2022-09-28

Hurricane Ian updates

 Hurricane Ian knocked out power to so much of Key West that most of the island can be considered without electrical power today. Bote's Southernmost Feed lasted as long as the big UPS batteries allowed, but finally lost power around 07:00 this morning. Keys Electric Coop crews were heard talking on the radio just before the feed went down, so it's only a matter of time before power is restored and we can get somebody to walk over and turn on the feed computer and everything.

Meanwhile, Broward County is getting hit with some gusty breezes. I saw an unconfirmed 911 report of a tornado near Oakland Park Blvd and the ocean, but nothing heard on the scanner so far. We might yet lose power here at our world HQ as gusty as it has become this morning.

UPDATE: Electrical power was restored around noon Wednesday, so Bote's Southernmost Feed is back online. For now I'm leaving Florida Keys Electric talkgroups enabled so we can hear the extent of damage and some people might even hear when their power is to be restored, which is nice. 

The airport is open, although the airlines have not resumed service as of this writing. Their Internet service is still out, which is a very common problem in the Keys. I'll have to listen for the daily crash phone test tomorrow morning; I missed the one on Wednesday because the power died on the stream about a half hour earlier.

2022-09-23

Weather Tweeps

 A list of good accounts to follow on Twitter for reliable information about South Florida weather and tropical systems in the Atlantic.

Scientists at NHC and Other Tropical Researchers

@NHC_Atlantic - official National Hurricane Center account

@NHC_TAFB

@AndrewHagen

@philklotzbach

@TropicalTidbits

@BMcNoldy

@EricBlake12


Hurricane Hunters (actually fly the planes into hurricanes)

@TheAstroNick

@JeremyDeHart53d


Weather Forecasters

@NWSMiami

@NWSTampaBay

@NWSKeyWest

@NWSCPC

@JohnMoralesTV

@lukedorrisWPLG

@FloridaStorms

@SammyHadiWx


Automated Accounts

@iembot_mfl


2021-04-21

Key West feed kerflooey

UPDATE 2021.04.23 - Bote's Southernmost Feed has been restored to service thanks to the efforts of a loyal local listener. The screen was blank no matter what we did so a power cycle brought it back to life. Aint Windows 10 great??

The Southernmost Feed has gone off into space (again). And Windows 10 was supposed to be so solid and reliable. And today is Wednesday which typically follows Tuesday, which is the big Windows Update day, so...I thought I disabled all that automatic update stuff so that I could supervise it to prevent THIS EXACT PROBLEM.

As soon as a local contact person can make it over to the feed site to reboot it, the thing will be back online, but that likely won't happen until tomorrow. This is a hobby, after all.

2021-04-06

Comcast Up and Down

UPDATE 2021.04.07:  Comcast has been stable for the better part of 24 hours so I'll declare things up and running again. Now the trouble is that I have a new public i.p. address, so I have to update that address in the other end of my point-to-point VPN links, which is not going well.

***

Comcrap has been up and down all morning (mostly down) so the Broward area feeds have followed suit. 

 I'm not declaring that things are back up until at least tomorrow. Comcast's app first said it would be repaired by 3PM, then when I checked an hour later it said by 4PM. Extending the promised repair time is their oldest trick in the book.

Just be patient. You be patient, sir, or you won't get anything.

2021-03-03

New Marine Feed, Broward CAD Down

It looks like Broward fire is no longer transmitting their USDD Computer-Aided Dispatch calls over a talkgroup on the old Project 16 trunked system, so I abandoned that and lit up a new VHF marine feed on Broadcastify.

I'm looking for a host in a tall condo near the beach to host the thing for better coverage. For now it's about 3 miles from the ocean and can hear vessels calling Oakland Park and Sunrise bridge tenders, but not the bridges themselves since they transmit at very low power.

 https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/34989

Enjoy!


2020-12-04

Host Outage

19:38 - The web host for listen.trackstreamer.com is experiencing a major outage tonight. My feeds will come back online when they do. 

No E.T.R. yet.

UPDATE: OK, I think it's REALLY back on. Crappy Friday + weekend for the techs working this problem at the co-lo facility, though.

2020-12-02

Broward County Goes P25

 You might have noticed that the old Broward County Project 16 analog trunked system has recently gotten very quiet. That's because they have switched over to their shiny new Project 25 digital trunked system.

Because it is new and we are hobbyists and not the radio shop, we don't know all the new talkgroups and need to map them out. This takes time and a coordinated effort by interested hobbyists who know their favorite areas well enough to infer what the new talkgroups are used for when it is not obvious.

As of right now only Bote's Mixer Board still hums along with Fort Lauderdale public safety stuff. Bote's Wild feed will go silent when Broward Fire Dispatch 1 switches over to the new P25 system. I hope to find the time to develop a suitable receive setup for the new P25 Phase 2 (TDMA) trunked system.

Stay tuned.

2020-08-02

Non-Hurricane Isaias Update

I took down the antenna for the F.E.C. Railway Oakland Park feed in anticipation of high winds from Hurricane Isaias, but that storm turned out to be a nothingburger for SoFLA. So the antenna is back up and you can once again hear all the exciting railroad action on both Florida East Coast and CSX/SFRTA/Tri-Rail on the same feed.

The right channel carries the road frequency while the left channel carries everything else. You will find it an effective combination.

2020-06-26

Key West feed Windows Updates

UPDATE: All Windows Updates have been applied, weirdness corrected, now streaming normally (until the next update!)

Bote's Southernmost Feed is in the midst of a massive Windows Update and will return when they have been applied and rebooted about a billion times.

2020-05-15

CUTOVER

Please refresh your DNS or restart your player to pick up the new DNS entry pointing to listen.trackstreamer.com (which is the same as listen.botecomm.com now).

It might be a little bumpy the nexty day or two, but it should even out once I get everything settled down. I'm trying something that might not work.

UPDATE 1: 2020.05.15 11:35 EDT - Well, that didn't work. Still more configurururing to figure out. Computers, huh?

UPDATE 2: 2020.05.16 10:17 - So far, so good. Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.