you can't hear the track PA system over the roar of the cars. The audio is
fine during the opening ceremonies, but, once the cars start blasting around
the track at full throttle, it's hopeless. So, the standard solution has
been to buy or rent a scanner that has the track PA audio channel, plus all
the race team channels, pre-programmed into the scanner. But, for semi-techy
people, another solution has emerged. You program all those channels into
your ham radio and use that as a scanner. Well, I did that, but then I
realized that my hand-held ham radios are heavy and bulky. So, Plan C is to
buy some teeny-tiny Part 90 (commercial) radios and program them. So I did
that. And then Agnes 3D-printed a pair of custom trays to keep the radios
from flopping around in the little attaché case. She added a felt lining and
glued the two bins together end-to-end, and you can see the results in the
picture above. BTW, did you wonder how I found out what frequencies to put
in my radios? That information is published in the spotters' guide
https://www.indycar.com/-/media/Files/2023/NICS/10-TOR/indycar-spotterguide-
printable-V2.pdf_. But, I hear you say, that's a lot of very tedious work to
copy all that information into your radio. Well, troo dat, but a greater
IndyCar fan than I has already done all that work and published the radio
programming file on his website. So, wham, bam, thank you ma'am, it's all
downloaded and "gas-pumped" into the radio with very little labor on my
part. Thank you "The Mann."
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