McLean Relay Station's last days

I hooked up the McLean Relay Station to my Icom 3210 on the railroad channels while I am here. It won't last long, but you can hear trains on the lower part of the CSX Metropolitan sub (B&O) between Gaithersburg and NE D.C. as well as the upper RF&P sub between Virginia Avenue and RO (Rosslyn) with spotty coverage of Franconia Hill which is a pretty high spot.

Next week I'm taking it down for good. It's a crappy receive location, the equipment just will not work reliably here despite my best efforts, and other factors tell me that its day is over.

Listen link:
http://colostreaming.com:8106/listen.pls

Enjoy while it lasts.

Bote

McLean Relay Station testing

I have been testing the rejuvenated McLean Relay Station for the last few days, so far so good computer-wise. The scanner simply will not provide reliable reception here, whether on the tower-mounted antenna nor with the back-of-set antenna sitting in a window. This is still a Bermuda Triangle for RF, unfortunately.

The MRS was catapulted back into the spotlight with coverage of the horrific Metro train wreck in northeast D.C. this evening. It maxed out at 10 listeners for quite some time. I only wish the radio coverage were solid, but the voice frequently breaks up. If I can stick a better 800 MHz antenna on it I will, but that is doubtful.

I put a business-grade router on it, so it should work after I turn my back on it to return home. But with computers you never know.

My thoughts go out to those affected by this train wreck.

The systems that will normally be scanned on the McLean Relay Station include Arlington County fire, MWAA (Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority) fire, Fairfax County fire, and Fairfax County police district 3 (McLean, natch). Special events and incidents might require me to deviate from this list, such as this evening.

Enjoy.

McLean Relay Station up full time

Bote's McLean Relay Station is up full time with channel tags to serve you better. Please avail yourself of the links on the left. They most likely will bring up the Shoutcast server status page if you just click on them.

If you want to listen outright, just copy the link contents and paste into your favorite player, including WinAmp (preferred), iTunes, VLC (VideoLAN), or Windows Media Player (no channel tags).

The systems monitored include (and are usually limited to):

0 - The Federal District of Columbia fire trunked radio system
1 - Arlington County, Virginia public safety digital trunked system, fire
(1) - Arlington County, Virginia public safety analog trunked system (catch all)
3 - MWAA (Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority) DCA and IAD trunked system, fire
4 - Fairfax County, Virginia public safety trunked system, fire
7 - Montgomery County, Maryland public safety trunked system, fire

At my option I might open up or deactivate certain groups as needed since I have remote control capability of this scanner. With the upcoming presidential inauguration fun and games I'm sure this capability will come in very handy. :-)

Because this feed monitors several trunked systems that employ duplicate talkgroup ids you might see DC fire on the channel tags when MWAA fire is talking. That's the way it goes. If you refer to the Council of Governments handy-dandy numbering chart above you can tell who you are hearing: the jurisdiction numbers are prefixed onto the unit numbers, so engine 705 is former Kensington (Montgomery) engine 5-1 and tower 401 is former McLean (Fairfax County) tower 1. Also, the damned channel tags don't seem to keep up when the scanner is rapidly stopping on different channels so you can't always believe what you read on the Internet.

More will be posted here as warranted.