By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
ARRL Contributing Editor
March 12, 2010

This week, Surfin' visits The DX Zone to find out what else you can hear on the Internet.

Last week, Surfin' described how to monitor the public safety radio channels via Web sites that provide live audio feeds of those radio channels. Upon further investigation, your intrepid Surfin' correspondent discovered a long list of public safety channels you can monitor via the Internet. For a two-page list, visit the Police Scanners Web page of The DX Zone.

Poking around The DX Zone, I found more cool stuff you can hear when you tune your computer to the correct URL. For example, the Live Streaming Web page lists Web sites that feed live audio from a variety of ham radio stations including FM repeaters, EchoLink operations and contest stations. In addition to the live ham feeds, the list also includes an online receiver that monitors signals from Jupiter and the Sun, as well as live audio streams of VLF "natural radio" sounds. You can also listen to how the other half lives by checking out live audio from the Citizens Band.

The DX Zone's Online Receivers Web page list is similar to what I mentioned above -- the big difference is that you can actually change the monitoring frequency of some of these online receivers. Not only can you hear what the radio world sounds like from a remote location like Podunk, but you can hear what you sound like in Downtown Podunk by tuning the remote Podunk receiver to your transmit frequency. How cool is that? Also, check out the WebSDR Web page for more software-defined radios you can monitor and remotely control.

Until next time, keep on surfin'!

Editor's note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, remembers when the expense of crystals was the primary foil to monitoring. To contact Stan, send him e-mail or add comments to his blog.