The Fort Lauderdale trunked system threw the switch to their new rebanded frequencies 15 MHz below their original assignments. That's why my Mixer Board feed has been suspiciously quiet this morning.
I will bang in the new freqs to all my scanners and get things reprogrammed as soon as possible today, in between those pesky demands of work.
2011-08-31
2011-08-25
Come on Irene
(with apologies to Dexy's Midnight Runners)
It looks like south Florida will be spared the brunt of Hurricane Irene's force, but we will still get a good amount of rain and some wind gusts that could make things a little bit interesting.
I'll be streaming the usual suspects, plus any special event talkgroups related to preparedness that I find.
Bote's Mixer Board carries Fort Lauderdale fire-rescue and Fort Lauderdale beach patrol only now. The City of Pompano recently moved their radio operations over to the Broward County big bruiser trunked system.
Bote's Wild Feed carries much of the public safety traffic in east Broward County, Florida. This includes fire-rescue operations for Oakland Park, Pompano Beach (and beach patrol), Lighthouse Point, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, and Hallandale Beach. The others out west can be considered bonus departments. The Wild Feed also carries all 3 Fort Lauderdale police districts and BSO Oakland Park / Lauderdale Lakes channel which is just about right without being crazy busy.
Our thoughts go out to those in the path of this storm.
It looks like south Florida will be spared the brunt of Hurricane Irene's force, but we will still get a good amount of rain and some wind gusts that could make things a little bit interesting.
I'll be streaming the usual suspects, plus any special event talkgroups related to preparedness that I find.
Bote's Mixer Board carries Fort Lauderdale fire-rescue and Fort Lauderdale beach patrol only now. The City of Pompano recently moved their radio operations over to the Broward County big bruiser trunked system.
Bote's Wild Feed carries much of the public safety traffic in east Broward County, Florida. This includes fire-rescue operations for Oakland Park, Pompano Beach (and beach patrol), Lighthouse Point, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, and Hallandale Beach. The others out west can be considered bonus departments. The Wild Feed also carries all 3 Fort Lauderdale police districts and BSO Oakland Park / Lauderdale Lakes channel which is just about right without being crazy busy.
Our thoughts go out to those in the path of this storm.
2011-08-23
Key West feed, power outages
Evidence is mounting that the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) serving the data closet where my Key West feed is located is faulty.
I'm told they had a 5 minute power outage shortly after noon today which explains why my feed was offline tonight when I got home. I use RadioFeed and while it's a great program for scanner feeds I have a sneaking suspicion that the Ethernet switch that connects it to the Internet lost power, which caused RadioFeed to lose its socket. So I can understand the program getting upset about that.
Normally, RadioFeed tries to reconnect if it loses connectivity to the Icecast server. But in this case the rug got yanked out from under it.
I'll be back down there in a few weeks and fix up everything to make it more reliable.
Now, all eyes are on the eye of Hurricane Irene. Watch this space for an announcement of a special feed as I just might put a spare scanner in Boca Raton to monitor fire traffic up that-a-way if Irene chooses to make things interesting for us.
I'm told they had a 5 minute power outage shortly after noon today which explains why my feed was offline tonight when I got home. I use RadioFeed and while it's a great program for scanner feeds I have a sneaking suspicion that the Ethernet switch that connects it to the Internet lost power, which caused RadioFeed to lose its socket. So I can understand the program getting upset about that.
Normally, RadioFeed tries to reconnect if it loses connectivity to the Icecast server. But in this case the rug got yanked out from under it.
I'll be back down there in a few weeks and fix up everything to make it more reliable.
Now, all eyes are on the eye of Hurricane Irene. Watch this space for an announcement of a special feed as I just might put a spare scanner in Boca Raton to monitor fire traffic up that-a-way if Irene chooses to make things interesting for us.
2011-08-21
Key West and NQX
Bote's Southernmost Feed is focused on the Boca Chica Naval Air Station today to discover the purposes for the unknown talkgroups that I have logged thus far.
I'll probably open it back up to the usual scan list tonight or tomorrow, depending on how much traffic the Navy base gives us.
Watch out later this week for Hurricane Irene as she might pay a visit to the Keys or southeast Florida. Either way I'm sure all 3 of my feeds will be hopping as public safety officials prepare for a tropical system.
I'll probably open it back up to the usual scan list tonight or tomorrow, depending on how much traffic the Navy base gives us.
Watch out later this week for Hurricane Irene as she might pay a visit to the Keys or southeast Florida. Either way I'm sure all 3 of my feeds will be hopping as public safety officials prepare for a tropical system.
2011-08-06
Key West feed restored
The Southernmost Feed is restored to service. I had to replace the battery in the u.p.s. since it was toast and the power in Key West is marginal at best.
In the meantime, I had shut off the feed computer for the other two feeds and forgot to turn it back on before leaving for EYW, so they are off until tonight. Sorry.
In the meantime, I had shut off the feed computer for the other two feeds and forgot to turn it back on before leaving for EYW, so they are off until tonight. Sorry.
