Railfan Locations

I took the same basic usage that I have on http://www.whatstodotoday.com and applied it to http://www.rtprailfan.com. Essentially users can register with the site and post their railfan sites. I have posted several of my sites around North Carolina. Even though its centered around North Carolina, you can post locations for anywhere in the world. Pretty cool....

Spring is here....

That means lots of yard work to do. Thus the lack of posts, not to mention hectic at work. I haven't been getting out to see much lately, but I did catch a freight today at Clegg. Soon I hope to get a Traintenna for my attic setup. I don't really listen to it much but it seems to be working ok. I'm wondering if I'm going to keep it going through the summer because it gets pretty hot up there plus the cost of running the computer all the time. I'll let you know when I get the new antenna set up.

Updated Website

I update my website with some small new stuff and got the links working at the top. Just did a page about the Yagi antenna I have in the attic even though I don't use it now. I'm using the RadioShack VHF antenna. It seems to pick up better than my 5 element Yagi. I still can't pick up the NS defect detector in RTP. I'll get a traintenna eventually and I hope I'll pick it up then.

Slackin

Man, I have been slackin on the website. Went over to Raleigh and Selma over the weekend, caught some action. Couple freights, couple Amtraks. I will have to post some new photos to the website soon. I caught the lunar eclipse last night and got some pictures. I needed a telephoto lens for that though. Work is still keeping me busy.

Its been a while

So I was on vacation and I haven't updated my blog in some time. I took some railfan trips, to Hamlet, Aberdeen, followed the Durham and Southern from Apex to Dunn, NC, went to Selma, NC on the old ACL mainline. It was quite a vacation. I have a ton of stuff to update http://www.rtprailfan.com/ with. Also, the search engine optimization we did is paying off, for some reason i'm highly ranked for "amtrak cary." I guess because of the one article I have on amtrak and Cary, NC. I went there also. I also am working on a video page but I did some stupid stuff the other night in Dreamweaver and I screwed up one of my CSS pages. I need to fix that tonight. Hope everyone had a good holiday and check out the page, I'll have new stuff soon.

RTPRailfan has a FORUM!

http://www.rtprailfan.com now has a forum for people to chat about railfanning in our area. It can be reached at http://www.rtprailfan.com/rtprailfanforum/ . Feel free to stop by and chat for a while, leave a picture, etc. I'm still setting it up but the basic stuff is up and running.

Research Triangle Park

Now that I have a good idea of what the rtprailfan site will entail, I think I'm going to start trying to get the rtp area things to do site together. Although, I'm not sure what I'm going to call it yet or even exactly what the content will be. I'd like to do something similar to the railfan site, something with interactive maps and good photography. Maybe something that includes outside/inside activites, places for couples. Any one have suggestions for what they would like to see?

Keyword Searches

I wonder how difficult it will be to get any traffic to this blog. I've been reading about keyword association with your site and it seems difficult. I guess it just takes time. I'm still working on my website but its slow going. I don't know how to use the programs very well so there is a very steep learning curve. I'm still trying to figure out how exactly I want to lay it out. I'm thinking if I can just get the page overview together, I'll go ahead and launch it. On a different subject all together, I'm still waiting on my mag mount antenna with BNC connector. I also got a 5/8 wavelength antenna custom build for 160 MHz resonance frequency. I'm hoping this will do much better than my Diamond antenna hooked to my scanner in the car. I just don't think I'm getting the range I'm supposed to be getting. Went out at lunch today looking for trains in RTP, no luck.

To much to do, to little time

I'm probably biting off more than I can chew here but in addition to my railfan website, I want to create one that highlights things to do in the Research Triangle Park area. I'm still trying to figure out what that will be about but I'm thinking something that links video/photography with google maps and a good description of what there is to do.