Freq Of Nature

[Source: Gene Hughes, Police Call]

From the Editor's Page of Police Call 2003 - Southern California Edition,

At age 13, I was living in a foster home. One of my few possessions was a radio, sent to me by a sympathetic uncle in Chicago. I discovered that I could receive the Los Angeles Police Department radio broadcasts – “police calls” as they were referred to. It was the only source of entertainment for a very lonely kid.

I used to daydream that someday lots of people would listen and it would be a big hobby, like photography or ham radio, with books and clubs and everything. Some dream huh?

Not many people get to see their most precious dream come true. I did! And with it there was a thing called Police Call so I could share information with other hobbyists here in Southern California. In what seemed like no time at all, there were Police Call books for the whole country. But even in it's peak year, when almost half a million people bought the national edition volumes, it was the Southern California Edition, it's readers and SCMA that have been closest to my heart.

You've probably guessed, by now, that this is the last Southern California Edition of Police Call. I'm grateful to each and every one of you for the support that has made these 40 wonderful years possible.

Thanks a million!

Gene
scangene@aol.com
copyright (c) 2002 California Radio Communications Co.

posted by Tracy at 12/23/2002 0 comments

Rose Parade Frequencies

[Source: Freq Of Nature]

UPDATE: Rose Parade radio frequency page has been updated.

posted by Tracy at 12/23/2002 0 comments

Sunday, December 22, 2002

Simi Valley Promotes New Police Chief From Ranks as Glendale Hires Adams

[Source: Los Angeles Times]

Simi Valley Police Chief Randy Adams will become Glendale's police chief next month, and Capt. Mark Layhew has been named as Adams' successor. Adams, who will assume the new post Jan. 31, replaces longtime Chief Russell Siverling, who retired this week. Layhew, the incoming chief, is so highly regarded by council members and police colleagues that city leaders decided against the normal nationwide search.

posted by RavenSoft at 12/22/2002 0 comments

Sunday, December 08, 2002

ScanningUSA: "The Radio Hobby After September 11th"

[Source: Tracy Justus]

If you haven’t already read the December 2002 issue of Scanning USA it has an article by Jack Hickok of www.norcalscan.org titled “The Radio Hobby After September 11th”. The article goes into some detail about Jakes concerns regarding the dissemination of sensitive radio system information in the world we woke up to on 9/11/2001.

A few months prior to his article being published, Jake had contacted his fellow California radio scanner web site owners (an unofficial group of web sites that cover California), www.scancal.org and www.freqofnature.com to discuss these concerns. We all agreed that there are certain things that should not be published on our web sites. While I can’t speak for Jake (www.norcalscan.org) or Mike (www.scancal.org) I have made a concerted effort to not publish certain information that I consider sensitive. It’s a much larger task to go back through the entire web site to remove such items, but it is being done as I update those pages.

The following is a list of things I consider to fall under the definition of “sensitive information”:

* Surveillance specific frequencies/talkgroups
* Surveillance operations
* Body wire frequencies
* Transmitter locations
* Input PL tones
* K-12 School frequencies/talk groups

In his article, Jake mentions newsgroups like the popular Yahoo Groups where radio scanning information is shared. Since only a small percentage of group members actually contribute by posting messages, it gives you the feeling that there are only a very few members reading the messages when in fact there are hundreds. Before clicking that SEND button, remember that hundreds of people are going to read your message.

Our hobby of radio monitoring should not be at odds with public safety; in fact it should contribute to it. How many police officers and fire fighters choose their field of work because they listened to a radio scanner as a kid? How many radio scanner hobbyists hold a HAM Radio license? How many times have a citizen reported the location of a wanted suspect after hearing the description of the suspect over a radio scanner?

I think that Jake has initiated an important trend in our hobby by voicing these concerns and actively meeting with public safety officials. Hopefully, by self regulating ourselves we won’t contribute to the risk of those who serve to protect us and we will be bettering the public image of our hobby.

Tracy Justus
www.freqofnature.com

posted by Tracy at 12/08/2002 0 comments

Saturday, December 07, 2002

LAPD Chief: Stop glamorizing chases

[Source: Los Angeles Daily News]

LAPD Chief William Bratton and other top officials expressed outrage this week at a police pursuit that ended in a crash in which a 3-week-old Arleta boy lost his arm, and they called for tougher prosecution of people who evade police.
...
Bratton, who visited the baby after the Tuesday afternoon crash and again Wednesday, railed against those who relish watching televised police pursuits.

"It's time to stop treating this as entertainment. This is about life and death. The young infant is a clear example of the tragedy of this issue.

"These (chases) will never stop because there are mental nitwits out there, not getting the message."

posted by Tracy at 12/07/2002 0 comments

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

tk2 version 0.7 software for the ICOM IC-R2 receiver is now available for free download

[Source: Bob Parnass, M.S.]

tk2 is open source, multi-platform software which configures the ICOM IC-R2 wide coverage receiver. It runs on Linux, MacOS X, BSD, UNIX, Windows (95 and later), and other operating systems.

You can learn about and freely download an experimental version of tk2 from http://parnass.com

posted by Tracy at 12/03/2002 0 comments