I am going through some of my stuff and listing some of the unused/not needed items on eBay.
You can view stuff as I list it here: http://www.ebay.com/sch/w8jkc/m.html
So far the list includes:
I originally learned of this story from Fox 8 Cleveland (WJW) via their website: http://www.fox8.com/news/wjw-obama-man-arrested,0,928965.story (Note: The updated story is at http://www.fox8.com/news/wjw-president-ohio-man-txt,0,4781992.story?page=1)
Here is an excerpt of the story:
At about 2 p.m. Sunday, airport police saw McVey get out of a car and saw that he had a sidearm, airport police Capt. Kevan Smith said. He was using a handheld scanner and radio to monitor local agencies and told an officer in the Asheville airport parking lot that he wanted to see the president, Smith said.
McVey was nowhere near the president’s plane, and was in a rental car return lot that is open to the public, Smith said.
McVey’s car was equipped with police gear, including a siren box, a mounted digital camera and LED law enforcement-style strobe lights in the front and rear dash, Smith said.
…
“Everything they found on him, with the exception of a gun, he basically had all that when he was in Coshocton,” said Wise, of the volunteer emergency group. “He just basically liked to monitor police frequencies and listen to what’s going on.”That’s common for the group’s members, though they are not authorized to have police sirens and lights or to break the speed limit on the way to emergencies, Wise said.
“He’s kind of a go-getter, and I know we had to kind of clip his wings a couple times and tell him he needed to watch what he was doing out there and slow down a little bit,” Wise said.
McVey had a camera in his car because he liked to chase severe storms and post video online, Wise said.
…
For about two years, McVey has been a member of a volunteer organization that assists the sheriff’s department with traffic control at emergency scenes, said Tim Wise, president of Coshocton County Radio Emergency Association Citizen Team.
When I read that the first time a few things stood out to me. I have highlighted those in the above excerpt.
Next I noticed this in one of the email newsgroups I am a member of. Basically somebody posted a different link to a similar article.
On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Jeff K. wrote:
Good Morning,
Just wanted to pass this little nugget along. Evidently a REACT whacker from Ohio was arrested with a tricked-out car and a sidearm when Obama was in Asheville.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9FARUC00&show_article=1
However, a few hours after the posting of the original email I noticed replies from Mr. Ed Greany and Mr. Stan Walters, both from the REACT International Board of Directors.
Reply #1:
From: Ed Greany
Subject: Re: [GMRS] Fw: Re: [SoCal-GMRS] REACT whacker arrested in NC
To: [email protected]
Date: Monday, April 26, 2010, 6:41 PMMary, David, et al:
This person is a member of REACT and also a ham radio operator. TODAY, he is no longer a REACT member. We do not tolerate this behavior but unfortunately cannot ride shotgun with everyone who wears the REACT patch – as both of you well know.
We took action and he is GONE from REACT.
Ed Greany, Executive Vice-president
REACT International, Inc.
e.greany@REACTINTL. org
Reply #2:
As a general rule, REACT HQ does not nor can it promote the use of any kind of lighting or responder type gear on members’ vehicles. The mission of REACT as a whole is to use two-way radio (and yes, you are correct that many teams including mine use GMRS) to save lives and property. Some teams have fallen into roles within their communities as responders of sorts, assisting local Sheriff’s Departments and fire departments with incident scene management including barricading roads, etc. I have visited with teams and team members who are “called out” by local responder agencies and if they have that kind of relationship and it is a valuable service and they use radios, good for them. Some states including PA allow motorists to display additional amber lighting on a vehicle as long as it is stationary under the definition of a “roadside assistance” vehicle and local hardware stores now stock and sell single amber-domed rotators as breakdown safety equipment. Again local and state laws are all different and one cannot assume that because you are under the jurisdiction of your county sheriff and he insists that you run amber lights when blocking a road in Ohio that you have the same privileges anywhere outside that county. I also do not believe that the normal duties of a REACT team member as a communicator would warrant carrying a weapon. Not that there is any reason a team member cannot go through proper legal channels to obtain the permits and licenses needed to do so, but it would not ever be a requirement of membership in a REACT Team.
