Prep Comms - Scanner Radios - Peak Listening

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

Listening to scanner radios is fascinating and engaging. Whether you’re new or experienced, the right police scanner can offer real-time info and fun. In this episode Caleb covers more of the need to know about scanner radios, from how they work to picking the best one- including the best place in the USA to buy one! What Are Scanners? A scanner is a radio receiver that quickly monitors ("scans") many channels. It lets you listen to two-way radio calls. Police, fire departments, and other services use these radios. They send short bursts of info on thousands of channels. Scanners help you follow these transmissions, giving a peek into local authorities and emergency services. Types of Scanners Handheld Scanners Handheld scanners are portable and let you monitor frequencies anywhere. They’re great for listening from different places. Popular models often have rechargeable batteries, built-in antennas, and easy-to-use interfaces. Base/Mobile Scanners Base or mobile scanners are bigger and meant for fixed locations or vehicles. They usually offer more range and features than handheld models. These scanners are ideal for enthusiasts wanting a strong setup at home or in their car. Digital Scanners Digital scanners can decode digital signals, common in public safety communications. These are crucial if you want to listen to agencies using digital trunking. Trunking Scanners Trunking scanners follow conversations across multiple frequencies, key for modern, complex radio systems used by many public safety agencies. This tech ensures you don’t miss any part of a conversation. What to do if you just don't know what to do? When unsure, consult experts at Scanner Master. They can guide you to the perfect scanner. Visit their website to learn more. follow these links for more information: ScannerMaster Radio Reference: Scanner Frequency Database Prep Comms: Scanner Store K4CDN KITs: Scanners and more Communications for the Prepared: eBook via Kindle HamRadio 360 Podcast: Scanner Listening Throwback episode My Favorite and Most Highly Suggested Scanner: Uniden Home Patrol II Pulse Point Respond: Thanks Eric

It is the PrepComs Podcast. I'm Caleb Nelson, Kilo 4 Charlie Delta November WRBR 237, and I've got a couple of other identifiers that I can't remember off the top of my head. But hello and welcome to this program. Yeah, I decided to start this show a couple of months ago to help you, the listener, figure out your communication solutions if you're a prepper. And if you're not and you're interested in communications, well, come on in. There's plenty of seats around the table. Speaking of, got some awesome listeners, which I knew already because I've had awesome listeners the entire time I've been podcasting all these years. And one of those guys, Eric, Instagram messaged me earlier today and said, hey man, check out this app called Pulse Point Respond. And I did. I downloaded the app and installed it on my phone and it didn't give me anything because I'm not close enough to the systems that it operates with.

But here's the deal. It's kind of like a scanner app and it's kind of like a neighborhood watch app. The big guts of it is if you install this on your phone and you can set up your area of operations where you live, where you work or whatnot, it will allow you to be alerted anytime there's a medical emergency nearby. Just in case you are certified in CPR or you're interested in helping someone in need, this app is a great way to help folks be aware that someone nearby to you may be in dire need of assistance. Now, where I live is not connected to the system. I can't utilize it. I'm going to play with it some more and see if I can find some ways to tap into somewhere,

you know, some other locations where some friends live and whatnot. But Eric, thank you so much. Appreciate your listening. Always great to hear from you as well. Any of you guys, I'm on Instagram all the time, a messenger there, even on the website, there's a voicemail link. You can press the button, leave a voicemail. Who knows? Might even play it on the show. I love questions. I love answering questions. And that's why this show exists, right? So we're going to be talking about scanners again, maybe two or three more

times actually, to really kind of get our heads and hands around a scanner radio. Now there's so many different kinds of scanners. And we talked a little bit about that the last time, you know, you've got handheld scanners. They're easy. They're portable. Most of the time they'll run on AA batteries, rechargeables, of course. And you know, you, you can just take it wherever you go, drop it in your pouch, put it in your cup holder in your car i've got an old grecom right here that i've had for forever i love it i think i paid 89 for it and and no it won't decode my local sheriff's department with their p25 uh digital radio work but everything else that i'm interested in listening to fire departments emMS dispatch, all sorts of things, trash truck drivers. I mean, you name it, pretty much this will pick it up. And so, you know, just got to let you know, you don't have

