Trying to listen to Shannon High Level

mr_jackapple

Hello everyone,

I'm living in Cavan and have a very simple Uniden Scanner.

My goal is to try listen to Shannon High Level frequencies but I'm not having much luck.

Found a great list of frequencies to tune in to : https://flyinginireland.com/frequencies/

The problem is I rarely hear much.

The odd time, I'll get some half-sentences on 119.0750 and today I picked up some stuff on 129.6666.

I'm fairly new to this kind of stuff so I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong. Am I simply out of range or am I listening to the wrong frequencies?

I've got my scanner connected to one of these antennas: https://amzn.to/2LEKnhf

....and I know the equipment works because I've heard some ATC and also the odd chatter from local taxi services.

Any advice would be great. Thanks!

Irish Steve

In Cavan, you're only likely to hear one side of any conversation, as the ground stations will probably not be in range of your receiver, so the only thing you'll hear will be the aircraft that are within range, and there may not be much traffic as such, as things like clearances and other operational information will have been passed earlier in the flight. The main things will be position reports where they are necessary, or changes to flight plans due to weather or operational problems, while they happen, there's not many in the scale of things.

mr_jackapple

Irish Steve wrote: »

In Cavan, you're only likely to hear one side of any conversation, as the ground stations will probably not be in range of your receiver, so the only thing you'll hear will be the aircraft that are within range, and there may not be much traffic as such, as things like clearances and other operational information will have been passed earlier in the flight. The main things will be position reports where they are necessary, or changes to flight plans due to weather or operational problems, while they happen, there's not many in the scale of things.

Steve, your timing couldn't have been better.

I've been on a few other threads looking for the best frequencies to tune to.

This afternoon, I've been getting a good amount of communication on 129.6666 which seems to be Oceanic Clearance but I was wondering why I'm only hearing the pilots and not the controller. As you said I'm just getting one side of the conversation which is a bit of a bummer.

smurfjed

Have a look at this, https://www.boatingmag.com/marine-vhf-radio-range#page-2
The logic is the same, your antenna is quite low, so you don't have the range to pick up the transmissions from another quite low antenna in Shannon.
It's based on this
distance in nautical miles = {\displaystyle 1.23\times {\sqrt {A_{f}}}} where {\displaystyle A_{f}} is the height of the antenna in feet
As the aircraft are over 30,000 feet high, the range is up to 200 nms.

mr_jackapple

smurfjed wrote: »

Have a look at this, https://www.boatingmag.com/marine-vhf-radio-range#page-2
The logic is the same, your antenna is quite low, so you don't have the range to pick up the transmissions from another quite low antenna in Shannon.

It makes perfect sense. That page has some great information. So because I'm so far away from Shannon's ground stations, my receiver is below the horizon so I'm not going to pick it up. But the aircraft however are within perfect range.

As I said, I'm fairly new to all of this but learning quite quickly. Thanks for your reply, to both of you! Much appreciated!

Try 127.130 or listen to Dublin on 129.175 when you see a Belfast departure heading southbound over the mournes. Shannon have been changing their overhead Dublin sector frequency a lot recently and 127.130 was in use but it may have changed again.