Thinking of our radio equipment including GMRS HTs, it may have been a bit of a fright for law enforcement to see someone with so much communications and responder equipment. My guess he was listening to the airport tower or area departure control and probably not chatting on GMRS at the time. Strapping on his sidearm was obviously very poor judgement on his part. But going all out to call him a whacker may also be a stretch. He is quoted as having an interest in a law enforcement career and I hope that this incident will not ruin his chances as everything else about him, his school grades, activities in extracurricular groups, obtaining his Amateur license and being a REACT team member all point to a civic minded service oriented young man.
And although I have no lighting beyond factory on my vehicle, I have 4 antennas and a lot of safety gear including my CERT pack, a cache of MURS HTs, Turbo Flares, reflective triangles, wanded flashlights, battery hot shot, tire inflator, etc. One day I had a driver in downtown York PA motion for me to roll down my window which I did and he asked me if I could talk to Mars. I told him that was too far away but the moon was within range.
Regards,
Stanton Walters
WQFD736, AB3EM, KIS5155
Director, Region 1
REACT International, Inc
[email protected]
717-235-7826
Once again, you will find the parts of the email and both replies that caught my attention highlighted. I just though I should share this with everyone that hasn’t seen it yet.
Note: Some contents of this post may be subject to copyright of the original author(s). Content is posted here under “Fair Use”, see http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html.
If you have any questions, comments, complaints, etc. see http://www.w8jkc.com/contact/ for information on how to contact me.
I have updated my WX-IMG products and have included the WWV image in this release.
To add these images to your site please see http://www.w8jkc.com/copythis.php?q=1
You are free to add them to your website, Facebook, MySpace or similar profile, including web signatures.
Also included in this release is my simple email address spam blocking image script. It is very simple to add to any page, but requires basic knowledge of HTTP URL structures. However it is explained completely on the page linked above.
I have changed the methodology behind the Weather Spotter Image too, it used to refresh the data every time the image was accessed or loaded, which means every time somebody viewed a page that had that image in it, the information would be retrieved again. This works great, however now that more people are using that image I am using way too much bandwidth and I am sure the NWS and NOAA did not appreciate me requesting the information so many times. This is especially true because they usually only update the information once every 24 hours (around 6am). I have changed this to only request and update every 7 hours, which means 3 updates per day. Currently the update times are (EDT) 0700, 01400, and 2300hrs each day. I believe this is the most effective use, because we have had some afternoon and some evening storms.
If you have any questions or concerns you may email me at: http://www.w8jkc.com/contact
or you may simply leave a comment below.
I have setup a new custom Weather Alert and SkyWarn Spotter Activation script through PHP and Twitter for Stark County, Ohio.
This project is currently in Live Beta Testing and I am encouraging anyone to “follow” the account; and if you wish, have them text messaged to your phone.
For now, this script will tweet any time someone views either of my WX-IMG for Stark County, which are currently used on many different websites.
This script will alert under any of the following conditions:
“Day” meaning one of: Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.
I plan on setting it up to check for Weather Alerts every 15 minutes and Spotter Activation every 7 hours, This will help to make it more reliable and help to prevent spam tweets with the same message.
The URL for this new Twitter account is http://www.twitter.com/starkohiowx
If you have any questions, comments, complaints, praise, etc; please email me: http://www.w8jkc.com/contact
If your agency, or business is using Motorola MDC capable radios, then you can utilize this numbering scheme. This makes it easier to identify what type of radio and which unit # or radio # is transmitting at any given time.
I reccomend setting MDC to “post only” which will make the radio transmit the MDC at the end after the user releases the PTT on the radio.
First, lets start off with some background information. Motorola’s MDC-1200 system is capable of using the characters A,B,C,D,E and numerals 0-9.
You can use any combination of these characters when setting the ID.
But lets make it simpler.
Let’s assign these characters for certain radio types.
A – portable/handheld
B – base station
C – “car” or mobile
D – dispatch
E – EMERGENCY
Use these combined with the radio or unit #. For example.
My HT1250 portable is currently programmed to ID as A506. My unit number is 506 and its a portable radio.
My CDM1250 mobile is programmed to ID as C506.
Now I also have the “emergency button” programmed on both of these.
I programmed the ID on both so when the emergency button is pressed it reverts to the ID of 506E. (Notice the reversal)
Whenever either of my radios is in emergency mode, and I press the PTT it shows 506E.
Now if I cycle the power and reset to normal operation it will go back to A506.
