Why multiple scanners?

[nemesis98]

Just a quick question.

I love looking at everyone's shacks and setups, and the one thing I always see are multiple scanners - why so many?
I have a Pro-97 that has 1000 channels - so that means 1000 different places to enter in freq's (right?)
Why do you need more than one scanner? Just a bit confused, as I am a long time casual listener, but want to get more serious. I am currently (I feel) under-utilizing my scanners capabilities, and want to enjoy this more.

Thanks!

[VO1GXG]

I have one 3 scanners

1 - EMS/Public Saftey
2 - Air Band & Marine
3 - Commercial

This allows me to catch everything that is happening, i also have 1 MCX1000 for amateur VHF and another MCX1000 which is programmed to the same frets combined in my scanners so i can focus in on one specific agency for constant monitoring. I have alot of commercial and EMS customers so i like to hear if any problems on their systems occur when i am not in the office. However i had this same setup before i joined the company i currently work for.

[jim202]

There is a bunch that goes on all around us almost constantly. Depending what your into, it may have some effect on how and what you listen to. One radio just will not pick up multiple agencies at the same time. They for some reason just don't hold their transmissions until the neighbor agency stops talking. Seems like they all talk at the same time in many cases.

A scanner with 1000 channels in it is great. But it takes time to be able to scan through even say 15 or 20 channels. If there is any activity on any one of those channels, the scanner will stop and park on the active channel until the traffic goes away. Then 3 seconds later, or what ever you have the delay set to, the scanner will start scanning again.

Take me for instance, I have about 15 radios going all the time at work. Some are on police channels, some are on fire channels and some are on ham radio channels. If you have say 4 towns or city agencies around you, you might even have a receiver for each agency. That way you stand a chance of hearing the original dispatched call go out. Once its dispatched, your probably not going to hear the address again unless one of the field units ask for it again. If the agency is using MDT for sending the address, your SOL hearing an address at all.

The multi receiver operation shows it stuff more when the weather starts getting bad. You can hear what is starting to happen around you before it actually hits home. This way you can have some prep time if you need to pick up the yard, go get your flashlight or what ever. In many cases, you might even have half an hour or more depending on the speed of a storm. You can race out and fill up the fuel tank in your wheels in that time.

[Skypilot007]

Since it can be difficult to get optimal performance on all bands with one scanner I generally use each of my scanners with a band specific antenna. I have several connected to a VHF/UHF dual bander with an active multicoupler, a few more connected to an 850MHz antenna feeding another band specific active multicoupler. I also use some commercial grade radios on UHF and 800MHz as scanners. You can miss a lot of things just using one scanner. I keep them all on at a moderate to low volume level and listen for signs of action like excited voices which usually come across louder and sirens going in the background. I keep the locals up the loudest usually. Then there is all the Ham gear....so much to listen too I need a couple more ears.

[n5ims]

Need - generally there isn't a "need", but it may make things much easier. For example, I monitor my local city's system on one scanner and nearby cities on one or more additional scanners. That way when I'm listening to activity on another scanner I don't miss any action going on in my local city.

That's important right now to me since I have a few of my radios set for the race channels at the nearby Texas Motor Speedway and still can hear the PD & FD traffic on a major power outage a few miles away from my house.

It's also good when there's a major incident (say a 3 alarm fire) nearby. I can dedicate one (or possibly more) to that incident so I can hear that traffic and not miss something interesting that may happen on another channel.

[nemesis98]

That makes sense - keep individual radios for each so you don't miss out.
I wonder how much I am missing only having one. I really need to get setup up better. I just now realized I didn't even have fire dept for the city entered in my scanner! oh boy...

[StephenVa]

I have 5 going and still miss out.

[KD2DLL]

I use multiple so when there is a major incident, I can leave certain scanners on certain freqss so I hear almost everything. Like if theres an accident and they are landing a helo, I scanner is on the freq that the crews at the accident are on, the other is on the freq the helo will be on. If I had more scanners, I would place one on PD in the area and one doing just regualr scanning to hear about other events going on at the same time.

[xts3000r]

I have only one scanner its a pro 106 p25. All my others are commercial radios like astro saber in VHF/Uhf/800mhz or for GE Radio systems I have Mrk.I don't like scanners it's not the best audio expescially on digital systems p25 the best on a astro radio

[kb3jqq]

One just isn't enough! Here, I have a PRO107 on my local P25 system, a PRO90 tuned to fire
dispatch and a old RS conventional tuned to the remaining low band stuff. A lot of times, they
are all talking at the same time. When it gets really busy, I turn on the PRO106 as well.