to buy the big monster 500 buck investment scanner. You can pick up a scanner from your pawn shop sometimes, or even order one online without breaking the bank to get into listening. You may not even be interested in listening to those departments that are, you know, protected with their different trucking systems and whatnot. Maybe you just want to chase a fire truck or something, but either way, I've had this one a long time. It does a great job. It's a portable. It operates on three double-A batteries. It'll run for days, especially during the drive in and back from work. So handheld scanners are great.

The only real negative to a handheld scanner is operating it at home because it is handheld. It's like a handheld radio, so it's kind of top-heavy. It's going to teeter on your countertop and sometimes the the ac adapters are a little wonky or you know they just get in the way right it's just not very aesthetically pleasing to the bride so that's the maybe if there is a negative that may be the only negative is that they're not the prettiest things to have on the countertop which leads us to our desktop or base style scanners. And these

can be used in a mobile, like a CB radio or a mobile radio installed under the dash. But at the same time, they can usually sit on the countertop or on a shelf. I've got one on shelves. I've got some in racks. Like I said last time, I've got scanners everywhere. And most of them have a little fold down foot on the bottom. So it adjusts the angle of viewing and maybe even the speaker coming from the bottom of the unit. You can find those ranging anywhere from $100 brand new to multiple hundreds of dollars brand new. Even, again, used. 90% of the time, if you buy a used scanner, maybe even a higher percentage than that, it's going to be okay. Usually it's an investment someone bought. They thought they

wanted or they had a specific need like they were going to a race and wanted to listen to the race car drivers. They come back. They're no longer doing that. They're just watching it on TV now. They take it to the pawn shop, put it on Facebook marketplace. Either way, they're really affordable and you can get your hands on them pretty simply. I really like the desktop base mobile, you know, larger ones. Usually they're easier to program. The buttons give you some more space. The display is easier to read. So it's a personal preference.

The big thing is, is if you're really interested in communications and things that are going around you and you're preparing for something, you're going to want to have a scanner. All right, we're going to continue to talk about those. One of the things that we mentioned last time, touched just a moment ago, are digital scanners. And these are scanners that are able to decode not only the voices that are being broadcast or transmitted on those frequencies, but a lot of times the radio itself, let's say the police officer is using a radio, and when he speaks into the microphone, the signal that's transmitted from the microphone, through the microphone into the radio, out of the antenna, it's actually just a digital raw ones and zeros that a decoder on the other end,

maybe the repeater or another radio simplex, you know, radio to radio, can decode that and play it back to where it sounds just like my voice. So a scanner like I have here, this old Grecom that I've had for forever, it can't decode that. It doesn't have the guts. It doesn't have the ability, the computer power, computing power to decode those things, to be able to make that signal able for me to hear it. Like it just can't. If it hears it at all, it'll just be R2D2, kind of like your cell phone breaking up when you're getting close to the end of the sale back in the day. So these things are, they're pretty necessary nowadays, the digital scanners, because a lot of the police departments, if they haven't

already gone encrypted, they're at least digital now. And if you're planning on listening to what's going on around you, you more than likely are going to have to invest in a digital scanner, especially if you're interested in the police work. Right. So these if you're if you're in a larger metropolitan area, more than likely you're going to have to have, all of our police departments now have, for the most part, moved to that sort of thing. Now, in addition to the digital scanners, most of the digital scanners will have trunking capabilities in them. And those are designed to follow conversations across multiple frequencies. So, whereas like our local fire service here in the upstate of South Carolina, we have one frequency they talk on and you can listen to that frequency anywhere in the county and you can hear what they're saying. You always transmit on the frequency,

you always receive on the frequency, and that's just how it works with the local fire service in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Now trucking is a big term basically for skipping around and using different frequencies and using the one that best works for your situation where you're using your radio. It's kind of like your cell phone. So here we go. If you don't know what you have, if you don't know what's operating around you, I've got to insist you visit Radio Reference and they will help you understand the frequencies that are in use around you as well as the types of systems. I want to talk about another great help here in a few minutes in that. But Radio Reference is a free website you can visit that has the frequencies listed there that can help you see and understand the different types of systems that are operating in your area.

