Military Monitoring with the Yaesu FT-8800

On the side of this blog, you'll notice that I use a Yaesu FT-8800 2meter/70cm radio in my car. In addition to using it for amateur radio, I also use it for scanning and monitoring. Over the last few days, I've been on the road quite a bit, so I've been using the FT-8800 to augment the BC-780 for monitoring the Fort Stewart Exercise. As I've found in the past, it has done an outstanding job.

As seen in the photo below, I used it today to listen to RAZOR 11/12, F-16s from Shaw AFB while they worked with ADVANCE, a JTAC from Fort Stewart on Townsend Range. On the left side of the radio is 141.900, RAZOR's air-to-air frequency; on the right side of the radio is 228.400, one of Townsend's range control frequencies. The RAZORs were coming in, as you can see, at over half-scale. Not bad considering I was in Port Wentworth at the time. The antenna being used was a Comet CHL-62S (2meter/70cm).

In addition to the frequencies noted above, I've also monitored other VHF and UHF military frequencies over the last few days with excellent results: 127.350, 138.150, 139.900, 141.800, 225.725, 237.000, 245.275, 279.625, and 280.800. The FT-8800, over the last year, has become my favorite of all the ham gear in my inventory. It is an extremely versatile radio that has benefited me as both an amateur radio operator and as a scanning enthusiast.

Mac McCormick, KF4LMT

kf4lmt@comcast.net