Two meter houseplant

[scott_sanford]

This two-meter houseplant has emerged from winter hibernation and is waking up. It seems to be doing well in the living room. It's not quite in bloom because it is not yet antenna season.

Comments

[kengr]

I'll have to talk to you about antennas (for my scanners) sometime. Apartments are a pain if you aren't a ham.

Also, Are scanners "banned" from monitoring the FRS bands or something? Mine doesn't seem to pick them up. Though it may just be too old.

[scott_sanford]

In the Portland area, yes, your scanner is probably too old. Many Portland services have moved to P25 trunking systems, which are handy for various reasons but involve a lot of digital hoo-hah that won't play with radios expecting more straightforward modulation.

Scanners that will handle this are available but still expensive (when I last looked, maybe six months ago).

If you're thinking of building your own antenna, the library has the ARRL Antenna Book. Concealed antennas are their own thing; there are entire books about clever things done by apartment dwellers. For the much easier approach of just buying something, there's Ham Radio Outlet in Tigard.

[kengr]

Oh, I don't care about the businesses. I'm more interested in monitoring the ordinary people using FRS. All those FRS handy-talkies are getting used by *someone*.

And yeah, I should make an excursion out to Ham Radio Outlet one of these days.

[scott_sanford]

Hm, a quick google turns up FRS frequencies and various people saying that they can use scanners or other radios to listen in. Some FRS radios use filtering subtones (CTCSS, etc) but that won't stop you from listening.

A quick check of the radio closest at hand verifies that a current generation handi-talkie will happily tune to FRS frequencies; with nobody around to transmit I can't tell how well it brings in FRS transmissions. (Note that even PoS ham gear is vastly over-engineered for this and for regulatory reasons may not stand in for a FRS transmitter.) If your scanner seems to be willing to listen on those frequencies but you're not hearing anything, have you tried finding someone with a FRS radio and creating a target signal?

[delosharriman]

Or they were bought by someone who then discovered they were practically useless, & stashed them in a drawer.
Or you're in an area where everyone who might have used FRS is just using a smartphone app.

[kengr]

Well, it won't pick up *my* FRS radios. Even when I programmed in the frequencies.

My best guess is that the scanner expects AM on those frequencies and FRS uses FM...

[delosharriman]

Hmm. I'd expect to hear something from the carrier switching on & off, even if it's not demodulating.