Welcome the electronic CARMA newsletter, the official publication of the Chicago Area Radio Monitoring Association.

You should send your contributions to the newsletter as an e-mail message to the below address:

carmachicago@yahoogroups.com

Note that this is NOT the address you send your commands to control your subscription. That address is:

carmachicago-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

CARMA is a hobbyist organization, which supports radio monitoring in the greater Chicago metropolitan area. A prioritized listing of our traditional areas of interest:

1. Scanning Public Safety radio operations in the Chicago metro area

2. Monitoring all other radio services in the Chicago metro area

3. Scanning Public Safety throughout the four state area (IL,WI,IN,MI)

4. Worldwide reports from our member's travels

5. Other radio monitoring related articles of general interest
(Equipment, techniques, in-depth articles, trends in radio comm, etc)

6. Conducting tours of facilities of interest to our membership.

CARMA's un-official list of goals as an organization:

a. The sharing and distribution of radio monitoring related information

b. Supporting the hobby of radio monitoring

c. Supporting new comers to the hobby

d. Fighting proposed legislation, which adversely impacts the hobby

e. Supporting public safety agencies in their attempts to maintain and improve their radio communications.

f. Improving the public image of the hobby.

g. Improving manufacturers awareness of our needs

Note goal "e" above. Make no mistake. CARMA fully supports all aspects of Public Safety and Law Enforcement. Many of our members are Law Enforcement Officers, Firefighters, Paramedics and other Public Safety employees. If you are a police or government hater, or if you feel like you cant abide by and support these goals yourself you should not subscribe to the newsletter, attend meetings or otherwise contact us as you wont feel welcome.

In addition, our most gracious host, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/carmachicago, has it's own policies with which we must abide by, most of which are already in place in our organization:

1. No profanity. This has generally been a long-standing policy for newsletter editors. It becomes far more important now. This list will be read worldwide. In many countries it's illegal to have profanities stored on a disc. We don’t want to land a hobbyist in an Islamic country in prison, or worse.

2. No personal attacks.

3. No flame wars.

4. No commercial advertising or Spam.

5. Avoid beating a continuing thread to death. Once a topic has been replied to five or six times it's likely that everything has already been said that needs saying.

6. No petty nonsense. Actually the way the policy reads it can't appear under #1 above. But you get the idea.

These are YAHOO's policies and you MUST abide by them or you will be removed from the list.

And... I'm adding a couple of my own...

1. No re-posting or quoting of lengthy previous posts to add 2 lines or less of comments. Just quote the relevant portion of the message you are replying to.

2. In many cases it's better to write to the originator of the message privately as opposed to posting to the list. Unless you have information that is of interest to the group as a whole send a private reply.

Posts appearing on the CARMA newsletter e-mail list represent the views and opinions of the individual author and may not reflect those of CARMA. Individual authors assume any and all liability associated with their posts. CARMA maintains a limited copyright on all of its publications and it's member's contributions. We strongly encourage our membership to freely distribute our information with other hobbyists. Credit must given to CARMA or the original source and no material may be distributed for profit. It's okay to charge for reproduction costs.

The current moderator / manager of the list is Ted Moran. He may be reached at:

tandkmoran@comcast.net

He is serving essentially as a troubleshooter for the system, which handles message processing, not as a newsletter editor. This is an automated list. YOU are the person who manages YOUR subscription. Do not write to Ted asking for introductory information, subscription requests, help files, etc. All of this is available through the system itself and should seldom require human intervention. Do write to Ted if your commands are being rejected after trying at least twice or if you are having other serious technical problems with the list.

If you have printed material you wish to contribute you should make some attempt at converting it to a text file stored on disc. Kinko's copy centers have page scanners, computers and helpful staff to guide you in the process at low cost. Many local libraries will do the same for free. Your local library is also a great place to establish a free e-mail account. Just subscribe in the digest form and stop by once a week or so to read, store on disc, or print your messages. Discs with text files can be mailed to the Post Office Box address below and we will post it to the list. Printed paper contributions can also be sent to Ted, but will be converted to text and posted to the list only as his time permits.

CARMA
PO Box 514
Winnetka IL 60093
USA

The CARMA newsletter was formerly a formal written newsletter written by an editor under his editorial control. This is no longer the case. The newsletter has been converted into an automatic e-mail system, and as a result has become totally democratic. It's vital that our local members post their observations to the list in order to maintain the traditional high quality of our publication. Ted is retaining some editorial authority to block messages not conforming to policy and to remove persons who violate policy or whose posts are not in keeping with our goals and policies. Violations will be reviewed by the CARMA board members and handled on a case by case basis.

