Any scanner listeners out there?

I like to monitor public safety on my trunking scanner. Anyone else out there have a scanner that they like to monitor?
Here's some topic starters:
What do you listen too/for?
What kind of systems are in your area?
What are you using?
What is the funniest, most serious, amazing thing you have monitored?

I listen to county wide Fire Department and Sheriff/Police.
There use a Motorola type 2 system that they are currently upgrading to Smart Zone. I am not as heavy duty into it as some of the locals on the yahoo scanner forum formed by those who live in my area, but I'm not a novice either.
I use a Rat Shack Pro-92. Lots of the local buffs thumb their noses at this model, but it works fine for my purposes, about to pick up a second one. Also by state law it is illegal to monitor from a vehicle with a "permanently mounted" scanner unless you have a ham radio license, but a portable unit is ok if you are un licensed [go figure]. And my unit is a portable hand held that is AC/DC powered. Nothing extra arieal wise, but I did get an enhanced mini antennae for 800 mhz that seems to help some [MAX 800].

I have been monitoring for years and have overheard so many things I couldn't list them all. Have heard car chases, shoot outs, firemen while they are inside a structure fighting a blaze, some undercover ops, an occasional swat exercise or operation, barricaded subject once. Hear the med choppers on a regular basis. I hate listening to the paramedics med calls to hospitals, sometimes too gross. Will not monitor until later in the day or evening on holidays for it is most depressing hearing the calls, especially on Christmas morning. And there is always some idiots [usually younger folk] that get into bad car accidents in the wee hours of holiday mornings.

Overall it has made me more concious of my surroundings and people in general, given me better insight for what the FD and PD personnel go through and how they operate, and made me more cautious of what is going on around me.

I don't have a scanner but awhile back I was at my sister and brother-in-laws house. His brother-in-law (So my in law's inlaw...) just had been hired onto the poice force and was, uhh, playing with his radio and we just happened to overhear what was coming from the speaker /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

One of the more exciting things was an office chasing a man with a shotgun on the other end of the valley. The man with a shotgun broke into a house and you could hear the house alarm going off over the radio.

I just got turned onto this site: http://www.scannerlist.com/index.shtml
I have been listening to the Chicago one from my computer at work.

I bought a scanner awhile back, a Uniden Sportcat, and it has turned out to be one of those things that gave me more than I thought. I bought it primarily because I live in tornado alley, and the boys in blue are on the ground seeing the real thing and calling them in. Many times the radar did not pick up a twister until it was already there and gone, but the local LEO's were calling them in as they hit.

When I first got it, I lived waaaaaaay out in the sticks. It was new, so I was playing around with it, figuring I would only use it for weather, when I learned that there was activity all around me. Seems a lot of the locals were in the meth business. I would have never known all the BS going on around me without the scanner, and when we had a pretty major crime happen, I told the cops about what I had been hearing about one place on the scanner, and they busted a major drug operation. We have several damaging storms a year, and it very handy to listen damage reports and find out what streets are out and where the electricity is out.

I live where the city PD is trunked, but the county is not. My scanner is non trunk tracking, but you can pick up enough bits and pieces to usually figure out what is going on. A scanner is a very worthwhile investment for practical reasons,not just entertainment.

check out: http://www.strongsignals.net/access/boards/message/board.cgi

I have a Uniden Bearcat handheld, and the city police here are on a trunked system. My radio can't pick those up, but surrounding counties outside the city are all low band analog, and I can pick them up. Often I don't mind picking up the air ambulance, but that can get gross at times. There were some instances where it got interesting, like the RCMP (county cops up here in Canada) were in a high speed chase 2 hours west of here. They were following a car going in excess of 180 km/h (110 mph), and their cars couldn't keep up.

A couple ow weeks back, heard the dispatcher ask the following: "Is the Tolar Cemetary on Tolar Cemetary Road?"