I even run 2 in the car. a P25 and a conventional unit.

Just look at the picture above

[rbm]

The 'perfect' setup is a lot of single channel receivers. One for every frequency you may ever want to listen to.
You would never miss anything.
Obviously, for most hobbyists that's unreasonable.

Many communications are going on simultaneously and a single scanner can only listen to one at a time.

So, you can try to find an acceptable level of missed communications and balance that with your ability to add more scanners.

The more channels you try to scan, the more you'll miss.
Even a scanner with 100 channels is way too much in my opinion.
In fact, there were times when a 20 channel scanner was too much.
(Aside from the fact that you may not have the proper 'mix' of frequencies for a given event.)

One of my online feeds has around 40 conventional frequencies, which at times is too much. But I've been asked by listeners to include that many.
My private feeds have from 8 to 20 conventional frequencies.

With the ideal being one frequency per radio, and worst case is having too many frequencies, you have to find a point where you are NOT missing most of what's going on.

I have a lot of Uniden scanners and almost every one is maxed out, programming wise.
However, during normal operation, each scanner sits on one agency/city/town/county.
(A few are searching.)

Even though my scanners may hold (and be programmed with) as many as 6,000-25,000 frequencies, it would be silly to expect to scan all of them and get any continuity on any of them. Everything would just be tiny snippets of mostly meaningless nonsense.

My Uniden scanners are like file cabinets full of drawers, folders, and papers. (Systems, Groups, Frequencies)
You can activate any combination of anything in the file cabinet with just a few keystrokes.
I can instantly change the frequencies in all of my scanners without having to reprogram them.

Rich

By the way, this is what it looks and sounds like when you get a Close Call hit on 20+ Uniden scanners at the same time.
That many only because the HT was in the same room. Typically I get CC hits on from 1 to 5 depending on how strong the signal is and how many scanners are stopped on active transmissions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSPOaHaf-Qk

[rbm]

Originally Posted by nemesis98

That makes sense - keep individual radios for each so you don't miss out.
I wonder how much I am missing only having one. I really need to get setup up better. I just now realized I didn't even have fire dept for the city entered in my scanner! oh boy...

You'd be surprised at what you can miss.

If you had two scanners programmed the same, with one scanning UP and the other scanning DOWN, you'll often hear one scanner and the other scanner would never let out a 'peep'.

Rich

[Exsmokey]

I have four scanners and a ham HF/2m/440 in my shack. When a winter storm starts moving in I have all four running. One is my primary scanner that contains a natural resource agency bank, a bank for law enforcement and other agencies for the county I live in, a bank for the adjacent county, a bank for county business and an aircraft bank, among others. The business band contains the frequencies of the private snow removal companies in town, as well as the taxi and shuttle companies. I have another scanner set up to listen to Southern California Edison, a large area trunked system that patches all of its service and trouble calls to every repeater. The third scanner is devoted to the trunked system for the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. The fourth contains 400 MHz link frequencies and a interagency dispatcher intercom. When a storm reaches the west side of the Sierra Nevada I can hear the trouble calls start on the Edison system with details of wind speed, snow level and precipitation. The Mammoth Mountain system gives me ears to listen to the details of what the storm is doing west of town at a higher elevation. The primary scanner is used to listen to how the local areas are being affected. The last scanner allows me to hear how the agencies are coordinating their efforts.

If the traffic in my county is heavy, I can turn off the bank for the adjacent county. One of the most important group of frequencies is that of the state department of transportation. They talk in a detailed manner as to what is happening to the highways in the area. I keep track of the chain requirements and other problems around the region and often answer calls on ham 2 meter repeaters with updates important to hams traveling through or to the area. It can get a bit hectic so I might shut down one or two of the scanners as you can't keep track of everything at the same time once the traffic gets busy on all the systems I'm monitoring. A winter storm in the Sierra can be strong and we receive snowfall measured in feet and snowfall rates up to 4" per hour several times per winter and rates up to 8" per hour every 4-6 years. 4" per hour produces visibility problems that result in some interesting incidents on the roads. We also experience up to 35,000 visitors to our town of 7,000 residents. Almost all of them are from southern California and most are not that used to driving in snow. They get themselves into some interesting debacles. Finally, we have a small airport that has 7 flights per day and up to 75 passengers per flight. The weather at the airport can be extreme at times and I'm able to hear pilots talking with the airline desks and the company dispatchers regarding being able to land or take off. If the power goes out I can hear what the problems is and how soon it will be restored. There are very few people in the area that understand how the Southern California Edison radio system works and I receive calls from friends wanting updates.

