Part of it is simply cleaning the areas where the guinea pigs once had their cages, but beyond that I've begun moving stuff around as I clean so that I can finally give the house a thorough cleaning it's not had in at least a decade.
Normally this is a Spring Cleaning sort of thing, but since I'm taking a short break from working on the deck --and given the heat this week, that's very much a good thing-- I've channeled my energies toward making my space that much cleaner instead.*
Alas for me, that means I've been hit with nostalgia of a different sort.
Right now, I've got this out of the basement, cleaned up --thank you, isopropyl alcohol-- and currently scanning away:
 |
| It's a Radio Shack Pro-2035. |
I acquired that from a yard sale before I began playing WoW, so probably sometime around 2006 - 2008, for the grand total of $35. Considering the original list price of $449.99 in 1995, that was a pretty damn good deal.
For a while I wondered why the person was selling it so cheaply, but a few years afterward I discovered why he sold what was at one time the top of the line scanner that Radio Shack had: Cincinnati Police and Fire were moving toward a trunked system, which this scanner could not receive.
Still, there are quite a few broadcasts in my local area that can be received by this scanner, so this afternoon I've been hearing about all of the paramedic and fire department activity within several miles of my house.**
***
I was never really a scanner listener, although when I did that 8 month stint at Radio Shack we did have our (then) top of the line scanner up and running, which made for very interesting listening when there was nobody in the store. There was a McDonalds about a football field away, and the things people said into the hot mic while waiting to order at the drive thru made me realize I should keep my mouth shut while in a drive-thru lane.
For a while, these scanners used to be able to listen in on old style cellular phone calls; that became a bit of a political problem early in the 90s when a scanner listener happened to listen in on a conversation between top level Republican Congressmen discussing strategy via cell phone, and as a consequence of that leaked conversation a law was quickly passed banning the cell frequencies from these scanners. That's not an issue now, given that digital communications have advanced significantly since those days, but it did highlight digital privacy issues even way back when.
***
I don't really have a listening station in the house these days, since I no longer work out of the basement, but I ought to consider making one somewhere. Right now, if I want to listen to shortwave I bring the radio upstairs with me and place it in a room away from my home office, as the computers there interfere with reception.
 |
| No, this is not me. I only have a couple of radios. From Wikipedia, and this is the attribution: By Mw0rkb - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24682534 |
I guess I ought to add an outside antenna (or two) to the project list...
*This was all part of my project plan I had been working on while I was figuring out costs associated with the deck, as mentioned here.
**That's interesting, but it can be morbidly so. I had to get up and go do something else away from my work desk when a call for paramedics for a suicide attempt came over the air.
EtA: Corrected some grammar.
#Blaugust2024
No comments:
Post a Comment