2011-07-31
Pompano Beach fire moves to Wild Feed
Owing to the overwhelming popularity of Bote's Wild Feed, Pompano Beach Fire dispatch has moved operations to Broward County fire Dispatch 5 which is served by the Wild Feed. No longer will you hear Pompano fire on Bote's Mixer Board, only Fort Lauderdale fire as well as the lifeguards for both those cities (as long as I can stand it, anyway).
Pompano fire will mix it up with the other Broward fire departments on their existing 3 tactical talkgroups, plus the 12-zone talkgroups for mutual aid interoperability when needed.
Additionally, Lighthouse Point, Sea Ranch Lakes, and Lauderdale by the Sea fire departments will join Pompano Beach fire officially on 1 August, 2011 at 06:00 since they all abut each other in the northeast corner of the county.
The law enforcement agencies for all those jurisdictions will consolidate their operations on a handful of talkgroups on the Broward County system as well. I have no plans to carry their police traffic, just making note of it to document it.
More info as it arrives. I will post the updated channel lineup on my personal web site About Bote's feeds, clickable in the pane to the right.
Pompano fire will mix it up with the other Broward fire departments on their existing 3 tactical talkgroups, plus the 12-zone talkgroups for mutual aid interoperability when needed.
Additionally, Lighthouse Point, Sea Ranch Lakes, and Lauderdale by the Sea fire departments will join Pompano Beach fire officially on 1 August, 2011 at 06:00 since they all abut each other in the northeast corner of the county.
The law enforcement agencies for all those jurisdictions will consolidate their operations on a handful of talkgroups on the Broward County system as well. I have no plans to carry their police traffic, just making note of it to document it.
More info as it arrives. I will post the updated channel lineup on my personal web site About Bote's feeds, clickable in the pane to the right.
2011-07-21
Key West feed down
The Southernmost Feed is down, I don't know why and have no estimated time to repair.
Sorry about that. I'll post here when it's back up.
Sorry about that. I'll post here when it's back up.
2011-06-18
Key West swim race
Marine channel 12 is hopping today with the FKCC Swim Around Key West.
Here's the whole scoop right from the horse's mouth:
http://www.fkccswimaroundkeywest.com
Happy monitoring!
Here's the whole scoop right from the horse's mouth:
http://www.fkccswimaroundkeywest.com
Happy monitoring!
NAS Key West added
I have added the Naval Air Station Key West trunked system to the Southernmost Feed. Several times while visiting Key West I have seen the Naval fire department running a call and wondering where they were going. Now this adds the missing piece to the puzzle.
The NAS police and other talkgroups are carried on the system, so if they get too chatty I might disable them and keep the fire channel. We shall see about that.
The NAS police and other talkgroups are carried on the system, so if they get too chatty I might disable them and keep the fire channel. We shall see about that.
2011-06-12
Key West audio GREATLY improved
At long last I have contacted the author of the Virtual Audio Cable utility and he directed me to check my settings to increase the audio level. I did that and now I can declare my Southernmost Feed up to snuff.
Since the audio level varies so widely between the VHF marine channels and the Monroe County digital trunked system I am using a compressor plug-in for WinAmp to add more punch to the audio on the Key West feed. V.A.C. allows me to loop the audio through WinAmp entirely in software, but it was costing me a loss of 12dB which made it sound pathetic again.
I experimented with the settings and it sounds listenable now with no additional amplification on your end. I also reduced the drive on Volume Logic so that it doesn't sound so processed and artificial. So enjoy!
For those interested in the technical details I started V.A.C. control panel and observed all the settings that ScannerCast uses to play out the stream. Then I entered those exact settings into the Cable Parameters section and saved them to the driver by clicking Set. I used SR=44100 (sample rate), BPS=16 (bits per second), NC=1 (channels).
Be sure to stop ScannerCast or whatever plays out the V.A.C. stream before you try to save it or you'll have to type it all over again. Fire up your player or streaming software, then fire up WinAmp to feed the processed audio to it and enjoy the punchiness.
Since the audio level varies so widely between the VHF marine channels and the Monroe County digital trunked system I am using a compressor plug-in for WinAmp to add more punch to the audio on the Key West feed. V.A.C. allows me to loop the audio through WinAmp entirely in software, but it was costing me a loss of 12dB which made it sound pathetic again.
I experimented with the settings and it sounds listenable now with no additional amplification on your end. I also reduced the drive on Volume Logic so that it doesn't sound so processed and artificial. So enjoy!
For those interested in the technical details I started V.A.C. control panel and observed all the settings that ScannerCast uses to play out the stream. Then I entered those exact settings into the Cable Parameters section and saved them to the driver by clicking Set. I used SR=44100 (sample rate), BPS=16 (bits per second), NC=1 (channels).
Be sure to stop ScannerCast or whatever plays out the V.A.C. stream before you try to save it or you'll have to type it all over again. Fire up your player or streaming software, then fire up WinAmp to feed the processed audio to it and enjoy the punchiness.
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