MILAIR(A Blast From the Past)

[BMT]

Remember when the RS PRO-2004 was the greatest thing since sliced bread and crunchy peanut butter,all 300 channels. Your dB was a notebook, the kind full of PAPER.You were writing down a HOT freq you had monitored and the lead broke MT and Pop Comm were hard to find. The first copy of MT I saw was the old tabloid format. Didn't take me too long to subscribe.
You attended a Grove Convention in Atlanta and met 5 or 10 guys from ,let's say the NE. You had name's addresses and phone number's. From the time you wrote a letter and received an answer was 10-14 days. Damn we were hot!!
You saw a copy of the IFR Supplement in an A/C cockpit and the pilot let you get a quick look, noway you could talk him out of his copy. You called NIMA and ordered/purchase a copy of the IFR,AP-1A and AP-1B. You received your copy and was in Hog Heaven. Damn you had the bull by the horn's and was setting the world on fire. Anyone relate to the above story??

Now we freak out if new data hasn't been saved and the 'puter crash's.

BMT
GOF

 

[n4voxgill]

My 2004 and 2006 are still in regular use monitoring milair. I bought them both from Grove, and they modified the 2004 to increase channels, speed and open 800 MHz. This was just before the passage of ECPA. I modified my 2006. Great scanners are never outdated. Plenty for them hear. I didn't get the overlay for the 2004 to show the new expanded memory. I don't think I ever programed more than 100 channels then nor now.

 

[ThunderBritches]

Brings back memories! I still have my 2004. I use it for the local AFB's. Awesome radio!

 

[mass-man]

My 2004 now sits at my Mom's lake house so she can hear the local PD and SO! The 2006 has a PROMINENT place in the shack, as the go-to scanner when I want to play!!! Mostly sits on ATC and Mil-air right now!!!

I wish I could find those notebooks full of freqs, callsigns, etc. I do have PAPER copies of what I have currently programmed for the "puter-crash."

Yea, 9-11 ruined our access to static aircraft at shows, where we could climb in the cockpit and scribble like crazy whatever we could find.

 

[barefootdipole]

??? PAST ???

(gulp)

 

[DPD1]

Sometimes I think it was better that way... Not just for mil stuff, but everything. The thrill was in the puzzle. Now sometimes it's almost too easy. I also sometimes think it was better when most people had no idea you could even hear some of the stuff that's out there. I have to wonder what kind of negative effect it has when people in the government discover certain things can be heard. Not that it's a surprise to us, but it seems to often be a big surprise to a lot of them. Maybe we were better off in the shadows.

Dave
http://www.dpdproductions.com
- Featuring the MilTenna Air Band Antennas -

Remember when the RS PRO-2004 was the greatest thing since sliced bread and crunchy peanut butter,all 300 channels. Your dB was a notebook, the kind full of PAPER.You were writing down a HOT freq you had monitored and the lead broke MT and Pop Comm were hard to find. The first copy of MT I saw was the old tabloid format. Didn't take me too long to subscribe.
You attended a Grove Convention in Atlanta and met 5 or 10 guys from ,let's say the NE. You had name's addresses and phone number's. From the time you wrote a letter and received an answer was 10-14 days. Damn we were hot!!
You saw a copy of the IFR Supplement in an A/C cockpit and the pilot let you get a quick look, noway you could talk him out of his copy. You called NIMA and ordered/purchase a copy of the IFR,AP-1A and AP-1B. You received your copy and was in Hog Heaven. Damn you had the bull by the horn's and was setting the world on fire. Anyone relate to the above story??

Now we freak out if new data hasn't been saved and the 'puter crash's.

 

[BMT]

Talking with some pilots at Moody AFB during open house. I told them they had better be careful how they talked about their Squadron Commander. I showed them my PRO-43 and explain what I could monitor in the MILAIR band, surprise them to say the least.

BMT

 

[oregontreehugger]

No offense, but that's the kind of thing that makes people think negatively of the hobby, IMO.

