the BLAH-G

Oh did I have fun Sunday morning.

No I didn’t go to the races nor was I at Idlewild Park. What I did was sit down with a few hours of recorded audio that I made of scanner transmissions over the last few weeks. Wow, I had fun. ( as you can see, it really doesn’t take much to float my boat ! )

HOT BREW

A huge fire in Bradenville ! I have no idea at this writing what all was saved but Barkley Beer Distributors, the Rolling Rock Master Distributor for this area was the scene of a major fire Sunday afternoon ! CORRECTION - DISPATCHED AS BARKEY BEER, actual fire was TWO DOORS DOWN !

Geano (a personal friend of the Booger) is the owner / operator of the business and from what I’ve heard the fire started in the upstairs of the house near his beer distributorship. The first firefighter on scene was Chief 71 and he reported heavy smoke. Moments later fire and smoke, fully involved structure fire !

I will attempt to get in the BOOGERMOBILE today and snap some photos for the late edition of the Blah-g. (update, did go and view the burned building, no photos taken of this private residence)

Now, I could tell you about the ventilation of the roof and all of the companies that responded to the scene however I’ll just report that the 800 Mhz Radio System worked fine.

IF YOU ARE A MEMBER OF A FIRE COMPANY THAT RESPONDED TO THIS FIRE, I am in the process of compiling an .mp3 of all of the audio. I will most likely make the audio available to those that may wish a copy. If you would like to get on the list just send me an email. I will advise you of this blah-ger’s plans. Send your email to news@k3sam.com.

ENCYPTION

Those of you that own one of the new digital scanners with appreciate the following. When the Sheriff’s and some police departments want secure communications they go to a secure TG (talkgroup). What you hear on your scanner is loud digital crap that sounds like a siren made of various noises. Very disturbing. ( Click here to listen to an actual ENCRYPTED TRANSMISSION )

I was thinking about another use for this sound. Record it on a digital chip and put it in an alarm clock. I don’t know about you but that sound wakes me up every time I hear it, even if I’m awake already !! It might even be a good replacement sound for police and fire vehicle sirens. I know I’d sure as hell move if I heard that behind me.

Oh what the boogy, while I’m on the subject of Encryption, let me tell you about my mother-in-law… NO, seriously when a normal digital transmission is made there are millions of digital bits that are sent over the airwaves. Some are system data and some are audio data. When a normal transmission takes place the digital audio transmission might start out with “100100000000101” which would tell the other radio to go ahead a decode this normally. However if the transmission would begin with “111100000000101” then the radio knows to go into it’s scramble mode. When your scanner sees the beginning digital code start with “1111” instead of “1001” then it knows that BY LAW it cannot reproduce this sound. So what you hear are bits and pieces of that actual audio (digital audio) transmission.

You can take a pair of car jumper cables and place one end on diode D12 and the other end on the base of transistor Q107 and you will able to hear everything ! Make sure you use the positive battery lead to do this. Using the negative will result in receiving transmissions from Air Force One and MTV simultaneously. Try this at your own risk. I can only be held liable for stupid stuff that I do.

That it for this afternoodle™, see you next noodle or later todoodle...

DECODED,
K3SAM