So you can best understand what you need to purchase if you're interested in a scanner. There's some retailers online, and I will mention that here right now. Scannermaster, I'll have a link in the show notes. You can call Scanner Master and say, hey man, I live in Provo, Utah, and I want a scanner to listen to my state police department and the local fire service. And the folks at Scanner Master can say, hey, we know exactly what you need. We can help you right here. You need X, you need Y, you need Z. Would you like to put that on your MasterCard? That's the kind of company they run. You can order it all online as well, but you can actually call and talk to a real person that speaks English that can help

you find your solution. Scannermaster.com. I've got a link in the show notes for that for you. So one of the reasons that I like scanners, again, is to know what's going on around me. I like to know what's going on. It's not that I want to know what my neighbor is doing. Like, why does he have three of those old Freightliner vans in his yard? I don't want to know. I don't know why he has an old beat up camper in his yard. I don't care. That's his business. It's his property. But I do want to know if someone is breaking into a bank nearby my wife's hair salon downtown. I am interested to know if there's a really serious accident on the interstate, uh, on my child's way home from work. I am interested in the knowing if, um, you know, somebody will, uh, will need help nearby and I can

go assist our local fire department. So I like a scanner for that. That's really why I like to scan. But at the same time, you know, it is so cool to be able to turn the scanner on and to listen to the local airplanes as they come in and out of our local airport, our local private airports here, our county run airports rather. We've got a big jet port. We have smaller airports around. That's fun for me to listen to. I've even listened to the county trash pickup service. You'd be surprised how comical that can be from time to time. Not too long ago, I was able to replace my unit in Home Patrol with a base unit.

I had a mobile, the handheld unit back before Carla was sick. And then I had to sell that and time just worked out that I was able to get another, a, a base model of the unit and home patrol, which is the one I recommend. If you're just looking for the super easy, press the button, listen to what you want to listen to unit in home patrol too. I'll have a link in the show notes, but that's the one that I love. I've got another one. It's so great. You just turn it on, enter your zip code and you're listening and you can decide, do you want to listen to the state national guard or just the state highway patrol, or maybe neither one of those, but you would really like to listen to the medical helicopters. And some of you may be saying, man, what is wrong with this guy? Why does he, why is he interested in all of that?

You know, honestly, I can't tell you. It's just me. And there's a lot of me out there. There's a lot of you I know that are interested in what's going on around you, especially in a bad situation. And with this show being again, prep comms, we're talking about preparedness communications. And what can we do to get ready for a situation? Well, I don't think there's much more that we can do, any better than we can do, than to have a way to listen to the authorities, to listen to the different municipalities, to listening to what's going on around us. So that's why I like scanners. Now, they've got some really, really great features, like this little Grecom. Again, it's an oldie but goodie,

but it has a signal stalker, or a close call feature, and it allows the scanner to detect nearby transmissions. I mentioned this the last time, but it's really cool. If you're maybe traveling or you're in a different area of town than you normally are and you kind of just want to know what's going on, you get the close call button. It'll buzz through the frequencies and find any frequencies that are in use. You can check it out, maybe find something. Trunk tracking, again, that allows you to keep up with the digital radios like most state patrol and sheriff's offices are using now. There's so many different ways to use your scanner.

