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Thursday, September 19, 2002
Minuteman III Missile Launch from Vandenberg AFB [Source: Freq Of Nature]  UPDATE Photos of a Minuteman III missile launch from Vandenberg AFB. A Minuteman III missile was launched from Vandenberg AFB at 7:30pm after a 90 minute launch delay. The delay put the launch right at dusk making for a spectacular view that could be seen for hundreds of miles. The WB6OBB repeater 147MHz on Broadcast Peak (Santa Barbara) followed the launch including comments from Brian Webb (KD6NRP) who was on the base to watch the launch. See Brian's web page at Rawhide Space Page II for more information and photos as well as dates of future missile launches. Another excellent web site is SoCal Sky Lights which also has photos and date of future launches. Tuesday, September 17, 2002
FCC Grants Certification Approval for Uniden Digital Capable Scanners [Source: Uniden America Corporation] Bearcat® APCO P-25 Capable Units Available in Late 2002 FORT WORTH, Texas, September 16, 2002 - Uniden America Corporation today announced that the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) granted certification approval for the company's digital capable scanners, the Bearcat BC250D handheld and the BC785D base/mobile scanner, on August 22, 2002 (FCC ID: AMWUB316, covering both scanners). Uniden American Corporation unveiled its new digital scanner line at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January of 2002. "Our customers expressed a desire for a Uniden® APCO-25 product, and we are pleased to be able to offer our new Bearcat BC250D handheld and BC785D base/mobile scanning unit," said Scott Carpenter, Uniden Product Manager. "With the ability to monitor conventional, trunked and APCO P-25 conventional and trunked systems, these models are state-of-the-art radio scanners." APCO Project 25 is a joint effort of U.S. federal, state and local government, with support from the U.S. Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), to develop a universal digital standard for wireless Land Mobile Radio communication users. These standards enable critical communications for safety and security agencies around North American and allow interoperability among the different agencies. The BC250D and the BC785D models offer 1,000 channels, 10 banks and a frequency range of 25MHz - 1300MHz. The BC250D comprises all of the features of Uniden's market-leading BC780XLT in a handheld model, plus an additional 600 channels. Users of both models must purchase an APCO P-25 card, the BCi25D, separately. All models will ship in late November 2002. "We're pleased to be bringing these great Bearcat APCO P-25 capable units to marker," Carpenter said. "We expect more big cities to migrate to the APCO P-25 digital technology, like Los Angeles did this past year, to ensure agency interoperability among police, fire, EMTs and the like - and we believe that news organizations, businesses and consumers will want to monitor these signals." Uniden officials stressed that APCO P-25 digital scanning technology simply gives users the ability to monitor the unencrypted day-to-day activities and signals of standard city and government service departments - but in no way allows users to monitor encrypted signals from national and local security organizations or any type of cellular transmissions. In a separate announcement, Uniden also detailed its plans to marker its own easy-to-use scanner programming software, which was demonstrated in its booth at CES 2002 in Las Vegas. The software, to be called E-Scanner™ Software, will allow users of Uniden scanners with data ports to easily program frequencies into channels and banks of their scanners. |