James Brummett

Last week, we sadly lost a long time member of the Savannah radio hobby community. James Brummett, better known and the Scanner Man or Frequency Man passed away. James was one of the most knowledgeable of Savannah's radio monitoring enthusiasts. He was well versed in many of the scanners available on the market and was undoubtedly the foremost expert on Savannah frequencies.

James was always on the hunt for new information and was always eager to share what he had discovered with the rest of us. He seemed to have an endless number of sources within the public safety and local government. I will truly miss his periodic stops by the house to pass on his latest scoops or discoveries. Many of those who monitored off duty had radios that were programmed by James. Likewise, many in the Savannah media owe their monitoring capabilities to James; they not only got their frequency and monitoring information from James, he also programmed their radios and suggested which radios they should buy. Many casual scanner listeners in Savannah had their radios programmed by him as well.

He kept up with scanning technology as it changed recently. As Savannah area public safety communications moved from conventional to trunked, James learned about trunking and was part of a group of us who figured out how to monitor the new systems and figured out who was using what. As some things started to go digital, he kept up with who was going digital and who was staying analog.

I recently found out that he had fallen on hard times. Apparently he didn't mention it to very many people and I'm not familiar with the details. It was sad to know that hard times had fallen on such a good natured and well meaning person; hopefully James is now in a better place free of his troubles and tribulations.

Mac McCormick, KF4LMT
kf4lmt@comcast.net