2008-11-17

New feed demo: McLean Relay Station

Yes, the McLean Relay Station is back online for a demonstration run.

This time around the focus is not railroad radio, but public safety. [Note 1]

Arlington County's digital trunked system comes in the best, with Fairfax County's a distant second. Both of these trunked systems give occasional fits to Uniden scanners, but for the most part they get the job done.

The focus of this new feed will be fire and rescue communications. Perhaps Arlington police will sneak on there when warranted. During this demo period you never know what you'll hear. Ya been tol'

If things work out well, I will make this feed permanent. You can listen with WinAmp, iTunes, Windows Media Player, and VLC. There might be existing Teamspeak feeds with this same traffic, but this feed allows just about anyone to hear it without requiring the installation of any new software.

If I can set up the talkgroup tags to fill in the Title field on your player, that will only make it that much better to monitor.

Enjoy!

da Bote Man


Note 1: I really like rail communications because they are pure and simple: FM high band simplex, no repeaters getting in the way, clean audio (mostly), and you know when a train is nearby based on signal strength. But these days the VHF band is getting even more polluted with noise generated by computerized devices of all kinds. Plus, the many various high powered transmitters around the receive site overload all but the best receivers. So the effort to receive railroad communications in McLean does not justify the results.

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