Indiana

Some states in the beginning didn’t place much consideration in the Police Communications needs of their early existence. Other states were small and close together and were communicating by Police Teletype Systems on land lines. Most used civilian personnel for their phone and teletype circuits. A few used sworn uniformed personnel. Here is one of the better operations! Indiana State Police.

The mid west states, southern and far west needed other means to communicate with. Telegraph was the answer and in the beginning Pittsburgh PD was the Gateway station for radio telegraph. Then a few states were strictly State Highway Patrol, featured mainly immediate broadcast of highway and traffic law enforcement or lost and stolen vehicles, wanted or missing people and warrants.

Indianapolis SP Headquarters Phone and teletype operator position.

The State Highway Patrol populace had more motor vehicle inter radio traffic and tend to have radio telegraph circuits to lessen the brunt volume of teletype traffic. States like Indiana, Missouri, Iowa - Illinois -WV- Michigan and Ohio had radiotelegraph stations that were manned 24 hours a day. Our Ohio personnel were eventually sworn uniform officers. Good things do change and in the 90's they would never again hire sworn radio officers, in Ohio. Things would change eventually in Indiana also.

We have been very fortunate to find the last RF-CW Engineer of the Indiana State Police thru the World Wide Web (Mr. Wayne Thalls residing in Santa Cruz, Calif.) We have generated a nice story, thanks to Wayne KB6KN. In his words.

“I served with the I.S.P. from 1947-1960. When I left in 1960, joining RCA as a mobile and microwave system engineer. I spent a decade with them. RCA went out of business a couple of years in the ‘70s - I joined a California company in 1969 and spent the rest of my career in Silicon Valley. Here are the Indiana years! Continued, ISP.

Indiana had CW installations in each of its 10 district posts. All P-T-P traffic was handled via CW with TWX service as a backup. At first we did not have a statewide tty net, as did OSP. The Indianapolis City PD operated a CW resource too. There were no others in the state. I handled traffic with Columbus OSP many times and occasionally with Cleveland, Cincinnati or Toledo. Our communications officers were all sworn and uniformed too. These days they are of course all civilians.

I used to work closely with Al Shirk OSP Columbus, Ohio - In fact shortly before I left the ISP, Al and I flew in the OSP plane from Columbus to DC for an APCO meeting with the FCC. I think he joined the U.S. State Dept. AID operation. I ended my stint with ISP as Chief engineer.

When I left, Wayne said, we had interconnect half of the then 20 posts with microwave. That system provided telephone and tty circuits to each location. The state wide system was completed about a year after I left. CW was gone soon after that.

Your author’s friend W8KEG ex Ohio Highway Patrol CW man advised me when he heard I was working on this project, the Indiana boys had sharp circuits were good operators and treated us royally once when we attended the 500 Races. We got in thru special gates and good seating. He has not forgotten their generosity.

In email communications dated 20 December 2004 with Engineer Thalls. “When I joined the department in ‘47, I was first assigned to the headquarters station. I was the only unmarried guy in the group. In ‘52 - I was stationed at the Pendleton Post located about 35 Miles N.E. of Indianapolis. Mid year I was promoted and moved to Indianapolis. Earlier I had been riding with one of the troopers. We took off after a car traveling at a high rate of speed through several small towns.

The patrol car hit a large puddle on the roadway and we spun out of control. (Pictured Indianapolis HQ Dispatch circa 1955.) The patrol car wrapped around a utility pole on the passenger side. I had a sore body for weeks. My knee struck the bulkhead mounted fire extinguisher and I received a nasty cut, which required several stitches.” That knee still bothers me during cold weather. Of course we never caught the reckless driver.

Before the department moved to VHF, The Indiana State Police base stations operated on 1634 Kc. That same frequency was used by the NYC Fire Department! Especially in the summertime, they kept the channel alive. I don’t know how many countless times a night they had roll call!

I received my one and only citation from the FCC around 1951. In the wee hours of the morning after exchanging traffic with another post, I added the “R” “Welcome back” at around 30 WPM (My friend had just returned from vacation) It wasn’t long before a pink slip arrived from the FCC monitoring station. “Unauthorized personal communications.” I was extremely careful after that-what with all those letters and phone calls which resulted.

Mobile, Ala - New Orleans - Ft. Worth - Little Rock SP - Denver - Phoenix and LA were all on the CW net. West Virginia SP had 5 or 6 cw stations - Missouri had 7 or 8 as I recall. Des Moines was also on as was Omaha, Detroit PD was the only non SP in Mich, Milwaukee had a station too.
Concerning good operations, Missouri Patrol had the best cw ops overall. Most were top notch, Jefferson City often performed relay service between west coast stations and those to the east. Harry Duncan led their communications division in those days. After a period of time you could readily recognize the fist of many operators, especially the very good and the very bad.

Wayne continued, The original ISP phone and CW transmitters were all composites, built in the Indianapolis shop. I think they copied the Western Electric circuits. Only the Indianapolis CW transmitters were ever replaced with commercial gear. The first VHF base transmitters were Motorola with Gates 1 KW amplifiers. This was at the time of the relocation of the FM broadcast band from 40 MHZ, so there was a good price on the amplifiers. We replaced the Headquarters CW rigs with Collins auto-tune HF gear. We had a lot of National HRO receivers throughout the system.

Our original HQ was located at Indianapolis State Fair Grounds. All the phone and CW transmitters were located in a building on the grounds. The receivers were located several miles away with leased line feeds. The CW operator worked here and watched over the installation. The headquarters dispatch center was located initially in the basement of the state capitol building downtown Indianapolis. Except for state fair week, the original remote site was a relatively peaceful haven. Actually, when I worked a few midnight shifts out there, I thought it was quite lonely. A few years later the ISP HQ was moved to the west side of town, when the military abandoned a WW2 airfield.

We took over the old admin building. In the mid ‘50s the State Fair Board evicted us as they needed the property to expand. We then relocated the transmitters to the new site, along with the CW operations.

Transmitters were installed in the old control tower located atop the three story building. Two of the CW operators soon quit because of the change.
The Chief Operator (pictured here) didn’t like the new operation and left when he had his time in.

Part of the problem was he didn’t like to be too close to microphones. (Editor - Bravo OM!) The console is two position CW only. The phone and other operators were in an adjacent communications room.

The Knitel K2AES Communications History hand book has some interesting entries listed in 1936 - Indiana State Police is listed operating on 1634 KC AM Phone with an authorized power of 1 KW - Those SP network stations listed follow -WPHS Chestertown, In – WBII Connersville; WPHU Jasper, In; WBMO Charlestown; WQGB Putnamville; WQFE Seymour, In. - WQFW Ligonier; WRNR Pendleton; WROR Lafayette - WPHE Indianapolis, In. HQ. All had CW capabilities.


Indiana State Police, Indianapolis Fairgrounds HQ Stattion	1946 Ford with Motorola Two Case