Thanks to those who showed up on Saturday. It was a well attended meeting, and the the amount of experience and expertise in that room was impressive.
Here are some random notes I took on my laptop while sitting there:
Intercept NW Meeting 11 October 2008
0930 start
Scott/N7SS (who was attending the PNWVHF Society breakfast in the next room) showed off the Icom IC-7100 ruggedized HF/6 Radio.
Introductions: T68, Wilrobinson, JoeyWeedin, PrestonBJ, Sean, DSTE, Kevin, NickCarr, Ben/KB7ZKA, Jerry/W7IEW, John/KB3JKP, Keith/K7RFY,Pat/W7PLW, Dave/KA7RRA, Jim/K7OEK, Jim/N7MAQ, Rob, Tim/AtomicTaco, FlashP, Bruce/KC7IAY
There was one other person sitting between DTSE and Kevin, but did not get his name. Total attendance was 21.
Internet access was provided by Bruce/KC7IAY and his various wireless access points.
New Radios: PCR-500 (Wil) – PSR Edit for programming, steep learning curve. N7MAQ (Jim) – various commercial/P25 stuff PrestonBJ – Kenwood commercial portables
Software – CommTekk software for two tone sequential decoding and encoding. BCTool – free software to do the Bearcat software, logging. PSR Edit for the PSR series scanners.
800 Update: Sean – most commercial 800 stuff should be dumped now...won't be usable after rebanding. MTS, MCS, Astro, AstroSaber, may make the rebanding cut. Also discussion about King county going to shuffled band plan, to prevent hacked radios from getting into the system. New King County (and other surrounding counties) P25 system– could be something other than Motorola....RFP going out a year or so....maybe longer out. Any new radio system in King County will be spec'd out at a much higher performance standard. Current standard is a 3w portable on the street, held in the hand, at head level. Next system will likely be a 3w portable on the belt using a speaker mic, and with some medium density building coverage requirement.
State agencies looking for efficiency, considering coming onto the tri-county (King/Pierce/Snohomish) radio effort.
Federal stuff – Coast Guard, Border Patrol, others running only 10 to 20 percent encryption.
Washington State DOT Still using Low Band in Southwest Washington, due to lack of 800 LTR coverage.
Idaho – 700mhz system, P25, on the air, local Boise and valley entities on it. Works pretty good, allegedly.
Miscellaneous: A suggestion was made to re-introduce the Intercept NW T-shirt, perhaps have available on MetaCafe or local source.
Group Photo in front of Eric's bus.
There was a LOT more information tossed out by members - however, I wanted to listen and participate - not be glued to a keyboard. So, if there's something important that I missed, please add.
Again, thanks for attending....
On another note....apparently, one of the attendees forgot to pay their food bill. Perhaps there was some confusion, and it was believed that their food was included in the meeting. It wasn't. Please contact me by Private Message if it was you, and we can settle it up.
_________________ Whatever.....
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