"Mark Holmes" wrote in message
...
The digital era has created no problems for me since all I've listened
to since 1974 is aircraft communications. Therefore, my scanning hobby
is alive and well, not on the verge of death.

Living directly between the three busiest aviation hubs on earth
(Atlanta, Chicago & Dallas), there's no shortage of high altitude stuff
flying overhead for me to hear on a daily basis. A person doesn't need
to live near an airport to listen to aircraft. Many folks may live in an
ideal location to listen to the same thing I do and not even realize it.
Go outside on a sunny day and look up to see what's flying above you.
Each of those white streaks which crisscross our skies are all talking
on the radio with air traffic controllers at an ARTCC facilitity.

There's even airline flight tracking sites like, http://flightview.com
that enable a person to see where a flight is coming from, going to,
flight routing and aircraft type.

Agree there, there's not only aviation - I live near one major airport
(Vancouver - YVR),and listen into aviation occaisionally but also marine.
Out here, there's lots of marine activity since there is a large vehicle
ferry fleet here, and there's always position reporting and the activity at
the terminals. Plus coastal ship operatins including cruise ships in season.
In addition, there's trains. Then there's also logging truck operations (be
sure you're not heading west on the same 14 foot wide road that a 12 foot
wide loaded logging truck is heading east!).

As far as the fire service goes, the fire service is not digitial around
here, since digital systems are costly. The only things that are digitally
encrypted are police and ambulance, but that's only in the local area.
Outside of the regional area, the police
are analogue and once one knows the matrix of RCMP channels, it's pretty
easy.

It depends on what the interests lie in listening in. As Mark here said,
there's tons of things to listen to if a person justs
looks around around.

I take my portable scanner aboard the ferry and one certainly gets a
different prespective while looking around outside around you.

PK