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Ah, the old phrase "my avocation is my vocation" I'm very blessed to be able to tell people this. When I was growing up, my grandmother had a radio scanner in

Ah, the old phrase "my avocation is my vocation" I'm very blessed to be able to tell people this. When I was growing up, my grandmother had a radio scanner in her small town Virginia home, and I was fascinated that you could listen in on what the police and fire departments were doing on a daily basis. My parents bought me a radio scanner a few years later and as a young boy I followed the rabbit hole of radio communications, scanners, and listening in to police, fire, aircraft, amateur radio etc. Fast forward many years: I'm well established in a career as an IBM System Engineer, and during my downtime in the 90's, I thought it would be really neat if, instead of purchasing books with radio frequencies, it would be pretty cool if you could search on the WWW for this data. This was back in the day when this data was just starting to be made available on dial-up BBSs, but this new WWW thing was becoming more and more popular. Mind you, I still pursued my hobby of radios and scanners, and had lots of expensive equipment to listen to everything around me. All the while taking multiple conference calls with IBM customers and generally doing my "day" job from home. So, one week I sat down and taught myself Perl and MySQL. Created an online database, solicited people over Usenet to submit data to the new site, and RadioReference.com was born. Fast forward to today. RadioReference.com is my avocation and vocation, I get to stay home and develop and manage my business which is also my hobby. And we did some amazing innovation which resulted in Broadcastify.com, which allows you to listen to police scanners all over the world without ever having to buy a complex radio. So, yes, you can monetize your hobby, and this article really resonates. I never made it about the money, but my business is wildly successful and I can definitely tell you that I am living the dream :)

victorstanciu 5y ago
I feel like you might like one of my previous posts too (https://tegowerk.eu/posts/serendipity/ https://tegowerk.eu/posts/serendipity/). The trajectory of my life has also been shaped and defined by a series of decisions and events which didn't seem at all momentous at the time :)
bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
Just wanted to thank you for your work! I got my Technician license last year and your site was one of the resources that I found as a result.
mooreds 5y ago
That is awesome, congrats! I wonder what percentage of people of working age have this privilege (or more precisely, have earned it!).
mod 5y ago
I've used your site several times, thanks!
AviationAtom 5y ago
But now many jurisdictions are choosing to go full-encrypted, because of people showing up to the scene and getting in the way. :-/
- OJFord 5y ago
  'now'? That's an argument/news item for more than a decade ago isn't it?
  - AviationAtom 5y ago
    Not really. Many are indeed implementing digital trunking systems, but choosing to leave most of their talkgroups in the clear. After incidents happen some of them are getting pushed to take all talkgroups encrypted, rather than just sensitive ones, such as tactical/SWAT.
    - OJFord 4y ago
      Interesting, I'm actually in the UK, had to look it up but what I was thinking of was 'TETRA': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Trunked_Radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Trunked_Radio I think I recall emergency services switched nationwide in/by 2010, certainly it came to the small town (i.e. far from breaking new ground) I was in around then. As I understood it at the time, it meant everything was encrypted and you could no longer listen in. But reading your comment and some of the details there (and having studied such things since then, albeit largely forgotten) I wonder if it's similar to your description, and it mostly prevented casual listening just because it raised the bar for the equipment needed, not because it was actually encrypted. (Afaik before that it was analogue, or at least dual or slowly switching/some services analogue.)
      - AviationAtom 4y ago
        Indeed, a good trunked radio costs some coin here, but it isn't outrageous (~$500). Most enthusiasts are happy to cough up the money for it. Casual folks generally just get a phone app, that then has a stream from one of the previously mentioned enthusiasts. Listening to the scanner isn't illegal here, so long as it isn't in the commission of a crime, but the ones that are encrypted obviously would be illegal to listen into without explicit authorization. A lot of agencies want to keep their transmissions open, but with how easy it is to turn on encryption on their existing equipment, it only takes one incident for them to suddenly decide to encrypt. It was disappointing when I moved from an area that had all but tactical channels in the clear, to one that encrypts everything. Apparently it even caused the state agencies to say they would not respond within the jurisdiction, for a period of time, as they were locked out of being able to talk to that jurisdiction's dispatch. Ultimately they were given encrypted access.

victorstanciu 5y ago

I feel like you might like one of my previous posts too (https://tegowerk.eu/posts/serendipity/ https://tegowerk.eu/posts/serendipity/). The trajectory of my life has also been shaped and defined by a series of decisions and events which didn't seem at all momentous at the time :)

bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago

Just wanted to thank you for your work! I got my Technician license last year and your site was one of the resources that I found as a result.

mooreds 5y ago

That is awesome, congrats! I wonder what percentage of people of working age have this privilege (or more precisely, have earned it!).

mod 5y ago

I've used your site several times, thanks!

AviationAtom 5y ago

But now many jurisdictions are choosing to go full-encrypted, because of people showing up to the scene and getting in the way. :-/

OJFord 5y ago
'now'? That's an argument/news item for more than a decade ago isn't it?
- AviationAtom 5y ago
  Not really. Many are indeed implementing digital trunking systems, but choosing to leave most of their talkgroups in the clear. After incidents happen some of them are getting pushed to take all talkgroups encrypted, rather than just sensitive ones, such as tactical/SWAT.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    Interesting, I'm actually in the UK, had to look it up but what I was thinking of was 'TETRA': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Trunked_Radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Trunked_Radio I think I recall emergency services switched nationwide in/by 2010, certainly it came to the small town (i.e. far from breaking new ground) I was in around then. As I understood it at the time, it meant everything was encrypted and you could no longer listen in. But reading your comment and some of the details there (and having studied such things since then, albeit largely forgotten) I wonder if it's similar to your description, and it mostly prevented casual listening just because it raised the bar for the equipment needed, not because it was actually encrypted. (Afaik before that it was analogue, or at least dual or slowly switching/some services analogue.)
    - AviationAtom 4y ago
      Indeed, a good trunked radio costs some coin here, but it isn't outrageous (~$500). Most enthusiasts are happy to cough up the money for it. Casual folks generally just get a phone app, that then has a stream from one of the previously mentioned enthusiasts. Listening to the scanner isn't illegal here, so long as it isn't in the commission of a crime, but the ones that are encrypted obviously would be illegal to listen into without explicit authorization. A lot of agencies want to keep their transmissions open, but with how easy it is to turn on encryption on their existing equipment, it only takes one incident for them to suddenly decide to encrypt. It was disappointing when I moved from an area that had all but tactical channels in the clear, to one that encrypts everything. Apparently it even caused the state agencies to say they would not respond within the jurisdiction, for a period of time, as they were locked out of being able to talk to that jurisdiction's dispatch. Ultimately they were given encrypted access.