I like being glued to my chair during a storm and taking pleasure for not having to be out in it. I'm retired from a career where I was out in it due to job responsibilities and it wasn't always that fun to be doing so. I've driven taxis and shuttle vans around town and to the airport dealing with chains and everything else that comes along with a strong storm. Now I can listen to all my former co-workers in other agencies and companies dealing with it.

[Jay911]

For me, it's a case of functionality.

My home "shack" has an HP1 for the actual voice activity. I also have a BC796D that is being used to feed the 144.390 APRS frequency into a sound card TNC for my rx-only APRS Igate (VE6SRT). I have a PSR600 for when/if the local P25 system ever gets off the ground, because I find that the GRE radios perform better in trunk analysis (Unitrunker/PRO96COM and the like) than other radios. There's a BCD996T here as well but it's suffering from the stuck headphone jack problem and is extraneous right now anyway, so it's idle.

In the car I have another HomePatrol permanently mounted and that's it for scanners (though there is a ham radio doing both voice and APRS, and my work handheld radio is always nearby too).

[carmelof]

Hi for me main intrest is monitoring the hf & vhf airbands most of my receivers only have 1 frequency programmed some have up to a few frequencies although prefer to monitor different frequencies some times,Also i share a shack at dads house we monitor hf/vhf aircraft,buses,emergency services,marine..

Regards Lino..
RADIOS:
ALINCO DJ-X11,ALINCO DJ-X2000,ALINCO DX-R8
AOR-8200MK3,AOR-8600MK2
DRAKE-R8,DRAKE-SW8
GRE-PSR400,GRE-PSR500
GRUNDIG SATELLIT-750
ICOM-PCR1000,ICOM-PCR1500,ICOM-R3,ICOM-R20,ICOM-R71A,ICOM-R75 (2),ICOM-R2500,
ICOM-R7100,ICOM-R8500,ICOM-RX7
KINETIC SBS-3
PALSTAR-R30A
REALISTIC-PRO2035
RFSPACE SDR-IQ (2)
SANGEAN-ATS909X
TEN TEC-320D
UNIDEN-UBCD396T,UNIDEN-UBCD-396XT,UNIDEN-UBC780XLT
YAESU-VR500
+ 50 receivers i share in dads shack..

[n4yek]

I have 3 scanners, VHF, UHF, and 800 MHz. I have them on 3 different antennas dedicated to that band.
Scanner antennas, while ok, are not the best antennas. An antenna made for a specific range of frequencies is the best you can use.

[Rt169Radio]

More scanners means more monitoring capabilities. For example you could have three scanners that could monitor the PD, EMS, FD individually.

[jeatock]

While this is a monitoring forum many of the members here are also public safety end users, and administrators, of communications systems.

Imagine our frustration trying to provide public safety reliability and the Holy Grail of communications, interoperability, when each agency feels the need to conduct all communications on their own private (and in many cases proprietary) communications network. The premise of common incident channels is given lip-service by many who in actuality communicate with other disciplines or agencies only through a third party- if at all. In many cases where common channels are available users choose not to switch to them, or by agency policy are prohibited from doing so.

To effectively manage even a moderately-sized incident, somebody (or several somebody’s) has to have several radios in front of them so they can pass messages back and forth. I know of localities where by policy "our" police dispatcher has to telephone "their" fire dispatcher to pass information. Each “forward’ inserts inaccuracy, and more importantly a time delay, into an incident where seconds may make a critical difference.

Politics, and in many cases pure laziness, are the real reasons that public safety communication (and the associated situational awareness) is in such a state of chaos.

[reconrider8]

well like right now im in the process of building another system system on my 15 from scratch so i got that scanning milair and my 106 decoding with unitrunker and my 72 just scanning local stuff while they are tied up

[MikeyC]

Where I'm at there's just too many different radio systems to catch everything on one scanner A lot of the state agencies (State Police included) are on a P25 trunked system. The county sheriff is on a commercial Motorola Type II system. Everyone else is (mainly) on VHF. At least one scanner for each "system" plus a couple more to run UniTrunker on the Type II and Pro96Com on the P25

That's not counting the 3 in the car ...