[SMCARA] SMECO Power Outages

[Richard B]

Good morning Jim.
SMECO, like many businesses in NA, have converted to a digital mode of operation. An analog receiver is unable to hear their transmissions. 
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73 DE N1LID (Boz) Monday, 08 August 2016, 10:07AM -04:00 from Jim  wieldtjr at md.metrocast.net :

>We had our power off for about 2 hours Saturday night.  I went to the effort of calling it in when it first went off as is our duty as users.  As is my usual thing, I lay awake wondering when I should get dressed and go out and fire up my generator since It is there for a reason.  Mostly to keep refrigerators and freezers going.  Since I am in the dark (pun intended) about the status of the outage, my mind turned in another direction and I wondered if I could listen in on their work crew radio traffic.
>
>When the power came back on, I looked up their radio station and they operate on 158.145 Mhz.  I can dial in that frequency  on my Yaesu FT-60R and did so and have left it on to listen in.
>
>Either my HT is kidding me about what I can and can’t do or possibly SMECO’s comm encrypted.   My HT gets the whole 2m and 70cm bands as well as the weather channels which are several Mhz higher in the low 160’.
>
>Anyone have any ideas.  I guess I could call SMECO and ask but that would be tacky.  I will go with the notion that it is encrypted which would also serve to prevent interlopers from asking the repair crews questions. 
>
>Jim  KC3WJA
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>Sent from Mail for Windows 10
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