WA Radio Scanner Users' Group

Does anyone know why The USS Columbia called VKI this Morning?? The Called up on Ch 46 (468.9750) for a radio check they came through loud and clear in fact the were booming down the radio very clear and distinctive. Vki gave them a radio check and told them that they were on ther wrong channel and they should goto channel 65. I have tried to scan that channel but i cant pick up anything. Anyone else hear this and know whats going on
Antt

Antt wrote:Does anyone know why The USS Columbia called VKI this Morning??

No idea at all. However, are you sure it was channel 65 they referred to? The standard VKI channels only go up to channel 64.

yeah, they confirmed it a few times over.... with the old sailor talk of repeating the last msg verbatem... "confirm channel 65". Havent heard anything further but

Hmmmmm.

About five years ago now I was *sure* I heard VKI refer to a channel 65 when I was listening. I put it off as being either my ears mis-heard, or the VKI op really meant some other channel and just got it wrong ... But maybe not!

I wonder if there are some extra specialist channels that are outside the normal 64 channel block. That's the only explanation I can think of.

Just did abit of research, and according to the wikipedia, USS Columbia is a Los Angelas class Submarine - which is visiting Garden Island for apparantley 5 days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Columbia_(SSN-771)

gkoutlis wrote:USS Columbia is a Los Angelas class Submarine

Ah - I thought you were referring to the lost Space Shuttle Columbia - most confusing...

by anychance did anyone else heart it ? i came through about 10 am.....

In Brisbane here, we have the standard 64ch allocation but my local police are always reffering to tell the units to change to ch 74 or 76 for better reception. I assume they have 100ch+ tranceivers and have a lot of other emergency services channels as well OR have a heap of channels within their tranceivers that use a different frequency for TX but still use the same repeaters or similar. My local police use ch 36,38,39,51,64 and their enquiry is 56. 36 and 39 can only be heard strong in the eastern part of the shire but 38 (although terrible audio and often hard to understand because is full of bass and muffled) is strong and clear throughout the entire shire. I can only hear the dispatcher on 51 & 64 and units can't be heard on these channels, even though the dispatcher is clearly talking to them on 36,38,39.

Pty wrote:In Brisbane here, we have the standard 64ch allocation but my local police are always reffering to tell the units to change to ch 74 or 76 for better reception.

In Melbourne the channels above 64 are voting channels. On that channel the radio "votes" or picks the strongest channel out of the ones linked together. So for someone in Perth, you might vote on channel 2 and 8 and program that as channel 65, say. Probably the same in Brissy.

I don't think it was a voting channel they were talking about with the USS Columbia though

New South Wales have a Channel 65: it's a simplex channel just above the 64 channel allocation intended for short range car-to-car comms.

Being mindful that it was a US sub, they may have been referring to VHF Marine channel 65 (which does exist).

Steve wrote:New South Wales have a Channel 65: it's a simplex channel just above the 64 channel allocation intended for short range car-to-car comms.

Being mindful that it was a US sub, they may have been referring to VHF Marine channel 65 (which does exist).

Hmm. But why would they then be talking to VKI instead of being on marine band?

I can only think that if they were talking to Police it was programmed on their radio as channel 65, and it was actually local channel. Not all radios can go to "local" and have to have a seperate channel programmed in for that mode.

I'm thinking that a US sub would be likely to have a radio that can 'dial up' 468.975 (or whatever frequency) manually - it's unlikely though to be a radio with the 64 police channels pre-programmed. They would, however, have a VHF marine set on board with the international marine channels programmed.

Whatever the case, this is about the most interesting communication I've heard of in 20 years of scanning!

I think the sub would be issued with an 'emergency service' frequency allocation table or similiar for australia and would simply tune to that frequency. I'm sure the comms systems on a sub would be pretty high tech

Pty wrote:I think the sub would be issued with an 'emergency service' frequency allocation table or similiar for australia and would simply tune to that frequency. I'm sure the comms systems on a sub would be pretty high tech

Or, they just got a VKI radio beforehand

But when you think about, both of these scenarios prompts one to ask 'what's a US sub doing contacting VKI anyway?!'

Intriguing!