Saturday, January 27, 2007
January 2007 meeting of the TRAMA group
Well we managed to get our first meeting in for 2007. Frankly I haven't been very active because of work and other commitments as of late so I wasn't quite sure that I wouldn't be sitting at a table by my self this morning. I felt sure that Frank(who needs to get his license) Stronic would would be there since he makes just about every meeting. Beyond that I wasn't sure.
As it turned out we had a good group show up. There were seven of us there total and we had a very good meeting. We discussed some of the places that we could hold future meetings in the coming year other than at Emerson. Not because we don't have a good meeting place there but because it is nice to visit some of the local radio clubs and other places that are of interest in the monitoring hobby. Also we discussed topics that we can have presentations on at upcoming meetings. I already had a few ideas and the gang came up with a few more. I think we are going to have some interesting sessions at our meetings this year. Stay tuned.
Dave, KB3FXI, attended the meeting and he gave us a quick demonstration of the RemCom ARMS system. This is a voice activated message and data retrieval system that you have to see to appreciate. Dave has kindly offered to give us a full blown demonstration at one of our future meetings. It is one that you will want to attend.
Dave also brought a program that impressed me called Pocket Digi. This program runs on a PDA that is running Windows CE, an operating system that I have never been particularly fond of, and with only input from a microphone decodes a number of different digital modes. Among them are PSK-31 and RTTY. I thought this would fall down when the back ground noise intermixed with the signals it was “hearing” though the microphone but I was amazed at how well it worked. More to come on this item in the future.
We also discussed topics for presentations at upcoming meetings among them,
Broadcast bands and history
SWL'ing
Trunking Scanners
Pod Casts
Military Air Communications
And this is just a start. If you have an idea that you would like to learn more about at one of our monthly meetings drop me a note in email and let me know. Or if you have some area of the hobby that you have invested a lot of time and attention and you would like to share what you have learned with the group let me know. We can make you “speaker” for a day. Next months meeting will be on Saturday February 24th. Mark you calendars now and plan on joining us.
