[Scan-DC] new CHM FAQ

[ka3jjz at NETSCAPE.COM]

We've made some significant changes to the website...

The Capitol Hill Monitors FAQ
As of: March 11 2006

I. What is the Capitol Hill Monitors?
  The Capitol Hill Monitors is an electronic club for scanner hobbyists covering Maryland, the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia and Southern Delaware.  Fees are charged only to cover the costs of mailing a hardcopy version of the newsletter, which is published irregularly.

II. What does the Capitol Hill Monitors website consist of?
  The website (which can be found at http://henney.com/chm ) is a collection of pages devoted to collecting links with useful frequency, trunking and system information for our coverage area. The site is open to all, regardless of membership. We have recently begun to incoporate Wikpedia© from the popular RadioReference website to allow the site to cover a much broader range of topics than would otherwise be possible. Articles (Wiki speak for pages) covering Trunktrackers (including the new digital tts), scanner antennas, military monitoring, the upcoming rebanding and much more are available, with more to follow.

 The site is organized into seperate pages, each of which has its own function.

. The main page, which gives you a little lowdown on the CHM, and some fast links into our site.  A link to previous issues of the Capitol Hill Monitors newsletters, some of which are in PDF format, is also available here.

. The Introduction page, which has many miscellaneous links.  There's a little here for a lot of different interests; milair, railfans, NASCAR, aircraft are all covered in this section.  You will also find links to some popular magazines' website, as well as for other mailing lists which might be of
interest. Some Wikipedia© articles regarding ACARS, Military Monitoring, Antennas as well as an introduction to trunking are all linked here.

. The regional pages. Each region is covered by a single page seperated into categories, which include;

. Trunking information
. Conventional frequency information
. Amateur Radio Links - for those hams and scannists that want to know about repeaters in this area
. Online audio and IRLP - Here you will find online scanners for this area, as well as links to Internet Radio Linking Protocol (IRLP) sites. Basically, this is one of 2 popular packages (the other is called Echolink) used by hams to tie a repeater into the Internet using Voice over IP technology. So if you hear an exotic location on a local machine, chances are good that it is using one of these protocols
. A Wikipedia© article titled ‘Delmarva Military Monitoring’ has also been added to these pages. This takes the place of the Combat Air Patrol files that were stored in a Yahoo group that no longer exists.  In addition, some additional RadioReference links have also been overhauled or replaced. 
. Other mailing lists - There are a few other scanning related mailing lists besides Scan-DC; the most active of these can be found on the popular RadioReference website.  The Virginia page also lists 2 other scanning
related clubs.

. The Scanners page – This page has, by far, been the most impacted by the Wikipedia© migration. We now have links to articles covering Uniden, Radio Shack (including all the trunktrackers, past present and one or two future models), AOR, Icom and Yaesu receivers and scanners, as well as the popular line of WinRadio products. Links on rebanding, and some other scanner related pages are found here. In addition, numerous battery manufacturers and distributors can be found here. 

. The ARC250 and .p96 library pages. These pages hold programming files for the 2 most popular software packages for the digital trunktrackers; ARC250 from BuTel Software supports the Uniden digital trunktrackers. The .p96 file extension is used for Win96, which supports the PRO96/2096 digital scanners from Radio Shack. Folks are strongly encouraged to add to these pages, particularly for those areas that are not yet covered.  The more files we get, the more useful the library will become.  

. The Maryland fire/rescue page - this page lists the known frequencies, by county, for fire dispatch and EMS operations.  Links are provided, where known, to RadioReference for talkgroup information.  As more and more
communities migrate from their conventional systems, these frequencies will change; your help is needed to keep things up to date

. The Delaware Fireboards page - this page lists the many vhf/uhf transmitters that communities have set up for relaying fire dispatches and some fire related trunking traffic.  These transmitters sometimes utilize low power with simple antennas, so hearing some of them is a challenge.

   The URL to check for all this information is: http://henney.com/chm

   If you find a page that should be listed, broken links, and so on, please let ka3jjz 'at' netscape 'dot' com know so it can be corrected. Files for the ARC250 and .p96 pages should be forwarded to alan 'at' henney 'dot' com for posting.  Thanks for reading this; 73s and enjoy the site.    


links editor,Capitol Hill Monitors
Utility Monitoring Central
editor, Strong Signals software page
Wiki Administrator, Radioreference.Com 

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