This is a live map of APRS activity, courtesy of aprs.fi:
Listen to live amateur radio in Austin
Listen live to Austin area amateur repeaters and Travis County and Austin police radio. These feeds run 24/7. The amateur radio feed scans through all known operational 6m, 2m, 1.25m, 70cm & 33cm repeaters in Austin, Williamson, Bastrop, and Hays counties in central Texas. The law enforcement feed scans police departments, sheriff and constables for: Austin Police, Travis County, Lakeway, Manor, Pflugerville, Westlake Hills, Rollingwood, Sunset Valley, UT, and Texas DPS.
Here are a few ways to listen to the amateur radio scanner:
– At Broadcastify here. If you use the Scanner Radio mobile app, it’s like having your own pocket scanner.
– With your preferred media player or streaming device, the network stream URL is http://audio1.radioreference.com:80/461054660
– Use the embedded feed on this site below:
The archives for the Austin amateur radio feed can be found here. Recordings are kept for six months.
To listen to the Travis County law enforcement and Austin Police Department scanner feed via Broadcastify, go here. The network stream URL for this feed is http://audio1.radioreference.com:80/907330774 . The same feed is also provided right here:
You can listen to both of these feeds simultaneously on this page.
Here is the “machine” that provides the amateur radio feed:
Raspberry Pi lego scanner contraption
VHF contesting is a spectator sport
As attested by these onlookers at my backyard station.
Children playing hide and seek pause to inspect my amateur radio station.
Crowd-sourcing your repeater directory
In Texas, there are a lot of repeaters. About 1,642 according to what some consider a reliable source. Of those, many are “paper repeaters” in that they exist only in repeater directories. These venerable books remind me of the yellow pages — one must ask, “do they still make those?”
It’s challenging to develop a well-curated file of repeaters. One source that’s made it rather easy is RepeaterBook, by ZMB2 software. They’re doing it right. Of all the repeater directories available, some great qualities set it apart:
– the ability of any account holder to submit changes easily;
– frequency files can be downloaded in CHIRP format for transceiver programming;
– the companion mobile app makes it easy to find repeaters in new areas, even more so if combined with the BlueCAT interface.
The result is that I can personally verify the operation of local repeaters, update the database at RepeaterBook, then run a query to download it into CHIRP. Now in my radio I have all the repeaters that work, and none that don’t. Just as it should be.
The benefits of crowd-sourcing a quality repeater directory only work if we all participate. Please do.
Coverage map for 442.15 repeater
Here’s a Longley-Rice coverage map for the 442.15 repeater in Austin. This was generated by a useful coverage map site.
