A plea to feed providers...

First and foremost, as a feed provider myself, I can understand the lack of appreciation you get. Sometimes I wonder if they are more hassle than its worth. However... I kindly ask a couple favors. The most important, being that you actually listen to your feed via broadcastify once every week or so. Do this to make sure the audio is still good, transmissions are clear, and the most critical... making sure you are actually scanning what is in your description.

Examples: There are currently 3 (Possibly 4) feeds that broadcast Phoenix Fire channel 1 and EMS traffic. Why is that? Listeners can listen to multiple feeds, so try to be unique and scan something that isn't already being scanned.

The Chandler Police feed hasn't aired a single Chandler police transmission in forever. Instead it (very poorly) airs Phoenix Fire channel 1 and at times channel 14 for ems incidents in chandler. The fire transmissions that make it through, are nearly unintelligible. Again, why not just stick with Chandler Police transmissions? Nobody else has that, and it would be a great asset to us.

I applaud your effort and contributions, I really do. Just passing along what I and others feel about it. Just my $0.01

I probably should monitor more than I do. I usually check every other month or so, but my feed is pretty slow (hence why I'm covering a bunch of channels). I've never gotten a complaint, so I just assume it's still working because every now and then the listener # spikes. I've managed a much more popular feed in the past so I'm used to much more frequent complaints (mostly due to control channel lock-up).

I'll try to explain the redundancy in my area.

I provide a feed that carries traffic in the foothills west of Denver, Jefferson and Douglas County. My radio is located on the plains 30 miles west of those hills. Why? Because I have reliable reception here whereas in the hills it is rare to get line-of-sight (Trunked and digital in the mountains has proven unreliable to agencies as well as the monitoring hobby). Second, weather related outages with power, ISP, and agency tower switchovers during outages have proven less reliable, meanwhile my feed keeps chugging away. And, if one file archive biffs, the other one is there to listen to.

My point, redundancy has been useful in these conditions.

lazierfan said:

I'll try to explain the redundancy in my area.

I provide a feed that carries traffic in the foothills west of Denver, Jefferson and Douglas County. My radio is located on the plains 30 miles west of those hills. Why? Because I have reliable reception here whereas in the hills it is rare to get line-of-sight (Trunked and digital in the mountains has proven unreliable to agencies as well as the monitoring hobby). Second, weather related outages with power, ISP, and agency tower switchovers during outages have proven less reliable, meanwhile my feed keeps chugging away. And, if one file archive biffs, the other one is there to listen to.

My point, redundancy has been useful in these conditions.

Click to expand...

Great points. Dont you think having 3 or 4 of the same thing is a bit overkill though? In this instance, Phoenix Fire Channel 1 airs ems and fire calls for an area that encompasses over 3 million people. There's a transmission on average every 45 seconds. This essentially blocks a majority of the other transmissions you are scanning, making it primarily a PFD Ch1 feed like the other 3. Its very difficult to follow when you've come there to listen to a specific agency.