InterceptRadio.com Forums

Last night, when I was driving home from work here in Portland, I heard on AAR 76 (which is the BNSF Vancouver Terminal) a train stopping because he thought he saw someone jump from the Lombard St Bridge which goes above the tracks after the Willamette River Drawbridge northbound.

Within 5 minutes, I heard a BNSF Special Agent call out for the Vancouver Terminal dispatcher. Boy did this special agent was loud; at first I thought he might of been running a 500W mobile, but he had a interesting noise in his signal. There was a this odd whooshing sound that almost made it sound like it was almost a digital to analog conversion going on but not quite. It was pretty consistent sound in each keyup to the dispatcher.

Since I was not too far away, I decided to go drive by and see what exactly had happened since I could not imagine how this could happen on that bridge. I go over the Willamette Blvd Bridge which is about 1/4 south of Lombard. Sure enough there's a train stopped down there with one PPB cruiser down there with a spot light going down the train.

I hear some radio traffic on the PPB N T2 talkgroup about what was going on, but I also chatter again on AAR 76. I hear crew down there talking to the BNSF Special Agent who again every time he keys up is booming with that weird sound.

I ended up just lapping around the side streets to see if I can get a better angle when I spotted a herd of PPB cruisers parked at the entrance to a bike path but around the corner was either the same BNSF Special Agent parked in his car.

I noticed there was no antennas of any kind on the car but he was talking into a Nextel, which made me wonder if he has a some sort of cross-network connection to a remote base so he can talk on AAR channels.

Any ideas?

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Interesting. I have often wondered if with Nexthell's 800mhz use if it would be advantageous for them to create a radio phone -- one that transmits on an 800mhz frequency like a 2-way radio but also transmits to the Nexthell system as well so you can use it's famous PTT walkie talkie across the country via the cell towers.

Even better if it transmitted on VHF, UHF & 800 as well as being able to use it as a cell phone -- all in the plam of your hand. :bowdown: :hitit:

I would think though with any sort of Nexthell-to-radio converter he would have antennas on his car of some sort...were you able to match up him putting the phone to his face with a message across the radio and then an unkey when he took the phone away from his face?

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Interoperability is an attitude, not a technology.

I was thinking that the remote base was not in the car itself, but maybe over on the West Hills and he has to switch it over manually via DTMF.

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They were likely using an ACU-1000

http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/acu1000/

Yeah, I was thinking of something like that remotely deployed.

Whats interesting is that I spoke to a few people that usually would be aware of incidents like these and this is the first they heard of it. I'm going to ask a few more people, but it makes me wonder.

I'm wondering if BNSF has a policy of not reporting suicides or something....

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Mt Wave SAR member
Support Search & Rescue: Get Lost!
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