You know, a lot of people think that a scanner can listen to encrypted communications. It can't. It's just unable to do that. Now, it can decode trunking, which is, you know, channel hopping, basically. But it can't decode and it can't break encryption. So there's some of that you can listen to, some of that you can't listen to. And again, we're going to, down the road, going to bring in, probably bring in Scanner School to come chat with us about scanners, most especially about trunking and encryption. So going back to our shortwave show, when Chris reminded us how well an external antenna

would increase our shortwave capacity, the listening of, this is the same way really with a scanner. Now your handheld scanner is going to have a great little antenna. Your, your base model is going to have a pull-up that'll work great. But here's the thing. If you really, really want to get out there and listen to maybe the next County over, or you're interested in the airplanes or the air traffic, or maybe the air national guard, something like that. Yeah, I would probably add an external antenna. I've got one up at my shack that I've been very disappointed with since the day I bought it. I'm not even going to mention the name of it, but it does not work well.

I've got its replacement, and I just haven't put the ladder up to get up there to replace it with. Even though, even with that said, I can still get loads of radio traffic with a poor-performing external antenna loads of radio traffic with a poor performing external antenna, of course, because it's 25 feet in the air versus standing there in the yard with a, just a regular vertical antenna on top of my scanner. So, you know, it will help. It will greatly increase the capacity of what your scanner is hearing. Okay.

Another thing to do is to always kind of remember to stay up to date with what's going on. Radio reference allows you to go in and see what the frequencies are today. And then you may want to go back in six months or so and see if anything's changed. And lastly, you know, I can't not say this, but I can tell you a lot of amateur radio operators are also scanner listeners. And I guess it's just like the nerd inside the person. I don't know, but most of the guys that I know that are hams love listening to scanners as well. And usually have a couple of scanners in their house or in their shack. So if you're, if you've got questions and you just can't find a good local answer, uh, check out your local ham club.

You don't have to be a ham radio operator. Okay. You don't have to pass a test to go and visit your ham club. Most of them have websites. You can go to the website. There's usually a contact us button, hit the button and make a connection. If none of that works for you, go to my website, prepcoms.com. There's a contact page there

there's a voicemail button whatever i'd be happy to try to help you get sorted and with that said i'm going to go back to scanner master because these guys have been in business almost as long as i've been alive and i remember seeing their ads and magazines back in the day. I mean, they have weathered the storms of the United States economy for almost 40-something years now, and they're still going strong. Scannermaster.com, I don't want to make this into a commercial for them, but I'm going to because they are a great company offering great service that you really just can't find anywhere. Now, granted, you can go on to Amazon and you can buy a unit in Home Patrol 2 and you can enter your zip code or use a GPS and it will program itself for you. Yep. But maybe you don't want to make that sort of investment. Maybe you're not, maybe your pockets aren't that deep yet. You can buy a low costcost scanner from Scanner Master, and they'll program it for you to work within your area and mail it to you pre-programmed, ready to go, with a warranty.

Or maybe you have an old scanner, and you really wish it would work better. You can send it in. They can fix it up for you, send it back. Now, I know not everybody is going to want to do that. I know a lot of folks are hands-on, and they're not going to pay someone else for something that they can do themselves. And you can sign up at Radio Reference and get downloadable frequency lists that automatically

populate in your scanner. There's loads of things to do we'll talk about later. But if you're just getting started and you just don't understand, maybe all this is just gibberish, it doesn't make any sense, but you know you need to to listen. You know, you want to listen to what's going on around you. Scanner master may be the place to go. There'll be a link in the website and the show notes for you guys to get over to scanner master, highly recommended company, people, and service. So speaking of before I go, speaking of service and companies, my company, Hub City Mercantile, British Birkfeld water filter systems, Birkin replacement filters, fluoride filters, all

of those things in the store, ready to ship. They all ship for free, as well as there's still a sale going on right now for the prep comms swag. So stickers and mouse pads, hats, all sorts of things. We've got antennas, et cetera, in the store. It's all there at Hub City Mercantile. Guys, thank you so much for listening. I am Caleb Nelson, K4CDN, right here, PrepComs Podcast.

Find us online at PrepComs.com. And if you have any questions, remember, don't forget to hit me up. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks again for listening. I'll be back soon. God bless you. 73, y'all. you