Tasmania Police UHF Frequencies

Ch

Freq-Out

Freq-In

Area Of Use

7

468.0000

458.5000

 

8

468.0250

458.5250

 

15

468.2000

458.7000

 

16

468.2250

458.7250

 

17

468.2500

458.7500

 

23

468.4000

458.9000

 

24

468.4250

458.9250

 

26

468.4750

458.9750

Hobart & Launceston Foot Patrols (Now Closed)

39

468.8000

459.3000

 

48

469.0250

459.5250

 

N/A

119.1000

 

Tasmania Police & Other Emergency Services Aircraft*

N/A

162.9400

 

Spare

N/A

163.7200

 

Spare

N/A

164.1100

 

Spare

 

*This frequency is within the Civil Aviation Airband and is therefore an AM mode transmission.

Tasmania Police maintain a network comprising of some of the National Police UHF 64 Frequencies in the event that interstate police attend Tasmania, such as when Victoria Police “Air 495” and SOG officers “Security 800” were sent to Tasmania during the Port Arthur massacre. Whilst the network is maintained it is very rarely used any more in Tasmania. Only UHF Channels 7, 8, 15, 16, 17, 23, 24, 26, 39 and 48 are maintained in Tasmania.

 

An interesting fact: our Government decided After Cyclone Tracey in 1977 that every state should have the same police radio frequencies. This arose as many interstate police forces arrived in Darwin in 1977 and were unable to communicate with NT police as each state has it’s own VHF networks that were incompatible with one another. (Vic 168MHz, SA 163 MHz, NSW 77MHz etc) So, we (you and I as taxpayers) payed for the Federal Government to establish a national allocation whereby every police force has the same radio frequencies, so if a NSW police officer crosses into QLD he can continue to have radio contact with either and/or VKR and VKG radio centres. At this time, all states took up the UHF frequencies and relegated their VHF networks to country areas, where they remain to this day, so most country vhf frequencies were in fact once the metro and/or state wide frequencies (Up until 1978 when UHF opened)

 

In short, we built a network to avoid the problems of 1977. Now that police forces are moving to their own systems, we are going backwards as each state will again be on a different radio network with different frequencies and unable to communicate with so if there is another Cyclone Tracey the police services will be faced with same problem they had in 1977.

 

In my opinion, all states (or none) should all switch to the same digital network. Now we have NSW on APCO, Tasmania on EDACS etc. Get my point. I am writning to the Federal Government with my concerns, and I ask you all to join me in contacting Canberra about this act of stupidity. Tasmania, at least, has kept it’s old UHF network operational, even if they don’t use it, for exactly this reason.

©COPYRIGHT 2003 Ashley Geelan, VicNews ISSN 1038-6971

All Information Correct As At: 11 September 2003

ageelan@bigpond.com

 

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