You control your subscription to this list by send an e-mail messages to the following address:

carmachicago-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Important note: IF YOU CHANGE YOUR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER, OR YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS, BEFORE DOING SO YOU MUST UN-SUBSCRIBE FROM WHICHEVER VERSION OF THE LIST YOU ARE RECEIVING, THEN RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER YOUR NEW NAME. IF YOU FAIL TO DO THIS YOUR SUBSCRIPTION IS TERMINATED.

carmachicago-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

1. When and where and what is the next meeting?

CARMA holds meetings every other month on Saturdays at area restaurants. Lunch is at 11:00, the meeting starts at 1PM. You must purchase a lunch as we get the room for free. Meetings usually last about 2 hours. If you are coming be prepared to share some of your locally confirmed information with members present. If you have a lot of information consider copies of a written handout. Attendance has been running 30-60 people. Come join in the fun! Meeting dates and times are announced regularly on this list and on our web site.

 

We also have informal Friday Nighters, where we get together, share vittles and conversation.

http://www.carmachicago.com

CARMA also conducts tours of facilities of interest to our membership. Watch the e-mail for announcements of coming tours and how to attend.

2. Who or What is CARMA?

We began as a small group of suburban hobbyists who met at area restaurants. Meeting attendance gradually increased over time. For a period of time we were the Chicago Chapter of the now defunct RCMA. We broke with the RCMA prior to their downfall to retain a greater level of independence. Our 20-year anniversary is approaching. Our previous newsletters have been subscribed to or read by well over 1000 people. Our biggest meeting had 110 people. We also hold an annual picnic (bring your own...) / field monitoring day.

3. How do I become a CARMA member?

CARMA has no formal membership procedure. If you are reading this, you are a member, welcome to the club.

4. I'm visiting Chicago soon; I just need a few good frequencies to monitor.

120.750 O’Hare Tower

123.025 Helicopter Common Traffic Advisory Frequency

132.700 O’Hare Tower

145.770 CARMA Simplex (151.4 Hz PL Tone)

153.770 Chgo Fire Dept Englewood Southside Dispatch

153.830 Fireground common Chgo Metro area

154.130 Chgo Fire Dept Main Northside Dispatch

154.265 IFERN Interagency Fire Emergency Radio Network

155.475 ISPERN Statewide Police Emergency Network

155.535 Cook County Sheriffs Office South

155.595 Cook County Sheriffs Office North

157.050 US Coast Guard Search & Rescue

384.900 O’Hare KC-135 Tanker USAF Command Post

450.250 WGN Traffic Copter reports

450.2875 Shadow Traffic Reporters

453.700 IL Dept Transportation Emergency Patrols

460.150 Chgo Police Dept Zone 4 1st & 18th Districts Downtown

460.575 American Red Cross Disaster Relief

460.600 Chgo Fire Dept Paramedics North

460.625 Chgo Fire Dept Paramedics South

460.125 Chgo Police Dept Citywide 1

460.175 Chgo Police Dept Citywide 2

460.250 Chgo Police Dept Citywide 6

470.9875 CTA Rail Control & Emergency

472.0375 Loyola Lifestar Medical Copter

5. What's a good scanner to buy?

We refer you to the FAQ's and intro files regularly published by Bob Parnass in the REC.RADIO.SCANNER usenet newsgroup. Which scanner you wish to purchase will probably be dictated by its frequency coverage Vs. the frequencies used by the services you wish to monitor, as well as your monetary situation. How happy you will be with whatever scanner you buy will largely be dictated by how well you understand what you are listening to, your listening environment, your knowledge of radio systems and other details. It's not so much what scanner you own but how you use it. Bring your questions to this list or to a meeting.

6. Why are you guys so nosey? Why are you eavesdropping?

Most people buy scanners to hear what their local emergency services are doing. We represent the hard-core technical enthusiasts. A large percentage of us are not so interested in the details of the conversations as we are in the type of signal or system being received, it's operating details, signal propagation, etc. Essentially, we like to know who's on first base. We map the spectrum. For many of us the most important thing is confirming a licensed (or un-licensed) transmitter as actually using a specific frequency.

7. Is it legal to...

-It is not legal to reveal to another person the details of conversations you monitor, if they would not have been privy to the original message.

-It is not legal to profit from what you monitor.

-It is not legal to listen to cordless phones or cellular phones.

