Thursdays is Isle Of Wight Radio Society Thursday Night Net Night.
On a Thursday, I like to run the net starting at 2000 and running through to 2100. Some nights there is a topic other nights are “Natter Nights” . Even though, with a topic, callers on the net can raise any issue they wish, having a topic merely provides a focus, if people can’t think of any other issue to raise. Usually, when a TNN is run with a topic it is not only entertaining, but it is educational as well. It’s rare that I don’t learn something.
Tonights topic was wireless scanners. There are two ways of conducting scanning; frequency and channel. Depending upon the capability of the scanner channel scanning is best, these are known set frequencies, that may be allocated a name or a number, for example, Southampton Vessel Traffic Services, commonly Southampton VTS manages ship movements into and out of Southampton and through the Solent, it operates on Marine Channel 12, or 156.600 MHz, scanners can be programmed so that you now the name of the primary channel user, they will then cycle through all the channels, stopping whenever a signal is detected. Scanners have a serious purpose, but they are also fun.
What I found out tonight was that my Uniden scanner only really deals with higher frequencies, there are frequencies used by ships and aircraft, if satellite isn’t available. I’d never even thought about HF. Once again, a very pleasant hour passed.
Here are some random pictures;
