Three Rivers Area Monitoring Association
I have always had an avid interest in listening to public safety radio first on single frequency radios and then on consumer grade scanners when they became available. My first "professional" radio was a Motorola Twin V receiver that had been pulled from service as a two way radio in a taxi cab. It was a tube type radio and I had to build a power supply for it and order a crystal from International Crystal company which cost me an arm and a leg at the time. With it however I was able to listen to Pittsburgh City Police, then call sign KGB-327, and hear every word just as if I was sitting in the dispatchers chair or the patrol car. What an interesting hobby.
The rest as they say "Is history". Advances in electronics made the old tube radios obsolete and they became available at very cheap prices. At one time I had an impromptu "rack" in my basement made from 2x4's with a number of these receiver strips mounted in it each receiving a local police or fire frequency. Latter I entered the wonderful world of Electra, a company from Indiana, that created the Bearcat Scanner. Suddenly you could have a small table top box that would cover eight frequencies in one radio! Of course that also meant that you had to buy eight crystals often investing a quarter or more of what you had paid for the radio to put it on the channels that you wanted to listen to.
I can't remember exactly which year it took place but Electra came out with a new model called the BC-101 that required no crystals. Now many of us tech types thought the model number was an Electra "inside joke" since the previous model had been the Bearcat IV and "101" is binary for five. This was a sixteen channel radio looked much like the conventional Bearcat with its row of flashing LED's each with a lock out switch under it. The big change came in that you could look up a frequency in the manual supplied with the radio, set the binary patten associated with the frequency on the lock switches and slide the ENTER switch on the front panel and you were listening.
I couldn't resists and went out and bought one of these radios for what was a very expensive price at the time. One week after I bought the 101 I was at Chuck Bell's Radio Pro Shop up in Butler when the Electra representative came in and unfolded a large poster they were giving to store announcing the upcoming release of the Bearcat model BC-210. A radio with keyboard entry of frequencies and a digital display of the frequencies assigned to the channels. Unless you have an unlimited toy budget it is very hard to stay ahead of technology. As Moore's law has held steady for the past few decades keeping up has become a log rhythmic proposition.
If like me you really enjoy the hobby however you have to look back and say it has been a really neat ride and look forward and wonder where the hobby will be in the next ten years. Many think with the advent of digital radios and encryption that the hobby is in it's waning days. I have to admit that I am one of those that is not real optimistic about the future of listen to public safety radio especially in the larger metro areas. I also think that unless you only want to hear police, fire and EMS that there will be interesting things out there to monitor with your scanner for some time to come.
Several years ago I combined two of my hobbies and started an amateur radio net on a local repeater with the purpose of discussing scanners with other interested in the hobby. I have to say that I had no idea how big the response would be to what I thought would be just a group of hams getting together on the air to exchange ideas on the hobby. After a number of month of meeting "on the air" we decided that we should get together face to face or has the hams say "To have an eye ball QSO" . We have been meeting on a regular basis since and thus was born TRAMA.
We now have a mailing list on Yahoo that I encourage you to join if you are interested in the hobby. We also still have our weekly net on the North Hills Amateur Radio Club's 147.090 repeater each Sunday evening at 09:00 PM local time in Pittsburgh. If you are in the area I invite you to join in on our conversation and if you are not licensed you can send any questions or comments you have for the net to me via email. [ Email Ken about the net ] Of course you could also join our Yahoo mailing list and post your questions there. Please come and join in on the fun.
The rest as they say "Is history". Advances in electronics made the old tube radios obsolete and they became available at very cheap prices. At one time I had an impromptu "rack" in my basement made from 2x4's with a number of these receiver strips mounted in it each receiving a local police or fire frequency. Latter I entered the wonderful world of Electra, a company from Indiana, that created the Bearcat Scanner. Suddenly you could have a small table top box that would cover eight frequencies in one radio! Of course that also meant that you had to buy eight crystals often investing a quarter or more of what you had paid for the radio to put it on the channels that you wanted to listen to.
I can't remember exactly which year it took place but Electra came out with a new model called the BC-101 that required no crystals. Now many of us tech types thought the model number was an Electra "inside joke" since the previous model had been the Bearcat IV and "101" is binary for five. This was a sixteen channel radio looked much like the conventional Bearcat with its row of flashing LED's each with a lock out switch under it. The big change came in that you could look up a frequency in the manual supplied with the radio, set the binary patten associated with the frequency on the lock switches and slide the ENTER switch on the front panel and you were listening.
I couldn't resists and went out and bought one of these radios for what was a very expensive price at the time. One week after I bought the 101 I was at Chuck Bell's Radio Pro Shop up in Butler when the Electra representative came in and unfolded a large poster they were giving to store announcing the upcoming release of the Bearcat model BC-210. A radio with keyboard entry of frequencies and a digital display of the frequencies assigned to the channels. Unless you have an unlimited toy budget it is very hard to stay ahead of technology. As Moore's law has held steady for the past few decades keeping up has become a log rhythmic proposition.
If like me you really enjoy the hobby however you have to look back and say it has been a really neat ride and look forward and wonder where the hobby will be in the next ten years. Many think with the advent of digital radios and encryption that the hobby is in it's waning days. I have to admit that I am one of those that is not real optimistic about the future of listen to public safety radio especially in the larger metro areas. I also think that unless you only want to hear police, fire and EMS that there will be interesting things out there to monitor with your scanner for some time to come.
Several years ago I combined two of my hobbies and started an amateur radio net on a local repeater with the purpose of discussing scanners with other interested in the hobby. I have to say that I had no idea how big the response would be to what I thought would be just a group of hams getting together on the air to exchange ideas on the hobby. After a number of month of meeting "on the air" we decided that we should get together face to face or has the hams say "To have an eye ball QSO" . We have been meeting on a regular basis since and thus was born TRAMA.
We now have a mailing list on Yahoo that I encourage you to join if you are interested in the hobby. We also still have our weekly net on the North Hills Amateur Radio Club's 147.090 repeater each Sunday evening at 09:00 PM local time in Pittsburgh. If you are in the area I invite you to join in on our conversation and if you are not licensed you can send any questions or comments you have for the net to me via email. [ Email Ken about the net ] Of course you could also join our Yahoo mailing list and post your questions there. Please come and join in on the fun.
