OT? Police/fire/etc. scanner usage

Don Y · 2012-02-18T18:15:30+00:00

Hi,Apologies as this isn't strictly on-topic. But, figured*some* folks here could provide hints or pointers to otherforum...I rescued a handheld scanner with some battery issues.Now that it's working, it seems an interesting "toy"to add to my bug out bag. (I don't have much interestin listening to that sort of sporadic chatter on adaily basis!)But, I'm clueless as to the most *practical* way of"programming" it. To be clear, I understand how to getthe parameters *into* it; rather, I'm curious as to thebest way to map those frequencies onto the scanningorder, etc.The device has 10 groups of 10 channel assignments.The first of each can be treated as a "priority"channel (there is a mode that gives preference tomonitoring these above the others). Entire groupscan be (easily) enabled/disabled. And, individualchannels can be disabled (though a bit more work todo this for many channels).After a bit of thought *imagining* how it might bemost useful in an emergency, I think the bestapproach is to group similar services (from differentmunicipalities, etc.) into each group. E.g., firein group 1, police in group 2, etc. So, in agiven geographical region, you would tend (??) to justbe able to pick up one set of services -- and, they wouldbe distributed across multiple groups. This would allowyou to easily disable that particular service withoutaffecting other services from that municipality(e.g., wanting to listen to the police chatter withoutbeing distracted by activity on the fire channel(s)).Since there often are several frequencies for eachservice, you could assign N groups for police traffic,M others for fire, etc. This would afford you thesame sort of easy "gating" for those individualchannels -- instead of having them compete with eachother in the same *group*.Having neighboring municipalities also present inthese same groups (but "out of broadcast range?")would allow you to migrate with the device picking upthe *local* services as you move between...

Feb 18, 2012 21 Replies

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Michael A. Terrell 14 years ago

Trunked radio was also sold as two way radio service to small businesses in the '80s. The WACX tower site had a huge roomful of Motorola trunked base station equipment. It bugged me that they would install mobile radios at the tower site, leaving both fences open to anyone who wanted to drive to the tower. That was in 1987.

You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

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josephkk 14 years ago

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Motorola came out with trunked radio systems in the late 1970s, they were expensive enough that only large organizations could afford them, only partly due to FCC licensing costs. Of course public safety and similar agencies got first pick when they could afford them.

?-)

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