To be more specific, it's illegal to tune into these frequency ranges and listen to services for which they are primarily allocated:

Cellular: Towers: 869.010-894.000 / Mobiles: 824.010 -to- 849.000, 30 Khz Steps

(These frequencies have been deleted from nearly all hobbyist level radios being sold in the United States. Radios made overseas which cover this band can no longer be approved for sale in the United States. Many radios have been confiscated in shipment by the US Customs Service. Hundreds of thousands of older radio which do cover this frequency range are still in use, as are countless older television sets which also tuned this band. Conventional cellular phones offer no degree of voice privacy for their users and their accounts can be easily stolen).

CORDLESS PHONE FREQUENCIES

CH BASE MOBILE

01 43.72 48.76

02 43.74 48.84

03 43.82 48.86

04 43.84 48.92

05 43.92 49.02

06 43.96 49.08

07 44.12 49.10

08 44.16 49.16

09 44.18 49.20

10 44.20 49.24

11 44.32 49.28

12 44.36 49.36

13 44.40 49.40

14 44.46 49.46

15 44.48 49.50

16 46.61 49.67

17 46.63 49.845

18 46.67 49.86

19 46.71 49.77

20 46.73 49.875

21 46.77 49.83

22 46.83 49.89

23 46.87 49.93

24 46.93 49.99

25 46.97 49.97

The above represent the current allocations for 25 Channel lowband cordless phones sold in the United States. This is a recent expansion from a 10 channel band plan, which was expanded from the original 5 channel lowband / 5 channel shortwave phones. These frequencies are still being included in all scanners being sold, but it's illegal to listen to them. The newer 15 channels were taken from inter-city bus transit and forest product services, some of which are still in use. It's unclear whether or not it would be legal to listen for these services, or even to use of these radios! But such is the nature of special interest legislation.

Scrambled low band cordless phones offer a very minimal degree of voice privacy to their users. Don't rely on it.

A similar situation exists for newer 900 Mhz cordless phones. While recent legislation would appear to make it illegal to tune into this service, this is an entirely shared band, used by amateur radio, vehicle tracking services, remote control devices and a plethora of low power, short range and spread spectrum devices. Here are a few examples of typical bandplans used by these units. True spread-spectrum, digital 900 Mhz phones offer the highest degree of voice privacy available to the typical consumer market, outside of after market encryption devices. These frequencies are still present in all scanners being sold, which feature frequency coverage this high.

900 MHZ CORDLESS TELEPHONES- 902 - 928 MHZ NFM

Panasonic KX-T9000 (60 Channels)

base 902.100 - 903.870 Base frequencies (30Khz spacing)

handset 926.100 - 927.870 Handset frequencies

CH BASE HANDSET CH BASE HANDSET CH BASE HANDSET

01 902.100 926.100 11 902.400 926.400 21 902.700 926.700

02 902.130 926.130 12 902.430 926.430 22 902.730 926.730

03 902.160 926.160 13 902.460 926.460 23 902.760 926.760

04 902.190 926.190 14 902.490 926.490 24 902.790 926.790

05 902.220 926.220 15 902.520 926.520 25 902.820 926.820

06 902.250 926.250 16 902.550 926.550 26 902.850 926.850

07 902.280 926.280 17 902.580 926.580 27 902.880 926.880

08 902.310 926.310 18 902.610 926.610 28 902.910 926.910

09 902.340 926.340 19 902.640 926.640 29 902.940 926.940

10 902.370 926.370 20 902.670 926.670 30 902.970 926.970

CH BASE HANDSET CH BASE HANDSET CH BASE HANDSET

31 903.000 927.000 41 903.300 927.300 51 903.600 927.600

32 903.030 927.030 42 903.330 927.330 52 903.630 927.630

33 903.060 927.060 43 903.360 927.360 53 903.660 927.660

34 903.090 927.090 44 903.390 927.390 54 903.690 927.690

35 903.120 927.120 45 903.420 927.420 55 903.720 927.720

36 903.150 927.150 46 903.450 927.450 56 903.750 927.750

37 903.180 927.180 47 903.480 927.480 57 903.780 927.780

38 903.210 927.210 48 903.510 927.510 58 903.810 927.810

39 903.240 927.240 49 903.540 927.540 59 903.840 927.840

40 903.270 927.270 50 903.570 927.570 60 903.870 927.870

V-TECH TROPEZ DX900 (20 CHANNELS)

905.6 - 907.5 TRANSPONDER (BASE) FREQUENCIES

(100 KHZ SPACING)

