The midwestern Amateur Radio operator who believes the Roman Catholic Church is responsible for the assasination of U.S. presidents through history, and is in absolute control of the U.S. through its surrogate, President George W. Bush, is in rare form tonight.
He has been absent from 75 meters for some time, but recently reappeared. He runs the legal limit, so even when band conditions are bad he's usually copyable.
Now I don't dispute his right to spew his venomous crap as he choses via ham radio. As a Roman Catholic myself, I find his assertions absurd, and frankly, they resemble the ravings of a lunatic. Quoting anti-Catholic publications both new and old, he insists that the pope was behind the 9/11 attacks; that the Catholic Church created Freemasonry to serve as a undercover army to infiltrate countries where the church doesn't have control; and the Jesuits are the Pope's acknowledged army.
He usually has one or two individuals who listen during his transmissions and throw in their callsigns when he's done. Tonight he has a couple of additional hams who have joined him. Presently he's shooing away someone who dared stop by the frequency and voice a dissenting opinion. “The frequency's in use, hit the road.”
He was nice enough to explain that he wasn't interesting in a debate. If you didn't agree with what he says, you aren't welcome on the frequency! I find it fascinating that he offers such incendiary statements but gets huffy when they attract someone who wishes to respond. He must be a politician at heart.
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I still need to box up my 746PRO, perhaps tomorrow. The only radio-related activity I've done this week is to play with my new Uniden BCT-15 scanner. I've wanted a scanner that has CTCSS and DCS, and this one has it. It's a trunking scanner, and it programs things using dynamic memory, and I'm still working to figure out how to use it as a conventional scanner.
One of the annoying parts of the scanners operation is that it seems to continuously seek other channels even when it stops on a busy channel. In the process, the audio drops out after about 8 seconds for about 2 seconds before the scanner reacquires the audio.
This may be my incorrect programming of the scanner. But its frustrating when your old $50 hamfest scanner stops on the local police and never misses a beat, while my new high-dollar whiz-bang scanner drops the audio on every signal it stops on. I've seen a number of these models sell on eBay, usually with the comment that there was no trunking system in the seller's area, or they didn't need such a complicated scanner.
Even after programming scanners for 25 years, this one has a pretty good learning curve. How it manages memories is different, and the manual is large and is geared more to users who want the trunking features. I'll continue to work on it, but if I can't get the audio dropping out problem resolved, I'm already thinking of selling it on eBay. I'm going to continue working with it, but I'm not exactly overwhelmed by the rig — yet. Is this a case where “simple is better?” Time will tell.
TIME DID TELL. After I completed this post, I went back to work studying the new BCT-15. The proverbial light bulb went off over why it was dropping the audio while it was stopped on a busy channel. It has to do with how the scanner organizes memories. You have to create a “System” and then within that system you create “Groups” and you add your frequencies to each group. You can divy up Groups like the traditional memory “banks” in a conventional scanner. As far as I can tell, there's no real limit to the number of frequencies in a Group.
I created two groups so far — one for public service, the second for the Amateur service. Once I had the memories correctly set up, in a side by side comparison, the new Uniden is far more sensitive than my older Radio Shack scanner. The Uniden pauses a little too long — or longer than I like right now — so I may adjust that. I inadvertently programmed a railroad frequency in as public service, and I probably need to change that.
I've not fooled with extensive programming yet because I wasn't sure the rig was a keeper yet. That's looking more like a yes at this point.