Scanning Tampa Bay

Law Enforcement

The channel uses for Tampa PD are those reported by a number of frequency lists and do appear to be out of date.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office has shifted most of their operations to the new EDACS system.

Fire Rescue

Hillsborough County Fire Rescue (HCFR) has joined the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office on the new EDACS system. They continue to transmit all(?) their dispatches on the old VHF channels, especially 154.1750.

When you listen to HCFR (and Tampa Fire Rescue), there are a couple things to note. There are private ambulance companies (AMR) that can respond to non-emergency cases and cases that will not need advanced life support. Typically you'll hear the county dispatcher call AMR dispatch first and see if they can respond to the non-emergency cases.

Tampa International Airport

I'm still not real clear on everything that goes on around an airport, but here's what I've pieced together at least for Tampa International Airport (TPA). Feel free to correct me.

It can be a bit hard to listen to this traffic. The airborne planes are pretty easy to hear (imagine a 5000 foot radio tower), but unless you're close to the airport, it can be hard to hear the tower or other controllers, especially ground control.

First, a little about the airport. There are two large north-south runways and one smaller east-west runway. Runways are numbered by their direction in tens of degrees. For example, the small runway at TPA is called runway 27 (two-seven) or runway 9 depending on the direction of approach or departure. The two large runways are 18 (one-eight) left and 18 right from the north and 36 left and right from the south.

When planes come around the south side of TPA, they encounter MacDill Air Force Base and are often instructed to turn to avoid it. Across the bay is the St. Pete Clearwater Airport. Smaller planes using runway 27 often encounter this airport.

First there is the ATIS (Automated Traffic Information Service/System). These two frequencies carry information about the current conditions of the airport. When you're flying somewhere and the captain comes on to tell you the current temperature at your destination, he's probably picked up this bulletin. These bulletins have things like: the frequencies to contact TPA approach, the current runway in use, taxiway closings, etc. During the county-wide mass casualty drill at the Airport in 1998 (30+ emergency response vehicles on-scene), the bulletins mentioned the training exercise.

Then there are the approach/departure frequencies. These slice the sky into segments. When planes are far from the airport, they are controlled by regional air traffic controllers (usually Jacksonville for planes in and out of TPA). As they approach the airport (or as they are departing), they are controlled by approach and departure controllers at TPA. Typically you'll hear inbound planes (usually from the North) contact approach. They'll then be given directions to either runway 18 left or 18 right or directions to pass around the airport and turn to come in on runway 36 left or 36 right. They'll also be guided to spot other traffic in visual range. When the plane approaches close enough, they are handed off to TPA tower. Outbound planes are typically a lot quieter. You'll hear them make contact and later get handed off to Jacksonville, but not much else.

The tower frequencies control the traffic close to the airport (usually within visual range). They handle clearance for takeoff and landings.

I believe the ground frequencies handle everything from the gate to the end of the runway.

An interesting non-TPA frequency I threw in is the local Civil Air Patrol (CAP) repeater. Several nights a week you can hear them run a regular net. More interesting is the occasional search-and-rescue (SAR) mission. From time to time a emergency beacon fires up (on 121.50) and CAP helps in the search. The first step is usually to drive to the airport and check the hangers. If the signal isn't coming from there, pretty soon you'll hear a collection of people on the frequency, attempting to locate the signal. You'll hear mobile stations (cars) with direction finding gear, base stations coordinating, and often one or more airplanes.

Hillsborough County EDACS System

Frequency	Frequency	Frequency	Frequency	Frequency
866.1250	866.2250	866.2500	866.3750	866.4125
866.5625	866.6500	866.7000	866.7250	866.7500
866.8125	867.0375	867.0625	867.3125	867.4000
867.5500	867.6500	867.8000	867.9125	868.1000
868.1250	868.2500	868.2750	868.3000	868.3500
868.5250	868.5750	868.6000	868.6875	868.7125
868.7375	868.8250

Hillsborough County is in the process of moving to a fairly new Ericsson EDACS system. The Sheriff's Office and Fire-Rescue are already mostly moved over. Other agencies will likely make the switch in the years to come.

Currently it is quite difficult to monitor this system. Why is it so hard? To begin with it is a trunked system with at least 30 channels and EDACS systems have two major differences from Motorola or LTR trunked systems that keep scanner listeners in the dark. On other trunked systems, a whole conversation might take place on the same frequency. On an EDACS system whenever someone keys up, the whole talk group moves to a new frequency. Every time. This wouldn't be so bad by itself, as your scanner could then drop back into scan and have a good chance of catching up with the rest of the talk group. Except EDACS also keeps the transmitted on the old frequency active, transmitting several high-pitched beeps. Listening to the beeps ads several seconds of delay to your scan time. Since most public safety transmissions are fairly short, by the time you drop back in to scan mode, the group you're listening to is probably ready to do the frequency hop again.

The BearCat/Uniden/Cobra/Radio Shack TrunkTracker scanners only deal with Motorola systems, not this less-popular Ericsson system. At this time, there are only two real possibilities for monitoring this system. The first is a rumor (though from a good source) that you can obtain one of the GE/Ericsson radios through Hillsborough County. It will be programmed for you, but transmit will be disabled (and the rumor is that some talk groups will be excluded). The cost is rumored to be about $1,500. The second method is to obtain your own EDACS radio, find someone with the programming software and cable, and spend weeks figuring out the system.

Neither option sounds very good. But there is hope. There is reportedly a new generation of the TrunkTracker scanner due to come out summer 1999 that understands Ericsson EDACS. It is also rumored that they will have an Internet database that you can pull frequencies (and possibly talk-group descriptions) from and download to the scanner. I'll be waiting.

In the meantime, you can try to monitor an EDACS system with a conventional scanner. Load all the channels in a scanner. Then you need to identify which are control channels and which are voice channels. I believe there are two control channels at all times, and the channels change at least every day. Identify them and lock them out. How do you tell what the control channels are? There are three things you'll hear besides voice traffic. The first is the high-pitched beeps at the end of a voice transmission. The second is short bursts of data on a voice channel. That's probably digital data for mobile data terminals (laptops) in the vehicles. The third is a constant sort of "warble" with occasional bursts of data. That's a control channel. They transmit all the time. Once you've locked out the control channels, that's about the best you can do. Hit the scan button whenever someone unkeys and the beeps start and maybe you can follow a conversation when the system isn't too busy (like real late at night or maybe mid-day).

Note that, like all 800 MHz repeater systems (and AMPS cell phone systems), the mobiles transmit 45 MHz below the repeater's frequency. So if you happened to be close enough to some action you could hear traffic on this system in the 821.1250 to 823.8250 range, without the control channels, beeps, etc.

Last Updated 03/14/1999 - Contact Me