Chicago Area Radio Monitoring Association
The Chicago Area Radio Monitoring Association (CARMA) is a scanner radio club in the Chicago metropolitan area. Membership is free and unofficial, there are no dues or membership certificates. About 1400 people are members of the mailing list or participate in other activities. A large percentage of the participants are public safety officials, dispatchers, radio vendors, service personnel and other professionals. Many are also amateur radio operators ("Hams"), GMRS licensees or members of RadioReference.com.
Most operations are handled through a Yahoo Groups list, including emails, files and databases.
CARMA hosts monthly meetings, with Saturday meetings and informal "Friday Nighter" get-togethers in alternate months.[1]
CARMA produces radio profiles of each county in Illinois, including scanner frequencies and other information for the Sheriff's, local agencies and transportation operations. Other extensive profiles of operations like StarCom21, State radio operations, railroads, aviation and other users of two-way radio are also produced.[2]
The CARMA logo contains the Latin phrase: "IN DEO SPERAMUS, CETEROS OMNES OBSERVAMUS", which roughly translates to "IN GOD WE TRUST, ALL OTHERS WE MONITOR".