Shaw Air Force Base VHF Trunked Repeater System

During my trip to Florence and Darlington yesterday, I was able to help identify the Shaw AFB TRS. A few months ago, I was asked to check out some frequencies that were known to be a trunked system in South Carolina, probably Shaw AFB or McEntire ANGB. At that time I was unable to determine much while in Columbia because of band conditions. VHF was wide open that morning and it was almost impossible to pick local transmissions from distant transmissions. During yesterday's trip conditions were normal, so I was able to nail down the location as Shaw AFB. Once I figured out the settings for the system, I was able to monitor it with the BC-796. Stations using the callsign SHAW and references to the 79th Fighter Squadron confirmed it as the Shaw AFB TRS.

SETTINGS & FREQUENCIES 9600 Baud Motorola
Base Freq: 162.0000
Step: 12.5
Offset: 380

163.4625 - Control Channel (9600 baud)
165.0125 - Digital Voice
165.1875 - Digital Voice
165.2250 - Digital Voice
165.4125 - Digital Voice
166.0000 - Digital Voice
166.2250 - Digital Voice

TALKGROUPS
19 - Fire?
20 - unknown
21 - unknown
25 - Police?
28 - Squadron talkgroup?
34 - Tower/Ground Control?
42 - POL?

Much work still needs to be done on sorting out this system. The talkgroup info above was accquired from less than one day (a Saturday no less) of monitoring while passing the area on I-95. If you are in the area, or are visiting the area, do some monitoring on this system. Please pass on your information to me or to Larry Van Horn at the Monitoring Times MilCom Monitoring Blog.


Mac McCormick, KF4LMT
kf4lmt@comcast.net