UK Police Radio Frequencies, Callsigns & Codes

in the past we've looked at some of the more interesting and unusual ham radio call signs out there and why some prefixes are missing or unallocated g9 test and development call signs being the main example in amateur radio the prefixes g0 to g8 were widely allocated with g9 being reserved for test and development m0 m1 m3 m5 m6 and m7 have all been widely allocated and there isn't currently a requirement for m8 or m9 radcom announced in 2004 that the foundation license at that time m3 only would be allocated the m4 prefix but this never happened so what about m2 well we need to go back as far as 1939 a long time before the m prefix was introduced home office radio was the vhf and uhf radio system set up by the british government for its blue light services such as police fire and ambulance as well as prisons and home defense agencies from around 1939 the department name was the home office directorate of telecommunications which is commonly referred to as details now details is quite a large topic and something we'll probably cover in another video because now we're only talking about m2 call signs radio schemes ran by details consisted of 10 wireless depots throughout england scotland and wales supplemented further by around 60 outstations the 10 details regions were the same as the home defense regions and within each region was a wireless telegraph station the word wireless is quite antiquated nowadays and is mostly referred to as radio instead although modern maps often still show hilltop radio sites as wt stations the wt standing for wireless telegraph which is an indicator that the site is a former home office station the 10 regional wireless depots and their many substations were responsible for the installation and maintenance of their own emergency service radio systems you can see here the 10 regions plus northern ireland as you can see the home office allocated two letter call signs to every police and fire service and what's more interesting is that these letters followed the prefix m2 in england the first letter of the abbreviated call sign for each county police or fire service referred to the region so as an example greater manchester police sat under the billing hill regional depot whose letters were b and c therefore greater manchester police's two-letter suffix was ck all welsh counties started with a w scotland used the letters z a or u and didn't conform with the naming scheme and romeo uniform was assigned to ulster the only substation in the northern ireland region workers and engineers at the regional wireless depots were assigned a mic 2 romeo callsign the last letter would be the letter corresponding to the depot for example the wales region with the letter w would use the call sign m2 romeo whiskey now most police forces and fire brigades left out the m2 prefix and only used the last two letters as an abbreviation another point to note is that while some forces use the nato phonetic alphabet many actually didn't so that is all pre-1989 between 1987 and 1989 there was a major overhaul in the uk's emergency service radio communication scheme there was a mass migration during this time of police radio systems from low band vhf to highband vhf most police forces began using more than one channel for their numerous vhf mobiles half a dozen channels were allocated in many areas with some channels serving a dedicated purpose such as the police national computer checks or motorway patrols now there was a massive growth in the number of hilltop sites serving the emergency services it also meant that police main station transmit and receive channels were mixed with linked frequencies which made it much harder for people to eavesdrop using radio scanners consequently all of this meant that each police station had its own two-letter suffix as opposed to each county force and this is why m2 was never allocated as an amateur radio prefix [Music] you

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Length: 5min 15sec (315 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021