Hello, Thanks again to Rich and John for organizing a great fest. Also thanks to Mike for managing the Hospitality Suite and providing the Vernors. I am cutting down on drinking soda during my trips but I made an exception for a few Vernors. The fruit juice was a good alternative to soda. I may become the Fruit Juice Guy.
The extra day did not make much of a difference, it still went by too fast! Although the Fest is on the informal side, there is some good information that is shared. I learnt about Software Defined Radio, DRM, Trunker, and several useful devices that can be used for radio listening at past fests. Thanks to Tracy and Kim for setting up the Satellite and DRM demos. The Acoustic Energy AE-1 looked interesting. If the fest has AM and FM HD radios next year maybe a simple FM Antenna or Discone could be put on the roof. I knew that TV Dxers took pictures of TV IDs but did not think of doing it for the RDS ID on the car radio. My car radio has RDS. I do radio on the road but it is usually non-Broadcast stuff. At the Fest I did do some AM/FM broadcast band scanning and TV band scanning as well. My room window faced south so a bandscan of 800 Mhz picked up the Philly School Board trunked system as well as both Philly Public Safety trunked sites. Although I did not do much listening to Trunked Radio systems, I did submit some updates to RadioReference.com. I also heard several PECO (Local Power Company) sites that use EDACS Wide trunking but did not have time to figure out the systems. The Scanner Scum slipped into some HF digital decoding discussion during their talk and used my favorite technique I saw Fred Osterman used years ago of audio samples. I like this page of various Digital Modes Samples. http://www.kb9ukd.com/digital/ Tom's web pages has information covered during his discussion. http://www.wa8pyr.net/ The Motorola Type 1 sample he played sounded like an Old Type 1 Motorola system, which tends to fool me due to the straight buzz sound when idle. The newer Type 1 and Type 2 systems send more data when idle so it has more of a pattern. I did get to see the Kugel Ball in Lansdale but it was encased in a clear plastic winter home without any water. I did not go to Philly by train but I did walk around Lansdale station and the area. There was some activity on ex-Conrail Channel 16 (161.460) that I suspect was the Lansdale yard. Besides the SEPTA trains there were two CSX engines (one still in ConRail livery) and some freight activity. I only had a couple of slight annoyances. Saturday evening I started to hear a funny noise coming from the bathroom. It turned out to be water coming down from the ceiling into the bathtub. I called the front desk but they could not get hold of anyone to look at it. The water stopped about ten minutes later. I reminded the front desk of the problem at checkout. It looked like a leaky drain pipe or bad sealing around the tub in the room above. I also tend to stop at the Vince Lombardi Service Area in the wilds of NJ on the way home to get gas. The driver in front of me in the gas line was throwing french fries out the side window and the sunroof. This attacted numerous seagulls and other birds hovering around the area. My car only got a few spots on it. I also use the GW Bridge, Cross-Bronx, and Major Deegan Expressway which were tied up with stop and go traffic while the XM Traffic channels said they were clear. They are usually clear on Sunday. The events just made the trip more interesting. I made it home safe and sound. Looking forward to next year. 73 Eric _______________________________________________ Swlfest mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swlfest To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], or visit the URL shown above. For more information on the Fest, visit: http://www.swlfest.com http://swlfest.blogspot.com