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif
duh! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon6.gif

I have an old 8-channel crystal scanner that was dropped into my tip jar when I tended bar around 1990 or thereabouts. It didn't have an antenna, but I rigged up something with coils of solder, paper clips, a CB balun, and a telescopic antenna from a ghetto blaster. I picked up some calls on it, but I haven't used it for years.
A little later, I got a handheld scanner from Rat Shack, but I really only used it to pick up WXJ-25 at 162.55MHz - the national weather service station for Juneau Alaska. I don't know whatever happened to that scanner, other than that I know I don't have it anymore. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif
I don't think it was trunk tracking, and I'm pretty darn tootin sure it didn't go to 800MHz or over.

I have a hand held 200 channel non trunking scanner. None of the area agencies trunk, so I don't miss much going this cheaper route. I pretty much turn it on any time I hear s siren to make sure it is nothing I have to deal with.

The worst thing I ever heard over the scanner is back when I lived in Phoenix, AZ:

About 2 AM one night a car parked in the alley behind my house. Two guys got out and started rampaging through the neighborhood firing weapons, One of them full auto. Of course I called 911 and pulled out my laser aimed shotgun and strapped on my .45 and turned on the scanner.

Within five minutes there were five Police cars in the neighborhood... I thought that was pretty good response time, I was impressed. Once the first LEO got there I went back inside, not wanting to add to the confusion. Kept listening to the scanner. Still hearing copious firing of the "bad guy's" weapons, now from about a block away.

A supervisor arrives. Checks out the car parked behind my house. Gets on the radio, says: "the vehicle is a known "gang car", lets not get involved." He sent everyone out of the neighborhood, himself included. WHILE THERE IS STILL A RUNNING GUN BATTLE GOING ON.

Man, that made me mad. 3/4 of the neighborhood at that time was decent lower middle class working stiffs and a lot of elderly people, Yet they abandoned them so that the 1/4 that were gangbangers could have a little war unimpeded.

One of our neighbors was an newly elected city official with higher political aspirations, and I told him what happened. Don't know if anything was done about it, although they did start cracking down on the gang activities in the neighborhood soon afterward. I also wrote to the newspaper, but they didn't publish anything.

I have a Uniden BCT-7, it's usually in my car. I used to listen to the police channels whenever I saw a helicopter orbiting overhead, but now Los Angeles has gone digital and I can't get anything interesting any more. I still listen to the highway patrol when I'm driving, hearing car chases and road closures ("Sigalerts" as they call them) and such. Helps me avoid traffic jams...

I have to ask, even if it makes me look like a fool....
I know nothing about radios....
Can someone explain the trunking versus non-trunking?

Thanks.

Our police and fire just went to a trunk system last week. No one can hear anything anymore. I know alot of seriously pissed off people.

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bigcozy said:
I bought a scanner awhile back, a Uniden Sportcat, and it has turned out to be one of those things that gave me more than I thought. I bought it primarily because I live in tornado alley, and the boys in blue are on the ground seeing the real thing and calling them in. ...snip...

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You might also want to find out what frequency your local Skywarn Net is on. They are what some folks call "stormspotters"

BTW these human sightings are called "The Ground Truth" by the national Weather Service

Disclaimer - I'm a Skywarn Spotter

I've been listening to Public Service calls since 1970; first with the multi-band "tunable" radios, then with crystal scanners and now programmable scanners (both base and handheld). Like others, I've heard alot of things (funny and serious).

I think the funniest police call I heard happened in the summer of 1975.
My parents and I were on vacation, and we had stopped for the night in the little town of Holbrook (?) AZ. This town was surrounded by miles of desert, and had two police cars (one fully marked; the other was painted blue-and-white and had a lightbar, but no city/police markings on the doors. While we were eating at a diner (all this town had was a couple of diners, one or two gas stations and a few motels), the radio cars would turn around in the diner's parking lot (which was at the edge of town, on the highway) and head back in the opposite direction. That's all I saw them do - drive up-and-down the highway (probably nothing else to do).

