Railfan Scanning

Well, I received my Traintenna LP but I haven't had much luck in getting it going. Well, by that I mean it seems to be working but it doesn't pick up any better than my VHF antenna from RadioShack. I'm don't think I have anything setup wrong, I just think it doesn't pick up any better and I'm fairly disappointed because that antenna was $170, my other VHF antenna was $25 and does just as good of a job??? That makes no sense to me. As soon as I get that thing setup the way I want it I'll put the RTPRailfan stream back online. Till then....

AudioBlog

So I was thinking after the summer about putting an audio blog or something of that sort together for the scanner stuff down here. I'm not sure how I would do that, I guess my scanner feed would be good enough now. I was thinking more of something you can put on an ipod to hear the previous days action. This would be really great around my area given the scarcity of transmissions sometimes. I went walking around Morrisville today, up near where Park West Village is suppose to go in. Doesn't look like there is much going on, maybe the housing downturn has put that project on hold?? We had a big layoff last Monday but I survived. Hopefully I can make it though this recession. Just got back from a vacation at the Outer Banks. It was really nice to get away.

Motorola Maxtrac

I bought this Moto Maxtrac 300 because I heard commercial radios are better than scanners. I can belive that. So I got it and it does indeed have better receive sensitivity. I had to gather all the equipment to get it going, radio interface box (RIB), Rib to radio cable (I built), Rib to computer cable (came with the RIB). Then I had to find the software. Took me a while to realize that the way Motorola and others define pins 1-8 on an RJ45 connector is backwards. Anyways, to the good stuff. Last night I hooked it up in my car and I could almost hear a train in Raleigh and I could hear the Cary defect detector no problem. This is a far cry from my scanner where the best I could hope for was Apex. I'm not sure what people have that say they can hear 35+ miles. I can only hear 20 with my maxtrac and a antenna tuned to 160 MHz. How much better can you get than that. Anyways, I'm hoping to get another one of these on the cheap and install it in the attic with the Yagi. This will definitely get better range than my current scanner.

Can't work on website, building Yagi Antenna

Well, I read online that some people were using Yagi antenna's for receiving talk over the AAR channels. I have two monopole antenna's but I thought I would try building a Yagi. I sort of got it working I guess but I still don't think its as good as it should be. I guess I'll give it a while and see how it does. Hopefully I can get it optimized and then I'll leave it be. I haven't worked on the www.rtprailfan.com site for a while because i've been wrapped up in antenna design. Hope to post some pics soon.

RTP Railfan

Finally, I have something to show for my effort. http://www.rtprailfan.com is sorta finished. I have some bugs and some of the links don't link to anything but I have the main page up and 3 articles. Hopefully I can get the last of the articles that I wanted to do completed soon. I took a break for a while, had other things going on. In antenna news, I got my Smiley antenna tuned to 160 MHz in. Its pretty nice, I can definitely hear more of what is floating around the airwaves than I could with my Diamond. I think I heard the dispatcher in Raleigh the other day but that my have been a fluke because I haven't heard anything recently. I also have a mag mount for my car that helps when I'm driving around. Pretty nice. Well thats about all thats happening. I should have more of my website together soon!