Tuesday, May 04, 2004
To be or not to be? I know someone has said that before...........
One day while reading one of the many mailing lists that I subscribe to I became envious. This particular list dealt with scanning and on of the posting was announcing the monthly meeting of CARMA, which is an acronym for Chicago Area Monitoring Association. The posting announced the meeting place, a restaurant, and time. Mentioned what the main topic of discussion would be at this months meeting and who would be bringing equipment to demo.
At the bottom of the posting in the signature file I noticed a line that gave a frequency and time for members of the club that were hams to meet on the air for a net. I thought “Gee that would be neat for a bunch of scanner users to get together on the air.” Like a said I was envious. I lived in a Chicago suburb for a while in a past life and while I was licensed at the time I had no interest in VHF/UHF or scanning then. Only HF operations were on my mind at the time. What an opportunity I missed! Well, I’m sure it won’t be the last one. So I went to the WPA scanner mailing list and posted a message asking if any hams that frequent the list would like to get together on the air. Thus was born the scanner net on Sunday evenings.
Then we started meeting at ham fests to shoot the breeze and look at scanners and experiment with software. Next came some week night sessions at Kings. Not a lot of people showed up at first and we don’t meet that often but the number keeps growing. Everyone seems to have a good time when we do get together.
So my question is where are we headed with this? Will the Pittsburgh Area Scanner Net become the Pittsburgh Area Scanner Club? Do any of you reading this think there is enough interest to create something formal? If the answers too either of those questions is “yes” then I have some further ideas. At this point though I just want to float the idea and see if there is any consensus in the group. Drop me a note and let me know what you think.
At the bottom of the posting in the signature file I noticed a line that gave a frequency and time for members of the club that were hams to meet on the air for a net. I thought “Gee that would be neat for a bunch of scanner users to get together on the air.” Like a said I was envious. I lived in a Chicago suburb for a while in a past life and while I was licensed at the time I had no interest in VHF/UHF or scanning then. Only HF operations were on my mind at the time. What an opportunity I missed! Well, I’m sure it won’t be the last one. So I went to the WPA scanner mailing list and posted a message asking if any hams that frequent the list would like to get together on the air. Thus was born the scanner net on Sunday evenings.
Then we started meeting at ham fests to shoot the breeze and look at scanners and experiment with software. Next came some week night sessions at Kings. Not a lot of people showed up at first and we don’t meet that often but the number keeps growing. Everyone seems to have a good time when we do get together.
So my question is where are we headed with this? Will the Pittsburgh Area Scanner Net become the Pittsburgh Area Scanner Club? Do any of you reading this think there is enough interest to create something formal? If the answers too either of those questions is “yes” then I have some further ideas. At this point though I just want to float the idea and see if there is any consensus in the group. Drop me a note and let me know what you think.
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