Police/Ems scanner?

[jrd541280]

Had an ollllddd radio shack scanner I dug out of the closet and cannot get it to work receive anymore. Looking to just get a new one. Looking to you folks for suggestions please? We live 20 miles out of town, do I need a special antenna?

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[uscsoldier]

First off, put your zip code in here and see what the agencies in your are are running on

RadioReference.com - Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference Database

 

[Kruel J]

Had an ollllddd radio shack scanner I dug out of the closet and cannot get it to work receive anymore. Looking to just get a new one. Looking to you folks for suggestions please? We live 20 miles out of town, do I need a special antenna?

Most LE/EMS agencies are using digital trunked systems now. You're old scanner may still be useful for aviation, ham and marine channels.

 

[jrd541280]

Did and thought about that too. According to this thing and the wife's smart-asz phone, frequencies have not changed. Used to put some tin foil rabbit ears on the ant and got good reception. Nothing now.

 

[Kruel J]

Did and thought about that too. According to this thing and the wife's smart-asz phone, frequencies have not changed. Used to put some tin foil rabbit ears on the ant and got good reception. Nothing now.

Frequencies haven't changed, you are correct. But they've gone from analog to digital, as well as being trunked to use multiple frequencies that change all the time.

Kinda like over-the-air television. It's still the same frequencies for each channel that haven't changed in 60+ years. But the signal is now digital, so old analog TV's are SOL.

 

[Vendor Hidden]

You can listen online for free: broadcastify.com

 

[jrd541280]

Most LE/EMS agencies are using digital trunked systems now. You're old scanner may still be useful for aviation, ham and marine channels.

Digitally trunked? Hopefully it is not complicated to get a "working" police scanner these days?

 

[Kruel J]

Digitally trunked? Hopefully it is not complicated to get a "working" police scanner these days?

You have to have a scanner that is capable of receiving digital and trunked systems. Even then you can miss some of the action as the freqs change often.

 

[gunnails]

I sometimes listen on line to the Portland feed.

Try this.
Tri-Cities Police and Fire Live Audio Feed

 

[jrd541280]

Thanks for the help so far guys. Just to be fair, you should know that this inquiry is coming from a guy that communicates with the latest update of the Motorola Quantico TriCording Device. Sooooo, you all might not be quite up o speed with me yet. If, ya catch my drift?.

 

[HenryJ]

I have a couple old Bearcat scanners that do a good job. I like the portables so that I can take it with me if I need to. Pretty easy to scan for frequencies if you need to. A must have for Nascar events.

Hard to beat the older scanners. I have a couple preban Bearcat scanners. If I had to buy today: Uniden BC75XLT would be worth considering.
You really don't need more than 30 channels or so. Scanning more than 10 you tend to miss quite a bit. I have four scanning in my house.

Don't worry about digital yet. Some departments have gone digital, but it is a big expense for a dispatch center , not to mention each department. Digital still has issues to resolve before it is ready for fire service use. Law enforcement agencies will be the push that makes us follow Plenty of action still analog. A few 700mhz , in Idaho. Fire repeats that analog VHF though

BTW use the FCC license search and you can find all the frequencies in your area easily.