The Pittsburgh Railfan Radio Net

Chief among my other hobbies is amateur radio. I have tinkered with electronics and radios since I was in junior high school. It was at the tender young age of fifteen that I passed my first FCC examination and joined the fraternity of “ham radio” operators. This is not to be confused with Citizen Band Radio which became part of the pop culture in the mid 1970's as a result of the so called gasoline shortage and the movie “Smokey and The Bandit”. I won't go into the differences here but if you are interested ask me some time and I'll go into more detail.

One of the things I have found to be true over the years is that amateur radio operators have a lot of hobbies in common other than radio. When I started a weekly on the air discussion group, called a “net”, to talk about scanning the VHF and UHF spectrum mostly listening to public safety agencies I found that there were an army of people out there who monitor the railroad frequencies. They listen in on engineers talking to their dispatchers and other trains in the area.

This niche interest in the monitoring hobby caused one of the scanner net members to start another on the air group to talk about all things related to railroading. The net meets over the air once a week on Thursday evening at 09:30 PM local time on the 146.880 repeater which belongs to the North Hills Amateur Radio Club.

If you are licensed amateur radio operator no further explanation is necessary. Come and join in on the fun. The net “conductor” is Dennis KB3HPC and all are welcome.

If you have a “police scanner” that is programmable and most are these days simply enter 146.880 into one of your channels and listen in on that channel at 09:30PM Thursday evenings. You can even participate if you like. Dennis is always looking for suggestions of topics that would be of interest to the net and answers any questions that he receives via email when he can. You can reach him by sending email to railfannet@hotmail.com with your comments on the net or any questions that you would like answered.