Weekend Wire

This Weekend Wire is in honor of the uniquely ‘Murican holiday involving alcohol, explosives, bad decisions, and a busy day for cops and EMS. The 4th of July is like that. Yes, this is a weekend to have the police scanner running. If you recently bought a receiver and have yet to take it out of the box, this weekend would be the second best time to do it. The first best time passed when you bought the thing. I guarantee the weekend is going to be busy. Short form TL;DR for the lazy: turn it on, use a public safety service search, see what you can hear. Recommended course of action: Go buy my book - https://litchfieldhillspress.gumroad.com/l/snxffn. Right now I’ve got a sale going on until HOPE ends: VUA76B5. 50% off everything until the stroke of midnite, August 17th.

Tomorrow we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I was 7 during the 200th anniversary, all I remember about it is watching fireworks over the lake with my parents after we marched in the parade. My parents were with the local volunteer fire department, and I was in the Cub Scouts. There also might have been a carnival involved, but memory is kinda hazy after 50 years. If you have parents who are involved in a volunteer fire department, you wind up going to so many parades and conventions they all wind up blurring together in a big mosaic of bullpens, beer, soda, hot dogs, hanging out with the other 1970s and 80s VFD orphans. IYKYK.

July 4th is one of the busiest days of the year for emergency services. That makes it prime scanner listening time, and a great opportunity to discover which neighbors have been graced with an excess of free dumb. Some places can go a day or two without any calls, and if you’re only monitoring for a couple hours a day when you’re home and otherwise unoccupied you wonder if you’ve programmed your scanner correctly, or have the right information. I can almost guarantee that from today until Sunday nite that you will hear something if you listen in.

The quickest way to get up an running is if you have one of those Uniden Home Patrol model or a Whistler with Zip Code programming. Select your location with a 5 or 10 mile radius, and you are good to go for the most part. If you don’t have one of those models, then you probably have a Service Search function. Use that instead. Remember to note down the frequencies you’re catching for later identification. The Service Search function in some ways is better than Zip Code programming because it will give you confirmed working frequencies and tell you just how far out you can receive on what bands and in what directions. I can catch VHF stuff 40+ miles away, and barely hear the 800 MHz. trunked system belonging to a city next door. Likewise around here the Hudson Valley, Long Island Sound, and Eastern Connecticut come in better than the Berkshires and Central Connecticut. When we lived just one town over the reception was very different.

In addition to emergency services, I’d also listen to VHF marine and aeronautical comms, especially during local fireworks displays. People will be on planes and boats watching them, and communications will be essential for deconfliction and general chit-chat. If you’re not near a navigable waterway hosting a display, aeronautical would be the service to monitor, as comms reach out pretty far when the transmitter is a few thousand feet in the air.

The HOPE Conference is coming up in August. I’m giving a talk, and there looks to be more than a few good talks being given by fellow speakers. I know it’s $250 to attend, not including transportation, lodging, food, and other incidentals. While it would be really cool to see you there, I understand that it might not be economically feasible this time around. If you can’t make it in person, please consider a virtual ticket or making a (tax-deductible) donation of what you can afford to the organization sponsoring the conference - https://www.hope.net/fundraiser/.