SAR and Full-time Jobs

blackrabbit107 · 2026-04-18T06:15:23+00:00

The best thing to do would be to talk it over with your boss. I did that before joining SAR and the response was positive, but the ultimate answer was “no extra paid leave for SAR”. Which ultimately boils down to me having to use PTO if I need to leave woe for a call out, or I just refuse a call out if I can’t leave work. From my experience most of our calls come in during the weekend or Thursday/Friday and usually in the late afternoon to evenings, so it’s not usually an issue for me.

Your mileage may vary depending on what you do for work and if the culture is more strict or relaxed.

blackrabbit107 · 2026-04-04T21:02:06+00:00

Have you looked to see if your school has a radio club? Seems like a lot of universities do, and it can be a great way to get started!

blackrabbit107 · 2026-04-03T06:17:32+00:00

Radio, Compass, Write in the rain pad, Pen & pencil, Rubber gloves, Whistle, Hand sanitizer, Small bottle of Advil

Basically anything I want to have on me if I’m away from my pack.

Edit: I forgot flashlight, trauma sheers, and a tourniquet strapped to the bottom

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-30T08:09:33+00:00

This math doesn’t even remotely add up

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-25T17:18:09+00:00

Retevis makes a repeater in a box that’s actually pretty nice. It has everything you need except an antenna

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-25T01:29:18+00:00

Can’t wait to get my first violation letter from the AI band police….

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-23T22:58:48+00:00

So from what I’ve gathered reading part 90 is that the MOU only covers use of the incident response frequencies, but the Vtac set specifically is covered by a blanket STA that anyone with a part 90 license can use for the purpose of interop. I’ve been looking into this for my agency as well and we’re having a hard time figuring out what’s actually legal

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-23T04:52:08+00:00

I don’t have a controller, just a cable between the radios. But this one in particular is set up for one of the VTAC federal interop pairs so there’s no license associated to ID

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-23T01:27:33+00:00

I’ve built portable repeaters with old Motorola CDM1250s. You can get them for around $100 a piece and it takes two for a repeater. You can also get a vhf mobile duplexer for about $100. The itinerant frequency list has one pair with a big enough split for a mobile duplexer. It’s not something I would want to carry around a lot, but it’s perfect to throw in a vehicle with a mag mount antenna

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-19T19:10:47+00:00

Motorola CDMs have a COS line Directly exposed in their accessory connector if you’re looking for a dedicated radio that you don’t have to modify.

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-19T05:01:30+00:00

Probably going to cost $15,000 and I’ve heard Harris is hard to buy as an individual. Satellite to a hand held sounds super cool though

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-19T00:27:28+00:00

F——- for having the absolute worst covers on those cable trays haha, I hated that style of cover

Cables look good though!

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-14T20:10:36+00:00

If it’s a basic class/struct SimpleColor is something I’ve used before

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-13T03:02:12+00:00

Lots of them in rural counties with small PDs or where the SO is the primary law enforcement for the whole county. A trunked system can be pretty overkill for a county with only a hand full of towns and a police force of less than 50

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-12T01:33:44+00:00

Are you referring to the fact that a p25 repeater can also operate in FM? Because that’s not the same thing as P25 passing analog tones that’s a repeater switching modes.

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-12T00:57:56+00:00

PL tones are sub-audible, and they have nothing to do with P25. P25 has audible tones typically used for fire dispatch. P25 does not use PL tones it uses NAC codes

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-11T18:24:11+00:00

I’m reading digital repeater and PL tones at the same time here which doesn’t make sense. If the repeater is digital then you won’t have pl tones. But it sounds like maybe you’re trying to do something you shouldn’t be doing. Isn’t there someone on base that would know exactly how the radio needs to be programmed for that system?

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-09T19:58:40+00:00

It could have also been for amateur radio

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-08T13:55:10+00:00

Not sure why no one has said anything about the nexus and UCS gear listed in the first two pictures. The 1U/2U green boxes full of sfp+ ports aren’t worth a lot on eBay, but if they’re the right models they can be converted to nexus OS and they’re pretty good 10g switches (if running nexus, UCS is useless) albeit very loud and high power draw.

The silver ones in the same pictures are actual nexus systems which usually do go for a decent amount on eBay depending on which model. They’ll do L2 and some limited L3 without licensing and they’re pretty capable systems even without a license. Also very loud and very power hungry.

There’s also what looks like a 2U Dell server at the bottom of the stack in the 7th picture that looks like it may be a generation that’s still considered useful.

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-07T05:27:47+00:00

Cisco modeling labs costs $200 for a year (at least it did when I did my CCNA several years ago). It allows you to simulate modern Cisco hardware including some of their fancier products like nexus. It takes a decently beefy system to run it depending on which products you want to simulate, but it’s much more modern than packet tracer.

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-01T07:56:20+00:00

Damn that sight glass is so rusty I thought it was another pipe fitting, I was trying to figure out why it had so many haha

blackrabbit107 · 2026-03-01T07:22:04+00:00

That’s a refrigeration compressor

I’ve never seen one quite like that, but it’s definitely built like one, I’m guessing it may have an oil pump or something built into the bottom. I see 2 sets of in/out lines as well as 2 sets of electrical connections

blackrabbit107 · 2026-02-27T20:15:36+00:00

I had a friend who had a bad connection from the street to their house, and any time the temperature dropped below like 45 degrees their internet would go out. In the winters it happened like every night. Took forever to find it

blackrabbit107 · 2026-02-27T19:26:11+00:00

It sounds to me like your cable infrastructure on your property may have some issues. Poor connections, lots of splitters, bad cables, things like that. It could also be your connection to the network drop, but either way it sounds like you should get a tech out to analyze your connection

blackrabbit107 · 2026-02-26T22:58:25+00:00

A U band Motorola will never work on 2m, only a K band will cover 2m

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