Category: Scanner

Air Traffic Feed Removed



Due to some trouble with equipment, I have decided to stop broadcasting the Air Traffic Feed. I will still be streaming the Amateur Radio Feed, however.

The Air Traffic Feed did not get a whole lot of listeners, anyway. Not that there was too much to listen to, either, but the decision was made to kill the feed, rather than spend any more time on trying to keep the feed up. Because I think the problem was actually from a problem with a USB sound card that was being used, I also did not want to spend any money to fix it.

If it was a more popular feed, I may have been more inclined to keep it going, but the popularity of listening to any air traffic isn’t real high.

Like I said, I am still streaming the Amateur Radio Feed. I am also still providing ADS-B data to FlightAware.



Feeding Another Stream

This morning, I began streaming voice traffic for aircraft, in addition to the amateur radio stream that I’ve been providing for a while. I was approved for the additional feed by Broadcastify, last night, and saw the approval, this morning. The feed is “Jamestown Regional Airport (KJMS)“. Clicking on that link will open the page on Broadcastify, where you can listen to the feed.

If you are an Android user, take a look at the Scanner Radio Pro app. It will let you tune in to any feed that is provided to Broadcastify. There is also a “non-pro” app that is supported by advertisements. It’s still a good app, being free, but I recommend the Pro version.

I’ll have more information about the feeds on the “Local Audio Feeds” section of this site.

Another Hamfest

I went to West Fargo, to the RRRA Hamfest on Saturday. I went with my son and a friend. Had a great time, and picked up some pretty good deals while we were there.

I bought lots of coax and five receivers. I haven’t figured out exactly what I’ll be doing with all of these new radios, but I’m sure it won’t take too long to figure it out. I spent less than $50 for about 150′ of coax and the five analog scanners (along with a few other things). We also saw some great radios for sale, but they didn’t fit into the budget, even though they were priced right.

Can’t wait for the next hamfest, now.

Couple New Radios

A while back, I purchased a used 10/12 meter radio. I found a really good deal on a Ranger RCI-2985DX. It’s the low powered little brother of the 2995dx. While the big brother will do 150+ watts, the one I have will do 25+ watts. It’s definitely not a fancy, modern HF radio, but for me, it’s a step in that direction. Sure… It would be nice to have a Kenwood TS-990S, but at this point, I have no use for it. Even if I was able to afford it (I don’t have $6,800.00 laying around), the thing would just sit there, for the most part, until I upgraded my license. Right now, I can legally get on SSB between 28.3 and 28.5MHz. Hopefully at the end of February, I’ll be able to expand that out to the full 10 & 12 meter bands.

As it sits right now, though, I am still waiting until spring, before I can throw up another antenna without worrying about sliding off the roof. I’m just listening to it using a temporary antenna, right now.

Today, I also received another radio in my mailbox. I found a Realistic HTX-202 for $27, and couldn’t pass it up. It was the first kind of HT that I owned, back in 1997, when I got my first license. The guy that I bought it from even sent me an Icom HM-46L speaker/mic. I quickly realized why it was such a low price and why he sent the speaker/mic, though. The internal mic doesn’t work. It’s not a huge deal, and I may rip it open and see if I can fix or replace it, at some point.

For now, though, I decided to use it as the receiver for the Broadcastify feed that I provide. It can be directly powered by 12 volts, so there’s no transformer or step-down converter to use. I used to have a small ground loop buzz on my feed, when I was using the scanner, and there was really no way to completely get rid of it. Now, the feed sounds a whole lot cleaner than it used to. Because of that, the audio is quite a bit louder and easier to hear.

I suppose that’s it, for now. Until next time…