 

[blueline_308]

I'm with oregontreehugger on this one. Why on earth would you tell them that. Isn't half the fun of this the fact that we hear stuff that we are 'not supposed to hear'. Not that its secret comms or anything...but it IS more clandestine than hams or local PD or FD. I will share freqs and point people in the right direction, but I never divulge what I hear. Maybe I am paranoid, and yes I know that if a bad person wants to hear it, they can...but they wont hear it from me. Just my .02.

Now to get back on topic...god yes I still remember my first Mil-Air intercepts using my Pro-2006. I had the notebooks with callsign and freqs, which sad to say is long gone. I remember sitting with only the glow of the display backlight iluminating the room in the dead of winter...to me its kinda romantic. Radio has always been my sanity pill if you will. When going through rough times, as you will in life, somehow the radio lets me escape for awhile and refocus myself. It has no side effects, you dont need a prescription and its one of the few things that you can do while driving still.

 

[DPD1]

I'm with oregontreehugger on this one. Why on earth would you tell them that. Isn't half the fun of this the fact that we hear stuff that we are 'not supposed to hear'. Not that its secret comms or anything...but it IS more clandestine than hams or local PD or FD. I will share freqs and point people in the right direction, but I never divulge what I hear. Maybe I am paranoid, and yes I know that if a bad person wants to hear it, they can...but they wont hear it from me.

I don't think it's paranoid... I once made the mistake of asking a Pilot about a call I heard from his base, and who it was for. He asked me how I would know that, and if I lived on base. I don't know what living on the base has to do with anything, but I told him I didn't, and figured it was my cue to politely walk away. He watched me for the next 15 minutes or so, and I was seriously thinking he was going to call security on me. That was the first and last time I ever discussed radio, or any other in-depth subject with military personnel. Now I figure the less they know, the better. All it would take is one over ambitious Congressman to get a wild hair, and all this could change real fast.

Dave
http://www.dpdproductions.com
- Custom Scanner, MURS, GMRS, Marine & Ham Antennas -

 

[radio10-8]

I enjoy Milair and enjoy it even more when I see the planes that are doing the talking and for a split second I think to myself.."I wonder aside from those 2 pilots if anyone else around me knows what I am listening to?" Then the guy behind me honks his horn because the light turned green a half second ago and I say.. "Nope just me and them ..."

 

[Declared_Hostile]

Talking with some pilots at Moody AFB during open house. I told them they had better be careful how they talked about their Squadron Commander. I showed them my PRO-43 and explain what I could monitor in the MILAIR band, surprise them to say the least.

BMT

Why on earth did you feel compelled to tell them that? To wreck your monitoring target? To get them to go green more often? To impress the pilots somehow so they would think you were cool? It's the same mentality that brags to the cops that they found the sooper seekrit surveillance frequency or the unpublished car-to-car frequency and all of a sudden the surveillance and drug raids on the surveillance frequency and the less than professional gossip and griping chatter on the car-to-car freq vanishes.

Back to the question yeah I remember ordering those NIMA pubs. Nothing like seeing the truck come and opening the big box and seeing all those cool white books and the plastic wrapped maps you ordered. Still have them on my shelf.

 

[barefootdipole]

Loose Lips Sink Ships...and Scanner Listening !!

Talking with some pilots at Moody AFB during open house. I told them they had better be careful how they talked about their Squadron Commander. I showed them my PRO-43 and explain what I could monitor in the MILAIR band, surprise them to say the least.

BMT

Loose Lips Sink Ships......and Scanner Listening !!!!

Man, i'm glad i wasn't the only one with this same reaction......the need to puff yourself up will just cost you the ability to listen in on discrete freqs and comms.....i've had it happen to me when i shared unpublished undercover ops freqs i'd found with a fellow scanner listener....and he went and told the users that he was listening, solely to puff himself up in their eyes, and those comms/ freqs went dead and quiet REAL quick....and soon encrypted !!

play it cool, daddy-o !!

barefootdipole