Maybe not from God but on a mission, nonetheless.
A “Scanner Mission” is where a scanner user(s) goes someplace specifically to see what they can hear on a scanner. Several friends of mine and I have gone on various Scanner Missions over the decades. Usually this involves one or more of us travelling someplace and figuring out frequencies, PL codes and other radio details about the target. Sometimes it was races, airshows or other events and sometimes it was just to figure out some mystery churning our insides around. Here are some of those stories:
Off to the races:
I am not a huge race fan. I have been to one Indy Car race, one Nascar Race and a few short track races. I have a couple friends who live and die with racing but to tell the truth I have not really caught the bug myself. I have had fun at the track playing radio, however. I find most racing to be similar to police work, mostly boring with the occasional moment of excitement. Except for the occasional crash it is a whole bunch of cars going around in circles, albeit not as fast (or as close together) as the Edens Expressway at rush hour.
Back in the late 80’s or early 90’s Scott asked if I wanted to go to the Milwaukee 500 (or 600 or whatever) with him. He wanted to do a radio mission much more than watch the race and I was up for that. He had a Ford Econoline panel van at the time set up with desks he had made himself. Between us we had a couple Icom R7000’s, PRO004/5/6 scanners and other radios as well as PL decoders. We arrived well before race time and had infield permits so we were able to drive the van into the infield and park there, right in the middle of the action. We set up the radios and kept copious notes about what we found. Since this was well before the Internet was common, most race frequencies were hard to find, but we were able to find almost every driver’s radio channels as well as the track channels.
Scott and I used to go to the old Rockford Speedway a couple times each summer. This was more interesting as they often had things like “Figure 8” races, jet-powered school busses, demolition races and other interesting and destructive stuff mixed in with regular (boring) circling of cars. Being a much smaller track these races were more fun to watch as sometimes cars would run half the race stuck to each other after a crash, they just kept on going. Of course, we had all the track frequencies memorized but always looked out for something new. The cars here were not allowed radios, I guess to keep costs down, but there was enough activity on the track channels, concessions and security/EMS to keep me interested.
A couple years ago Dale called and asked if I wanted to go to the Nascar race here in the Phoenix valley. He had premier tickets with infield passes. I said, sure, and on the day picked him and his grandson up at their Airbnb not far from my house and we went off to the track on the other side of the valley. He had a set of the Racing Radios scanners along with the headphones and intercom system. We stopped by the Racing Radios hauler, and they programmed the scanner for us. Apparently, these are programmed by fast DTMF codes on a specific frequency directly into the scanner, a pretty nice arrangement. I also bought the frequency list for that race as a souvenir. In addition, I also brought my BCD325P2 for CloseCall, we found a few channels there too for the track operations. We all had a good time!
I stumbled into a boat race once at a lake in Wisconsin. This was a hydroplane race, and we were driving by when we saw it. The wife was interested so we stopped and watched for a couple hours. It was a lot more fun than car races and I of course had a scanner with me, finding the race organizers, marine patrol and even the local TV station helicopter downlink.
I really enjoyed the submarine races when I was younger but to tell the truth I usually didn’t bother bringing a scanner with me.
As I write this, I was informed that my buddy Dan passed away today. He was a mentor to me as a young dispatcher and a real race fan. He even ran a professional race rescue that operated in Wisconsin and Illinois.
(Please see Part 2)
A “Scanner Mission” is where a scanner user(s) goes someplace specifically to see what they can hear on a scanner. Several friends of mine and I have gone on various Scanner Missions over the decades. Usually this involves one or more of us travelling someplace and figuring out frequencies, PL codes and other radio details about the target. Sometimes it was races, airshows or other events and sometimes it was just to figure out some mystery churning our insides around. Here are some of those stories:
Off to the races:
I am not a huge race fan. I have been to one Indy Car race, one Nascar Race and a few short track races. I have a couple friends who live and die with racing but to tell the truth I have not really caught the bug myself. I have had fun at the track playing radio, however. I find most racing to be similar to police work, mostly boring with the occasional moment of excitement. Except for the occasional crash it is a whole bunch of cars going around in circles, albeit not as fast (or as close together) as the Edens Expressway at rush hour.
Back in the late 80’s or early 90’s Scott asked if I wanted to go to the Milwaukee 500 (or 600 or whatever) with him. He wanted to do a radio mission much more than watch the race and I was up for that. He had a Ford Econoline panel van at the time set up with desks he had made himself. Between us we had a couple Icom R7000’s, PRO004/5/6 scanners and other radios as well as PL decoders. We arrived well before race time and had infield permits so we were able to drive the van into the infield and park there, right in the middle of the action. We set up the radios and kept copious notes about what we found. Since this was well before the Internet was common, most race frequencies were hard to find, but we were able to find almost every driver’s radio channels as well as the track channels.
Scott and I used to go to the old Rockford Speedway a couple times each summer. This was more interesting as they often had things like “Figure 8” races, jet-powered school busses, demolition races and other interesting and destructive stuff mixed in with regular (boring) circling of cars. Being a much smaller track these races were more fun to watch as sometimes cars would run half the race stuck to each other after a crash, they just kept on going. Of course, we had all the track frequencies memorized but always looked out for something new. The cars here were not allowed radios, I guess to keep costs down, but there was enough activity on the track channels, concessions and security/EMS to keep me interested.
A couple years ago Dale called and asked if I wanted to go to the Nascar race here in the Phoenix valley. He had premier tickets with infield passes. I said, sure, and on the day picked him and his grandson up at their Airbnb not far from my house and we went off to the track on the other side of the valley. He had a set of the Racing Radios scanners along with the headphones and intercom system. We stopped by the Racing Radios hauler, and they programmed the scanner for us. Apparently, these are programmed by fast DTMF codes on a specific frequency directly into the scanner, a pretty nice arrangement. I also bought the frequency list for that race as a souvenir. In addition, I also brought my BCD325P2 for CloseCall, we found a few channels there too for the track operations. We all had a good time!
I stumbled into a boat race once at a lake in Wisconsin. This was a hydroplane race, and we were driving by when we saw it. The wife was interested so we stopped and watched for a couple hours. It was a lot more fun than car races and I of course had a scanner with me, finding the race organizers, marine patrol and even the local TV station helicopter downlink.
I really enjoyed the submarine races when I was younger but to tell the truth I usually didn’t bother bringing a scanner with me.
As I write this, I was informed that my buddy Dan passed away today. He was a mentor to me as a young dispatcher and a real race fan. He even ran a professional race rescue that operated in Wisconsin and Illinois.
(Please see Part 2)
