I myself have listened to planes' radio transmissions. We used to live near a major airport and I now live near an air base, and I enjoy listening to the radio transmissions (some can actually be very funny) of the aeroplanes. It got me wondering, though. Would it be possible to listen to the pit-to-car radio when attending a race, given the right equipment? On which frequencies do the teams operate? I wonder if it would be possible to find a frequency allocation list... Then again, it can be quite fun trying to figure out which is which.

I'd have loved to hear McLaren **** up Hamilton's pitstop (I'm a macca fan, btw) - I'm told it was a mis communication or something. Or in the montoya days, he used to be quite entertaining on the radio.

Hi Kilowatt,

There is no list of frequencies as such, but the teams do have to make pit to car transmissions available to the FIA and FOM. They will run several different "circuits" pit wall to car, car to pit wall, pit wall to engineers, pit wall to pit crew leader.

The only transmissions that are made "free to air" are the ones from Pit Wall to Car and Car to Pit Wall. A lot of the transmissions are encrypted or at least used to be!

Trying to catch them at the circuit will be very difficult as the team have several frequencies to chose from and invariably switch them around to avoid people listening in. All transmissions are recorded and can be requested by the FIA at any time.

The frequencies will also change from circuit to circuit as each country will have its own restrictions as to what frequencies can be used.

The transmissions you hear over the world feed are selected by FOM and provided on the international effects feed supplied to every broadcaster.

If you are at the circuit you can rent a Kangaroo TV and they have 6 pit to car feeds available at any one time, you wont get all the transmissions on it but you get a lot more than FOM put on the international effects feed.

Hope that helps?

Cheers,

Jason

I've posted before about extensively intercepting McLaren pit-to-car with DC at the US GP, as well as getting snippets of conversation from Renault and, I think Minardi.

As Jason said, there isn't an official published list of frequencies used by the teams since they change from venue to venue. I had the best luck in the 400 MHz range. Several years ago I downloaded a list from a Yahoo! F1 group, so if you Google it, I think you will find lists reporting frequency and team by country.

A few tips if you don't mind:

1. Use a stub antenna. When I used the standard antenna on my scanner I got too much information (at Indianapolis, that included taxi services and the local McDonalds). Once I put the stub antenna on, I had much better luck.

2. Unless you are familiar with your scanner, bring a pad and pen and be prepared to write. My scanner can "remember" a large number of frequencies, but the process of committing them to memory takes practice and time, so I tended to write them down. For example, "438.750, possible Renault..."

3. Don't be afraid to ask other scanners or even the teams.

4. You won't get pit crew. They are encrypted.

While attending (all) the races at Indy, I noticed that teams seemed to go from encrypted systems to unprotected voice and then back again. I used to be a communications intercept operator back when I was in the Navy, so I know what various encryption systems sound like.

I know that after mentioning to some McLaren people at the airport that I knew that DC retired with a gearbox problem, the next year, on the same frequency, I heard nothing but the sync-tone and hiss of digital encryption.

Good luck and have fun with it. It can be frustrating to find a team that uses unprotected voice, but once you do, it's a lot of fun to hear what they have to say - like hearing DC and his engineer like I reported in a post a long while back.

Most teams are now using digital radios, not necessarily with any encryption, but you will not be able to listen to these without some very expensive equipment. Again, most teams use UHF - usually around 440 - 465Mhz, although a couple still use VHF. All teams use a repeater for the car to pit radio channel so the transmit and receive frequencies will be different (up to 10Mhz seperation). Some also use a repeater for their crew channels.

Typically, a team will use 6 to 10 channels, but as mentioned above, they are not usually the same frequencies at each race as the licencing requirements of each country vary.

Teams are obliged to have their car channels hooked up to the FOM so that they can be used for the TV broadcast, however most teams have a 'mute' button so that they can turn it off if there is particularly sensitive information being transmitted. It is only recently that Ferrari have allowed the FOM to listen to their radios at all.

Most conversation is conducted on the teams intercom systems and so are totally 'in house' and cannot be intercepted by outsiders.

Systems in use as far as I know;
Renault - Analogue UHF
Force India - digital
BMW - digital
Red Bull - Analogue VHF
Torro Rosso - Analogue VHF
Ferrari - encrypted
McLaren - encrypted
Toyota - digital
Brawn - digital

During a race there is very little radio transmissions - everyone is sat at their places in the garage and talking on the intercom. The only radio calls are between driver and engineer and between pit wall and pit crew, which is limited during a race. The busiest time is during the pre-race build up as the engineers are on the grid and there is a fair amount of radio traffic as the team makes its final preparations.