In all my years on the road and staying at a variety of hotels and motels and truckstops, I have found that general business has no respect for FCC rules and regulations and they use any ol' radio they want to. I have seen Hyatt Regency use FRS radios, Holiday Inn Express use GMRS radios, I have seen (recently) cruise ships using amateur DMR radios (uhf), and some still use the older 49mhz walkie-talkies. It's a hodge-podge out there and you never know what you are going to hear above and beyond the business dot radios. I always sniffed out security and maintenance frequencies with Close Call and Spectrum Sweeper, running both at the same time in my room with search banks in uhf/vhf business bands going on another scanner. Never know what you might hear!
A quick story about hotels and radio - I was staying at the Westin out in LA once, there for 3-days with nothing to do, so I am experimenting with antennas trying to dial in an HF broadcast station on my little Yaesu HT (with wide rx) so I am stringing up one of those retractable wire antennas on my balcony (overlooking the inside atrium) and someone calls security saying it looks like I am laying some kind of wire (or fuse!?) on the structure and they did not feel safe. I get a knock on the door - security and maintenance saying they are doing an emergency safety check on my room and checking fire extinguishers. They came in and looked around and their eyes are getting wide. I have several scanners going along with that HT and a laptop on the little drink table and it was apparently making them nervous. Long story short - I showed my FCC license card and explained what I was doing and we ended up talking ham radio for over an hour and came to be good buddies. I still get a good laugh when I think about that night, no harm done, but when I think of what
could have happened if something went wrong during our conversation it makes me shudder. People have been 'accidently' shot over far less miscommunications. At one point, the security guy keyed up his radio and he heard himself on my Close Call and says 'You can hear us?' I could see he didn't like it. Anyway, from now on I am careful as to where I string up my antennas. Most people don't know what to think when they see someone hanging an antenna wire. Too many Bond movies, me thinks.
JD
kf4anc
