Morning, & welcome aboard

[Sean Paul]

Good Monday morning all. Thank you all for your patients in getting through the moderated process. I have been dealing with a very sick in-law over the past week. With my work, schooling & studying, that left me very little other free time. However, we're good to go. I'd also like to take a moment to thank you all for joining us. We're very glad to have any new members. The more, the merrier, I say! Also, if you know of any other folks that would like to join us. Please feel free to let them know they can do so by simply sending an email to monitoring_bl...@googlegroups.com 

once again, thank you all for joining & welcome aboard. Now, let the discussions begin.

[Ron Miller]

Good evening everyone,

I think this is the first time I've actually introduced myself to the list, though I have had the privilege of being a part of it since its inception.

 

My name is Ron. I have been interested in radio since I was about 8 or 9 years old. I didn't get my first scanner receiver until I was 13 or 14 years old around 1977, a Montgomery Ward’s 4-channel, crystal controlled (remember those?) vhf hi-lo "pocket scanner." I lived in  Vacaville, California at the time, a city located about 50 miles north and east of San Francisco, Ca. in Solano county. I used that scanner exclusively for the next 4 or 5 years, begging for "just $5" from my mom as often as I could think up reasons to justify the expense (Christmas, birthday, anything else I could come up with, including forgetting that I'd already spent my Christmas/birthday money) for another crystal to add another frequency. This continued until I graduated from high school and used a chunk of my graduation gift money to buy a Uniden Bearcat BC210.LT. This scanner cost me a whopping $200 (1981 dollars) but it was one of the best on the market, at the time. It had 18 (eighteen) programmable channels and covered vhf low and high And uhf. It was almost perfect, in my opinion, except it lacked the aero band, and, of course, it didn't receive the military uhf frequencies (not many scanner receivers did, back then).

 

Those were the really fun days of scanning. Everyone but three-letter government agencies transmitted in the clear and even most of the feds were unencrypted. It seemed like frequency searches kept turning up new and unexpected things to listen to. I even heard Owen Gariott when he made the first ham radio contacts from aboard the space shuttle back in 1982 using that scanner and its telescoping antenna.

 

I've also been a pretty constant utility monitor, with special interest in military hf vhf and uhf monitoring. In 1985 I earned my novice class amateur radio license and currently hold an advanced class license.

 

I currently live in Dunedin, Florida, in Pinellas county and use a GRE PSR-500 handheld scanner. It is proving to be pretty usable and I enjoy it quite a bit. I use the PSREdit software to program it which makes setting it up so that it is most usable, relatively straightforward.

 

I look forward to chatting with all of you.

 

Best regards and good listening

 

Ron Miller

N6MSA

Dunedin, Fl.

USA

SKYPE: arjay1

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[Jim Gammon]

 

OK, well, I didn’t introduce myself on the blind hams list so here’t goes on this one.  I am Jim Gammon.  I have been a radio listener since I was probably two or three.  I remember my dad helping me on the roof of our house when I was probably four years old to “Help” him put up an antenna for a crystal set.  I was interested in two way stuff since I was in first grade.  I remember sitting in a cab on the way to swimming lessons feeling the Mic and getting the guy to make radio calls.  Same with the local cops when they would cruise by on their motor cycles.

For some reason, I never could get enthused about code even though I had practice keys and such.  I did a lot of SWL-ing and got my first Public Service receiver when I was probably in college, a couple of Tun-a-verters that tuned the entire low and high VHF bands in one 270 degree turn of the knob.  Man you really had to have a steady hand to tune stuff in using those, and then, they would drift!  Then I got a Midland tunable Low High VHF and UHF receiver that looked kind of like an FM tuner.  It had a couple crystal channels as well.  I think my first Real scanner was maybe a midland that used metal combs that plugged in to the back to give you a given frequency on one of the ten channels on it.  You could also buy a box that could be plugged in to one of the channels which would let you tune in one frequency manually.