925.5 - 927.4 HANDSET FREQUENCIES

CH BASE HANDSET CH BASE HANDSET CH BASE HANDSET

01 905.600 925.500 08 906.300 926.200 15 907.000 926.900

02 905.700 925.600 09 906.400 926.300 16 907.100 927.000

03 905.800 925.700 10 906.500 926.400 17 907.200 927.100

04 905.900 925.800 11 906.600 926.500 18 907.300 927.200

05 906.000 925.900 12 906.700 926.600 19 907.400 927.300

06 906.100 926.000 13 906.800 926.700 20 907.500 927.400

07 906.200 926.100 14 906.900 926.800

OTHER 900 MHZ CORDLESS PHONES:

AT&T #9120 - - - - - 902.0 - 905.0 & 925.0 - 928.0 MHZ

OTRON CORP. #CP-1000 902.1 - 903.9 & 926.1 - 927.9 MHZ

SAMSUNG #SP-R912- - - 903.0 & 927.0 MHZ

It should be noted that IS legal to listen to any of these frequencies if you are in the process of attempting to rectify a radio interference situation. It is unclear if it is legal to listen to a station operating on one of these frequencies, which is not a service primarily allocated to it. Example: Motorola has experimental class licensed transmitters in the Chicago area on some cellular frequencies.

Most of these frequencies were banned by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and it's amendments. PCS services are likely to soon be included in pending legislation. To date, no one has ever been prosecuted under this bill, and the FBI, which has been tasked with it's enforcement pronounced it "un-enforceable".

We include these frequencies in this Frequently Asked Questions file because we believe that our members cannot obey the law unless they know what is illegal.

-It is not legal to listen to studio -to- transmitter links or remote broadcast pickup links used by broadcasters.

It's not certain, but it's thought that this service ended up being protected by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act as the result of a mis-understanding. But they are illegal to listen to:

944.000 -to- 952.000

These services also employ other "BA" class allocations. (See Police Call back section). But those frequencies are also used in a variety of other ways by the broadcast services. Engineering, Studio Control, Cues, Camera Techs, Etc. So this ends up as yet another gray area.

-It is not legal to decipher encrypted or encoded radio transmissions.

This appears to mean an attempt to use a descrambling device to listen to a radio conversation being conducted on an encrypted radio transmission, not the mere reception of the signal. Actually the wording of the law is unclear, what a surprise!

-It is not legal to decode paging transmissions.

We have yet to hear any explanation or rationalization for this.

-It is not legal to interfere with Police or Fire agencies.

This could mean transmitting on a public safety frequency or keying up a public safety repeater. But it also includes your presence causing physical interference at an emergency / disaster scene or investigation or surveillance. Or your revealing to one of those non-privy third parties the details of radio traffic which later get back to a subject under investigation. There are a variety of other scenarios, which worry us. Use good judgment.

-It is not legal to transmit on frequencies requiring a license for which you do not hold a license.

Self explanatory.

-It is not legal to intentionally interfere with radio communications.

Don't do it.

-It is illegal to violate national security laws.

Be cautious while monitoring sensitive communications, especially federal transmissions. While these matters are not supposed to be discussed on any conventional radio channel you never know what you'll stumble onto.

-It is illegal to use a radio system (repeater, etc) that you are not authorized to use.

Locally, the Cook County States Attorney prosecutes people under "theft of service" laws. Don’t steal service from a radio communications service provider.

There are a few gray areas centering around the decoding of digital radio signals.

As far as we are aware it is currently legal everywhere in the State of Illinois to own and operate radio receivers from your home, car or on your person. In the judgment of some law enforcement officers a person operating a scanner from a location other than their home (in public) may represent probable cause for further inquiry, especially if you are acting suspiciously, un-cooperative or there are other influencing factors. We urge you to use good judgment in all situations. In the City of Chicago there is a separate law that you can be charged under if you are using a scanner to aid or assist in the commission of another offense.

Beware of local building ordinances and condo board rules which prohibit setting up outside antennas. If you are already stuck consider trying your building's master antenna TV system for a receive antenna, or employing a hidden antenna. Okay, so we hate these laws. But you shouldn't really break them, either.

IT IS NOT LEGAL TO LISTEN TO CORDLESS OR CELLULAR PHONES ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES. So please don't ask us to assist you in doing so. We fought hard to prevent the passage of these laws, but they passed anyway. So now we must obey them as a matter of policy. If you want to know how to modify your scanner to receive cellular radiotelephone transmissions try a Yahoo search or post your question to the newsgroups. Please don't ask us on the list. Thanks.

