2m Skip?

[K9CCH]

So I'm monitoring my local repeaters with my BooFunky HT, and I'm in the bedroom.... Folding clothes! The radio is on the dresser (next to the bail money) and it stops scanning in 147.220.

147.220 is a repeater for the Pearland Radio Club, and its about 12 miles from me, but all of a sudden I'm hearing fire tones. Deer Park Pd was dispatching the FD to an unconscious person.

Now the repeater is 12mi from me, but the Deer Park PD is only like 2.

I've NEVER heard DP police dispatch on ANY frequency, and I was pretty sure they were on an 800mhz system.

Is this just a fluke thing based on the location of my radio, the weather, and the proximity of the transmitting station? I wouldn't think they would be using frequencies so close to amateur bands...

[NQ6U]

Not skip, tropospheric ducting. It happens a lot in the late summer. Sometimes I hear repeaters from way up north down here in San Diego and SoCal hams QSO with hams in Hawaii on 2m.

[N8OBM]

Not skip, tropospheric ducting. It happens a lot in the late summer. Sometimes I hear repeaters from way up north down here in San Diego and SoCal hams QSO with hams in Hawaii on 2m.

A cool tropo-ducting story. Years ago I was talking to friend of mine across town in Ann Arbor on the 145.15 repeater. This machine needs a 100hz PL to open up. After we were talking for a few minutes I noticed the tails were a little slow and the courtesy tone was different when I stopped transmitting. It seemed that I forgot to turn my tone on and My signal was going trough a repeater on the other side of Lake Erie in Cleveland Ohio. That was a good 200+ miles away. Not bad for a 5 watt HT. It also happens pretty regularly in the FM broadcast band. My evil twin brother lives near Cleveland so I visit often. It's not uncommon to hear Detroit FM stations in summer in Cleveland.

Archie N8OBM

[K7SGJ]

A cool tropo-ducting story. Years ago I was talking to friend of mine across town in Ann Arbor on the 145.15 repeater. This machine needs a 100hz PL to open up. After we were talking for a few minutes I noticed the tails were a little slow and the courtesy tone was different when I stopped transmitting. It seemed that I forgot to turn my tone on and My signal was going trough a repeater on the other side of Lake Erie in Cleveland Ohio. That was a good 200+ miles away. Not bad for a 5 watt HT. It also happens pretty regularly in the FM broadcast band. My evil twin brother lives near Cleveland so I visit often. It's not uncommon to hear Detroit FM stations in summer in Cleveland.

Archie N8OBM

They still have radio stations in Detroit? Who gnu?

[NQ6U]

Who gnu?

Wildebeest who made that pun please excuse himself?

[N8OBM]

They still have radio stations in Detroit? Who gnu?

Even more unbelievable, They have radios in Cleveland!

Archie N8OBM

[K9CCH]

But it's only one way right? I I transmitted on that frequency from that exact spot in my home, considering I can even get out, would they hear me? Or is that an undeterminable situation?

[NQ6U]

They might and they might not, hard to know for sure but you're probably hearing a high-wattage repeater from somewhere so it's not likely they'd hear you unless you have a fairly powerful transmitter and high-gain antenna yourself.

[kb2vxa]

OK, two possibilities:
1) Somebody on 147.220 was jerking around.
2) Since the receiver was in scan mode it moved on to the VHF Part 90 band just above 2M and received a regional simulcast frequency. Often a police or fire department also dispatches ambulances that may or may not be a fire rescue unit. In any case the PD always responds to any and all emergencies so they also could have dispatched a PD unit you mistook for FD.
154.79250 KKT848 DP PD Dispatch (simulcast from trunked system)
154.22000 KBG773 103.5 PL DP Fire Dispatch (simulcast from trunked system)
In any case what you heard wasn't DX by any stretch of the imagination, it was a "local" transmission from the Houston suburb you live in. I have no idea how these simulcast frequencies work so I can't say whether they could hear you on that frequency or not. One thing's for sure, they could if you had their talk group and NAC programmed into a Motorola Type II Smartset trunking radio. (;->)

[K9CCH]

I was in channel scan, not VFO scan.


And I know how they work, we patch in a VHF frequency for our volunteers who only have pagers and no radios. That wasn't what this was. This was a transmission on an amateur band.