Transmission1

can the police helicopter radios be heard on a scanner if so what frequencies please

No not the police to police comms.

I thought the helo still used the old radios rather than the TETRA system, I'm sure I have seen some frequencies I'll post them when I find them

This is the info I have, I am not sure how old the info is but here it is anyway :-

These are the main frequencies used by police force helicopter support units to talk with units on the ground. You will need to be fairly close to where they are operating to hear them.

CH88 450.625
CH89 450.675
CH92 451.150 UNCONFIRMED
CH93 452.150
CH94 452.100
CH95 452.000
CH96 452.050
CH6 451.300 Rare
450.7625 Rare

The only way you will hear the police is when they talk to air traffic control of the airspace they are in, the helipad & to other helicopters using a 'private' company frequency which is rare.

You will not hear them talking to ground officers unless they are helping out in an area with (for example) mountain rescue or the coast guard then they will use rescue air to ground frequencies allocated for the teams they are working with at the time.
Most of the time the helicopter is talking to ATC and ground units so you will only really hear them talking to ATC which is boring unless you want to know where they are & it means you must listen all the time as ATC freq's are busy with airliners so its hard to spot the police helicopter.

I know they use Tetra now for radio comms however they used to transmit video signals on 2.3 - 2.4GHz
Have they also scrambled these now? or just moved up to a higher band? I heard a rumour they were on 5GHz but am not sure.
Used to have great fun watching them a few years ago, any upto date info would be great!

Cheers Mark

Would have been nice to see those! but i think you cant see those anymore.
You might be able to see video from other helicopters with cameras, lots of utility companies have helicopters to check things out, such as electricity lines, gas lines, rail ways and whatever else..
Also in this area there is British transport police helicopters, there is 2 of them located at the same base and are also used by network rail so are called out to both police and rail matters, mostly they do police transport related matters & i could imagine these helicopters have encrypted systems.
The same company who owns the helicopter has a fleet of them tho, mainly for utility reasons so quite a few have the cameras but i could imagine they would all be the same systems.

You got to do a bit of research and see whats in your area, search helicopter databases for callsigns you hear or registrations and find out what they are and who they belong to, or look online and see is there is stuff bases in your area like what i mentioned and see if you can pick them up first normal helicopter frequencies and then maybe when closer in the area you can try see if you can get video feeds.

Goodluck!

shortymcsteve wrote:Would have been nice to see those! but i think you cant see those anymore.
You might be able to see video from other helicopters with cameras, lots of utility companies have helicopters to check things out, such as electricity lines, gas lines, rail ways and whatever else..
Also in this area there is British transport police helicopters, there is 2 of them located at the same base and are also used by network rail so are called out to both police and rail matters, mostly they do police transport related matters & i could imagine these helicopters have encrypted systems.
The same company who owns the helicopter has a fleet of them tho, mainly for utility reasons so quite a few have the cameras but i could imagine they would all be the same systems.

You got to do a bit of research and see whats in your area, search helicopter databases for callsigns you hear or registrations and find out what they are and who they belong to, or look online and see is there is stuff bases in your area like what i mentioned and see if you can pick them up first normal helicopter frequencies and then maybe when closer in the area you can try see if you can get video feeds.

Goodluck!

Hi Steve,
I have been watching for them for a while now everytime there is a footy match which is mainly when I used to see video from them, the callsign used is Air1 but havent heard that for a while now cus of tetra.
Got some old footage of a thermal sweep of a canal and local cemetary etc, but as i said its from a number of years ago now. I know we used to have to alter the rx intercarrier sound circuit and move it to 7.?Mhz the usual TV intercarrier sound offset used to be 5.5Mhz for europe and 6.5MHz for UK. Anyway was all good fun. Also used to capture Sky's
OB signal on 10.8GHz using modified sat LNB Amazing how snotty some of the ITV presenters can be when they arent LIVE!

Anyway I have tried Google but not come up with anything upto date, If I can get a 100% genuine Freq I can then see if I can mod a sat lnb using down mixing But they could be scrambled as well!
Guess I just have to keep looking.
Thanks for your reply anyway.
Cheers Mark

To be honest i dont know anything about watching video feeds, i have no idea how its done but it does sound like it is very interesting and fun to watch.
If i see anything that might help you il give you a shout.

Again, good luck on finding anything.

Are all these dead then? (searched at http://www.airscene.co.uk/ )

1 119.800 London Gatwick Police/Helicopter...
2 122.450 Chichester Military Police H...
3 130.475 London, Lippits Hill Met Police Helico...
4 130.650 Luton Airport Thames Valley Pol...
5 133.512 Bristol Police helicopter..
6 133.550 Bristol Police helicopter...

just to add........can confirm west, south & humberside downlinks are all still alocated around the 2.3ghz encrypted!!!

very much doubt you will hear but i might give that a go myself as they are always near my house hovering around this estate

Helicopters downlink on Airwave AGA channels.

384.8125 :1
384.8375 :2 Birmingham area
384.8625 :3 Rugby area / Wester Ross area
384.8875 :4
384.9125 :5
384.9375 :6 Wigan area
384.9625 :7
384.9875 :8

The ground to air transmitters are more more widely spaced that normal Airwave transmitters, so cover quite a large area.

Depending on your scanner, you might be able to detect transmissions if you experiment with various modulations.
WFM can be effective (though it will detect multiple channels), FM offset by -12.5k works on Uniden 3500XLT/BCT15X models.

Search the corresponding 394 freqs (+10 MHz) to work out which channel covers your area (go up a hill if you can't find any transmission), then you can scan the mobile freq to detect nearby activity.