8. What is a PL Tone? (also known as CTCSS)

It's a sub-audible tone sent out with the signal. Either as a conventional sine wave or as a digitally coded square wave. There are 38 standard conventional tones. They are used to control repeater access and to prevent the reception of other signals with different or no PL tone operating on the same frequency. See the Police Call introduction for a more in-depth explanation.

Hobbyists can use an radio that is capable of PL receive to help reduce paging interference, to selectively receive a single user of a crowded channel, to better understand how certain types of radio systems operate, to assist with identifying stations and to block the reception of digitally encrypted signals. CARMA has tracked PL tones in the Chicago area and the midwest for over 15 years. We suggest you download our PL list from the web site and import it into a database to see what we are talking about.

You should know that the FCC does not assign PL tones, and tracked them only experimentally for a short period of time many years ago here in the Chicago area. We publish PL tones in the newsletter in this format:

155.595 (107.2) Cook County Sheriffs Office North Dispatch

IIIIIII IIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

\Freq/ \PLTone/ \User/

If you have no idea what this means or don't have a radio or computer interface which offers PL receive as an option you can safely simply ignore the PL numbers and just program the frequency.

9. You guys know everything already. I'm just a beginner. What can I possibly contribute?

Nonsense! Every new member we've run into had something we did not. For one thing, beginners always end up doing a lot of searching around the spectrum, and as a result, usually have come across something that was in a place we don't usually look at. More importantly, just because of your geographic location, where you listen from, what you are hearing is unique. You can hear dozens of low power operations that we cannot. We need your observations! Post them to the list! Do it today! The frequencies, callsigns, activity codes, callsigns, PL tones, channel plans and other details that you have personally confirmed are very important to all of us. Don't be shy! Post today!

10. What kind of computers do you guys use. What kind of files?

Our newsletters, e-mail list and newsletter archives are all plain text files, readable by any word processor program. There is a large core element of true database fanatics in the club and DBF has become our standard sharing format. You will want a database program capable of importing a DBF file, most will. We plan on posting PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader) format newsletters on our web site in the future as the need arises. There are both Mac and PC users in the club. Scanstar and Probe are popular among our members for computer aided scanning, along with a variety of shareware packages.

11. Should I put up an outside antenna?

All things being equal, yes. But there are many factors at work with this one. Chicago is a VERY noisy radio environment to listen in / from. Numerous high power broadcasters, hundreds of paging transmitters and thousands of cellular towers make for a lot of interference. Many handheld scanners were engineered to work best with their built in antennas and will get badly overloaded when using an outside antenna. Again, we are currently suggesting a receiver which uses triple conversion circuit design. Putting up an outside antenna can be very dangerous. Don't attempt it if you are not aware of the hazards (electrocution, falls, etc) and know what you are doing (grounding paths, lightning protection, building codes, roof leaks, chimney falls, etc). But the height of the tip of your (or their!) antenna is the biggest overall factor in how far you will be able to reliably receive line of sight signals. Also - the higher the frequency is that you wish to receive the more important good quality coaxial cable becomes. Sometimes the combination of an outside antenna and a device which reduces signal levels can be a wining combination, oddly enough.

12. I can't hear a thing when listening from inside my home. What gives?

Beware of:

Extensive steel beam structures (skyscrapers)

Steel reinforced concrete structures (old buildings)

Foil backed roof and wall insulation (new cheap buildings)

All can reduce or almost totally block radio reception. Your best solution is an outside antenna. Next is some type of window mount. As a last resort trying moving your antenna along inside walls until you find a spot that produces the best reception for a signal of interest.

13. I hear that everything is going digital, why listen?

It's true that most services are progressing towards either digital or other narrow band modes of transmission, and most current receivers cannot be used to listen to these signals. Current legislation would appear to prevent the sale of digital ready radio receivers (scanners) in the United States. We remain hopeful that some compromise will be found. But there are still many thousands of conventional radio services in operation in the Chicago area and will be for many years to come. Software will soon appear on the Internet which will allow a computer user to listen to many different digital modes. Already, mobile data terminals, pagers, fax machines and many other modes of non-voice signals can be decoded. Radio teletype signals have been decoded by hobbyists for over 50 years. As services leave their existing frequencies for newer digital modes new users appear on the old frequencies. Change is always exciting!

14. What's Simplex / Duplex / Mobile / Trunked / Repeater / Skip?

We defer to the introductory section of Police Call. Read it. Then read it again.

15. You guys / Radio signals / This list is driving me crazy. I'm ready to kill somebody! Who should I scream at?!

Hey pal, lighten up, remember, it's only a hobby...

Happy Scanning!!!

-Ted Moran / CARMA / 1998 FAQ

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