This lets Dispatch know that my emergency button was pressed, and when I return to normal operation.
Now lets put this numbering scheme into use on an example department situation.
Lets say we have a small town fire department with 5 stations, 5 squads, 2 engines, a tanker, a tower, and a couple of other trucks. These apparatus are housed in 4 stations around the area. Our department has 30 portables also.
Each station has a base, each truck has a mobile, and each truck also carries 2 to 4 portables also.
Now we have already given each a unit number.
400 – Chief
401 – Asst. Cheif
402-409 Upper Staff
410 – Station 1
412 – Engine 1
415 – Medic 1
417 – Tower 1
419 – Grass Truck 1
420 – Station 2
422 – Engine 2
424 – Tanker 2
425 – Medic 2
430 – Station 3
435 – Medic 3
438 – Air/Scene Command (Truck 3)
440 – Station 4
446 – Utility/Support (Truck 4)
450 – Station 5
452 – Engine/Rescue 5
455 – Medic 5
For mobiles in each apparatus we put C and the unit number such as C446 for Truck 4. Truck 4 carries 2 portables so they both ID as A446.
Station 2′s base would ID as B420.
At this point you can see how easy it is to set up MDC for every radio in your department.
If you find this information useful, or you want to suggest differently; please comment below or email me http://www.w8jkc.com/contact
With the way the economy, stock markets, are right now; many people are unemployed and looking for a new job.
But how do you use your computer and the internet to find that new job? Yes there are places such as Monster, Craigslist, and others.
Here’s a little fact, many companies post “secret” openings to their own website, days or even weeks before putting them on others.
What are the chances that you would actually look at that companies site, before they posted the job to other sites? Slim to none.
So know that you know where to look, what is the easiest way to find these company websites in your area? Thats where special “job search engines” come in. These websites are extremely customized search engines that only crawl the web for specific words such as opening, position, and others including locations.
Here are a few job search engines to help you find only hiring companies websites:
http://www.simplyhired.com
http://www.linkup.com
http://www.indeed.com
http://www.dice.com (Technology Jobs Only)
http://www.usajobs.gov (Government Jobs)
Do you know of any other “job search engines” or other ways to find jobs? Feel free to submit them below. Have any questions or comments? Submit them below too, or email me: http://www.w8jkc.com/contact
I always hear the same question from my friends and family, “How do I protect my computer from viruses and spyware…?” or it’s variant “What is the best virus scanner or spyware program…?”
While I can’t tell you exactly which is the best software to suit your needs, I can recommend the software that I use on a daily basis with My Windows Vista /Ubuntu 8.10 (dual booted) laptop.
On the Windows side, I have installed and use 2 programs to protect from viruses and spyware. The first one which protects from all sort of attacks and malicous software is called AVG Free. This program is developed by a company called AVG Technlogies (formerly Grisoft). To download see here or skip directly to the Windows download here.
I have used AVG on all my computers for the last 3 years with no problems since I installed it. Before AVG I had used either McAfee or Norton depending on which computer I was on and after installing it, I found that the previous program failed to detect some spyware and even a couple viruses on 2 occasions.
The second program I use is a firewall to block all malicous connections to and from my computer. This program is called Comodo Internet Security and it is developed by a company called Comodo Security Solutions. While the benefits of using this program are numerous, the down side is that after you install it, most if not all of your normal everyday programs have to be “trained” into Comodo so that it does not block them from accessing the internet or your files. This is fairly easy to do, as it will pop up on your screen, but it may get annoying for the first 2 weeks of using Comodo. During the setup of Comodo you have 3 options to choose from. The first is install the firewall only, the second is install the AntiVirus only, and the third is to install both. I chose firewall only, but feel free to choose any of them but keep in mind that it may give you errors and conflicts with AVG. See the Comodo site here or skip directly to the Windows download here.
When in Ubuntu I also use AVG, they have a version for linux and other operating systems.
To protect my whole network, my DSL modem is directly connected to a pfSense Linux Firewall/Router box. This helps protect the whole network with IDS, ICMP blocking, and many other features, It even allows URL, MAC, IP, and many other blocking options for outgoing connections.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to submit them below, or you can email me: http://www.w8jkc.com/contact.
I would love to hear what programs you use, and why you use them.