I can’t remember my first scanner with keypad entry but it must have been a bearcat.  I had I think two double A batteries on each side and the keys were long metal bars arranged like a touch tone keypad.

Am using an old BC-245 now mainly for conventional stuff and like Ron, a PSR-500 for trunking.  I would love to talk to Ron about using PSR edit which I have but have never really learned much about.

I have been a ham since 1973 when I got my novice then got my advanced license in 1975 I think.  I have never stopped using ham stuff though have been limited by work and family circumstances to only using a handheld for a while.  Now I run a Kenwood TS-480 on HF and a Kenwood TMV-71A on VHF and UHF.  I love those rigs as they have great speech output access.  I don’t know why other companies don’t offer the same degree of speech access, or even any at all.

Other interests are, Reading, Computers, and though I retired from my day job at UC Berkeley’s Disabled Students’ Program, I play trumpet in several local jazz bands in the SF bay area which is how I make some money for my boy toys like new rigs!  Am considering buying a BC-396 and using it with the free program Free-Scan. 

BTW, I also heard Owen Garriot from the Columbia.  I was using a large two meter beam and a handheld and man he just came in so solid!  I never tried to contact him because the were guys running a ham station from the Stanford radio dish squirting probably a couple hundred KW at him so my peanut whistle rig wasn’t going to cut it.  Anyway, that’s it from this end.  I am on skype under jgammon and echolink when I have it on which isn’t much, and of course I monitor local repeaters in my area that I can discuss more in a later post.  Best 73 for now, Jim WA6EKS  

   

 

[Jim Gammon]

Hello Sean, so sorry to hear about your family difficulties.  Thanks for the list and for signing me up.  Not sure how to write to the list other than replying to you.  Is it just monitoring_blind.org?  Thanks, Jim WA6EKS. 

 

From: Sean Paul

Sent: Monday, August 06, 2012 3:34 AM

To: monitori...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Morning, & welcome aboard

 

Good Monday morning all. Thank you all for your patients in getting through the moderated process. I have been dealing with a very sick in-law over the past week. With my work, schooling & studying, that left me very little other free time. However, we're good to go. I'd also like to take a moment to thank you all for joining us. We're very glad to have any new members. The more, the merrier, I say! Also, if you know of any other folks that would like to join us. Please feel free to let them know they can do so by simply sending an email to monitoring_bl...@googlegroups.com 

once again, thank you all for joining & welcome aboard. Now, let the discussions begin.

[Sean Paul]

You can reply to the list by replying to a message or sending an email to monitori...@googlegroups.com. It is also listed at the bottom of each email if we forget & I do from time to time.

[Scott Marshall F.]

Hello,
I live in Salt Lake City, Utah and I've been involved with scanners since the days of crystal based receivers. I currently have a BC-246XLT (I think) and would like help learning how to program it. I had the original programming done by Scanner Master but would like to make some changes.
Thanks,
Marshall

[Raymond Bishop]

Hi List:

 

My name is Raymond and I live in Saint Louis.  I have lived in a few places.  I grew up in Phoenix, AZ, lived for two (2) years in Houston, Lived for ten (10) years in Las Vegas, NV and now Saint Louis for the past eight (7) years.  I really enjoy Saint Louis and two (2) years ago finally got my Amateur radio license.  I am an Extra license holder.  I joined this list because I want to know more about Scanners.  My grandfather had a scanner going 24-7 when I was growing up and I really enjoyed listening.  I now am looking to get one since I do allot with the SkyWarn and other disaster relief programs.  It would be nice to be able to monitor police, fire, paramedic and since I am near the river(s) Missouri and Mississippi, I would like to be able to monitor the marine channels.  Thanks to the moderator(s) for making this list available and I hope to make many new friends and maybe catch up with old ones.  Take care!

 

 

_{Raymond Bishop, NV9B}

_{Philippians 4:6-7}

 

 

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