Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Civil Air Patrol to Conduct Weekend Exercise in Northeast


The Northeast Region Civil Air Patrol will be conducting a region wide disaster relief exercise this weekend (7/31-8/1). Looks like there's going to be a lot of HF/SSB radio traffic including ALE operation. Will probably have a lot of air to ground VHF-NFM comms conducted by all wings throughout the region.

If you are an HF entusiasts CAP is quite active within the HF spectrum and can be interesting to monitor. The following ALE addresses have been seen here in BTown.

0001OKCAP 0002SCCAP 0004IACAP 0004ILCAP 0004MSCAP 0004NVCAP 0004NYCAP 0004SCCAP 0004WICAP 0004WVCAP 00081ILCAP 0010NVCAP 0010PACAP 0011ARCAP 0011DCCAP 001NHQCAP 0016MECAP 0020NHCAP 002NHQCAP 0032WICAP 0032WVCAP 0033COCAP 0040IACAP 0041CTCAP 0041MICAP 0041WICAP 0042MICAP 0042NHCAP 0043ILCAP 0048FLCAP 004MERCAP 004RMRCAP 004SERCAP 004SWRCAP 0078NVCAP 0094ALCAP 009NHQCAP 0100NDCAP 0100PRCAP 0112GACAP 0140NVCAP 0148KYCAP 0164CACAP 0196NECAP 0204MICAP 0204SCCAP 022NHQCAP 0272HICAP 028NHQCAP 0303WACAP 0314MICAP 031NHQCAP 033NHQCAP 034MERCAP 0355OKCAP 0360FLCAP 037RMRCAP 040NHQCAP 042RMRCAP 42SERCAP 0431ILCAP 043MERCAP 043NHQCAP 043SERCAP 044NCRCAP 046NHQCAP 047NHQCAP 047SERCAP 054NHQCAP 0602IACAP 060PCRCAP 062NHQCAP 064NHQCAP 0775NVCAP 0902ALCAP 1000SWRCAP 100NCRCAP 100NDCAP 100NDCAP 100NERCAP 100SWRCAP 101NCRCAP 101NERCAP 101SWRCAP 104MERCAP 201SERCAP 202SERCAP 900NHQCAP 901NHQCAP 909NHQCAP 9101ORCAP 951NHQCAP 952NHQCAP 971NHQCAP 991NHQCAP 998NHQCAP 999NHQCAP

I have found the assignment pattern for their ALE addresses as follows:

#### (state two ltr abbrev) CAP aka 0001OKCAP (A state/wing callsign)
### (region abbrev/NHQ) CAP aka 004MERCAP or 909NHQCAP (Region address/National HQ assigned address)

There are some 4-number addresses and these have all been associated with a state wing.

And here is my latest freq list (I know I am still missing some high end freqs)

2011.0 3204.0 4477.0 4585.0 5006.0 5447.0 6773.0 6806.0 7602.0 7665.0 8012.0 9047.0 10162.0 11402.0 12081.0 13415.0 14357.0 15602.0 17412.0 19814.0 25354.0 29894.0 kHz.

On the VHF/UHF side of the spectrum, I wrote an extensive article on all of this in the May 2010 MT Milcom column (if you miss one issue you miss a lot). But to help out those who don't subscribe (and you really should), here are the frequencies to watch for CAP activity:

139.8750 141.0000 141.5750 143.5500 143.6250 143.600 143.7000 148.1250 148.1375 148.1500 149.2750 150.2250 150.5625 MHz

National CAP Plan (Supposedly Zone 1 in all the new ground-only radios)

141.5750 Simplex 127.3 Hz Command Control
141.0000 Simplex 131.8 Hz Command Control
149.2750 Simplex 141.3 Hz Air-to-Air
150.5625 Simplex 151.4 Hz Air-to-Air
150.2250 Simplex 162.2 Hz CAP Guard Channel
139.8750 Simplex 173.8 Hz Tactical/Miscellaneous use (also used on the Canadian Border as an input to the 148.1250 repeaters)
148.1250 Simplex 100.0 Hz Primary Talk-Around
148.1500 Simplex 100.0 Hz Secondary Talk-Around
148.1375/143.6250 203.5 Hz Airborne/Tactical Repeater
148.1375/143.6250 192.8 Hz Airborne/Tactical Repeater
148.1375/143.6250 131.8 Hz Airborne/Tactical Repeater
148.1375/143.6250 162.2 Hz Airborne/Tactical Repeater
148.1250/143.5500 203.5 Hz Airborne/Tactical Repeater
148.1250/139.8750 Canadian Border repeaters
148.1500/143.7000 203.5 Hz Airborne/Tactical Repeater
148.1500/143.6000 Canadian Border repeaters

Again there is more to all this, but that is about 2,000 words in the MT May issue.