505 kHz Licenced to NSW, NT and Vic Police
10295 kHz Licenced to Qld and SA Police
14572 kHz Licenced to ACT, NT and Vic Police

I've also managed to get some quick video/audio of a couple of recent transmissions I took whilst mobile in my car between Brisbane and the Gold Coast which you can check out here http://m.youtube.com/#/playlist?list=PL ... 4Wy7dxCs0j

Cheers

G

Post by **SteveO** » Fri May 24, 2013 9:29 pm

Thanks for posting this. Are the transmissions fairly regular or sporadic? I would like to get into shortwave listening again but don't have a good radio for it.

Post by **geoffro316** » Fri May 24, 2013 11:25 pm

Unfortunately they are fairly sporadic Steve. The ALE transmits 24/7 but the data doesn't contain anything other than the "polling" info. The units that use HF are mostly in remote areas and as you could imagine, are not that busy. I guess it depends on what's happening at the time (major disasters like floods, bushfires, Cyclones etc). The video of Darling River 10 was during a major motor vehicle accident and they were on and off the radio for about an hour that night so you never know what you're going to get! I scan 10 channels during my 1 hour drive to work every morning and then back home again that night so this is the only times Ive really tuned in! Who knows what I've missed during the day! I love HF, have 2 x rigs in my car (Codan 9323 and a Yaesu FT857d) and an Icom IC7000 at home. I reckon HF is like going on an adventure without actually going anywhere, you never know what you're going to hear or what part of the world it will come from! You should get back into it Steve! Check out the other playlists on my YouTube page! Aussie Military HF is fairly regular believe it or not!

Post by **chanjyj** » Sat May 25, 2013 1:13 am

Thanks for the info.

Post by **melbourneradio** » Sat May 25, 2013 2:16 am

Great work il have to wack them into the radio

Post by **melbourneradio** » Sat May 25, 2013 2:22 am

Just checked out your you tube , great work ,What antenna are you using

Post by **bodyguard** » Sat May 25, 2013 7:48 am

what a great catch there Geoffro, thats some serious monitoring
thanks for the freqs that are active, never thought about the police using HF

Post by **geoffro316** » Sun May 26, 2013 1:23 am

melbourneradio wrote:Just checked out your you tube , great work ,What antenna are you using

My mobile antenna is an Opek HVT400B multi band vertical (bought it new off eBay for $60). I do have a Codan 9350 Autotune antenna for the car but its down in Vic at the moment getting upgraded. The Opek is tuned to 7500khz and does pretty good on receive. My QTH antenna is an end fed longwire setup as a sloper, the box is only about 5 metres off the ground, nothing special!

Post by **geoffro316** » Sun May 26, 2013 1:25 am

bodyguard wrote:what a great catch there Geoffro, thats some serious monitoring
thanks for the freqs that are active, never thought about the police using HF

No worries BG! I'm researching a heap of other services as well like Ambos, fire, SES, parks and wildlife etc. I'm putting a spreadsheet together and I'll post it when finished! HF is not dead yet, that's for sure!

Post by **bodyguard** » Sat Jun 01, 2013 8:30 am

hey Geoffro, approx what times were the radio check ins ?
Have you had any other successes ?

Post by **aircadet** » Mon Jun 03, 2013 3:32 pm

Thanks for the info!!! I having put those Freqs in and i will have a look around.
Been listing to HF flightwatch a bit of late... 6565mhz also 8822mhz and 8831mhz.

Cheers

Post by **geoffro316** » Mon Jun 03, 2013 10:15 pm

bodyguard wrote:hey Geoffro, approx what times were the radio check ins ?
Have you had any other successes ?

BG, the Radchecks were on Friday 23/5 at approx 0810hrs. I'm not sure if this was a regular check maybe done on the second last Friday of each month? or if it was the Radio Tech doing a test on new he had fitted, maybe at the Airwing hanger??

Post by **geoffro316** » Mon Jun 03, 2013 10:20 pm

aircadet wrote:Thanks for the info!!! I having put those Freqs in and i will have a look around.
Been listing to HF flightwatch a bit of late... 6565mhz also 8822mhz and 8831mhz.

Cheers

Did you see the video of Flightwatch blasting pirate operators on 8831? It was quite interesting! I heard a few aircraft try and call over the top of the Flightwatch "announcement" but they were never responded to, probably because the Flightwatch transmitter was locked on? I'd never heard this before! I know the Australian Defence Force does a similar thing when international pirates hijack their frequencies.

Post by **aircadet** » Wed Jun 05, 2013 9:20 am

Yes I have heard flightwatch doing this on occasions as well.... Starting to get back into HF... a lot to be found out there!!

Post by **Grunter1** » Fri Jun 07, 2013 8:55 am

Heya Geoffro,

Greetings from across the ditch.

Just my regular question - have you had any more thoughts about putting a Gold Coast live feed back up? It's something that's really lackling amongst the ones that are available.

Cheers and regards.

Grunter1.

Post by **geoffro316** » Mon Jun 10, 2013 1:19 am

Grunter1 wrote:Heya Geoffro,

Greetings from across the ditch.

Just my regular question - have you had any more thoughts about putting a Gold Coast live feed back up? It's something that's really lackling amongst the ones that are available.

Cheers and regards.

Grunter1.

I've thought about it, and could do it but I don't have the right resources at the moment! My Uniden scanner has been sitting on my desk for over a year now and I don't think I've turned it on once in that time! My desktop PC carked it a couple of years ago and I've only just put it in for repair but not sure yet if it can be fixed or not (have been running from my laptop and iPad/iPhone).

My biggest problem is my Internet connection! I'm with Dodo but was signed up under false pretenses! I asked them to confirm if I was signing up for an ADSL 2+ connection which the lovely Indian lady said yes to about 100 times as I continued to quiz her during the whole enquiry/sign up process to be sure that's exactly what I was getting! Once connected, and locked in to a 2 year contract I was flat out getting 1 mb/s download and only around 0.15 mb/s upload and even then the connection "stalls" almost every 20 minutes! If I had decent unlimited Internet I would probably run it again once (if) I got my desktop PC running!

vkcpolice · Post by **vkcpolice** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 1:04 am

http://m.youtube.com/#/playlist?list=PL ... 4Wy7dxCs0j
Link is Dead aslo are these LSB Or USB?

G[/quote]

Post by **Phantom** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 7:36 am

Errrrrrr, look at the screen. Fairly confident is says USB

Post by **Pumper_50** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 8:58 am

USB.

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