Anyway, I had a Radio Shack 4-band tunable radio; I managed to find the Police Department on the VHF "high" band. I mostly heard the dispatcher calling the units, trying to find out who had taken the jail keys (which went on for about 45 minutes). But, one (and only one) call was broadcast that night. It went something like: "Car-1, respond to XXX Second Street - we have a report that a man has tripped over a bumper jack in the rear yard." The unit arrives, and tells the dispatcher, "there's no one back here, or in front of here or anywhere else here - I'm leaving." The dispatcher just said, "Ten-4." We all had a good laugh.

Mike

I have a Ratshack Pro 60 here by my 'puter.

If the really crappy job Lee. P. Brown has been doing budget-wise has a bright spot, HPD is still analog on the radio. They do have in car computer communications in digital, but all code 1 - pretty much all dispatching goes on on the radio.

I keep it tuned to Southeast district, my home turf. Some areas within 5 miles or so are HOT at night! But I rarely even here calls dispatching units to streets even starting with the same first four as mine (which are numerous!).

I have been known in the past to moniter much more, but this channel stays busy enough!

Coolest thing I think I ever heard was an aircraft following/watching a suspect vehicle. Heard the AC guy telling ground units what was going on.

Dispatcher "Dawn" sounds HOT!!!!!

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Floating Spots said:
I have to ask, even if it makes me look like a fool....
I know nothing about radios....
Can someone explain the trunking versus non-trunking?

Thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'll take a stab at this one. Trunked signals are digitally controlled to spread out over several frequencies. To follow a conversation means rapidly changing channels in succession of what the broadcaster is transmitting. Non-trunked if the frequency is right all the conversation is on one channel only.

If my memory serves me right, some cities use close to the cellular frequencies..... and monitoring cellular calls is illegal.

At first glance, trunking may look like a way of keeping conversations private. But, it didn't take long for scanners to be built that would track them. Basically, it's advantage is that less frequency allotments can handle more agencies.

Consider a city that has, maybe 50 agencies that require radio communications. At the least, that would require at least 50 seperate radio frequency assignments to handle them without interference with the other agencies. Even if some agencies shared the same, there would be no isolation of activity. Each agency sharing, would also have to listen to the other agencies. Now with trunking, all or a great number of them can share the trunking frequencies. When an agency keys up, it selects a frequency not in use for the transmission. As soon as they unkey, the frequency is released back into the pool for whichever agency. They might use ten frequencies in the trunking system among the 50 agencies.

I purchased a Pro-95 from Radio Shack and still have to figure out how these Dual Trunking stuff works. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif Anyway, I would monitor my area once in a while and find some really interesting stuff going on around my neighborhood. It's mostly gang related stuff, domestic disturbances, and such. Nothing out of the ordinary, or at least, not yet....

Not too long ago there was a guy who shot his wife then barricaded in the house. I heard the cal for a deputy to check out a "man down" call at that address. He got there and the perp shot him with a rifle. i heard him on the radio calling for help, had thrown homself into a ditch to avoid fire. Stated he thinks an artery was hit because blood was spurting out every time he let go of the wound. Units arrived and set up a perimeter. The guy was taking pot shits at cops for over an hour and a half. Then swat moved in and surrounded the house. Had two snipers set up watching windows. Lead officers were sneaking up to neighboring houses to evacuate residents. Eventually the guy gets a "brilliant idea" and sets fire to his home and tries to escape in the confusion, not, caught him and gave up without a fight.

Latest funny call was two weeks ago. Cops got sent to a restraunt for a burglar alarm call, roll up onscene and scare the suspect off, who runs and jumps into a small pond and the culvert that feeds it. The cops were spread out for two blocks peering into grates tracking the guy. They would hear him underfoot then shine lights and scare him off to another grate. He finally gave up and came out the way he went in, he couldn't find another path. They were even yelling at him to watch out for gators down there.

Trunking??? Please explain.

It's not a simple explanation, Josh. What it isn't, is two units talking back and forth on a single frequency or duplex arrangement.

For a down-to-earth basic explanation, try this site.