Do I need a digital scanner to listen to South St Paul PD?

Marcopolo456 · #1 (**permalink**) 11-05-2009, 10:57 PM

Forgive me, as I am very new and very confused. From what I can tell, SSP PD is part of the AMERA (?) system, and I believe that is digital??? I also think a Radio Shack Pro-163/164 is an analog only scanner, so I think I would need a Pro-197 scanner to listen to SSP... Correct? I don't want to make a $300 mistake. (One of the guys in Radio Shack this afternoon told me the only difference between the 164 and the 197 was the range! I went back to purchase the 164 tonight and a different sales rep told me I needed the 197 to listen to SSP as it is digital!

Please help!
Thanks

Raven95150 · #2 (**permalink**) 11-06-2009, 06:15 PM

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Yes, all of Dakota County is on the digital ARMER system. The only thing you will hear without a digital scanner is the VHF patch for Fire dispatch.

Marcopolo456 · #3 (**permalink**) 11-06-2009, 07:21 PM

Thanks!

wogggieee · #4 (**permalink**) 11-07-2009, 12:14 PM

For scanner questions in the future i would suggest comming here and and never listening to the radio shack employees, they know nothing.

Raven95150 · #5 (**permalink**) 11-07-2009, 09:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wogggieee

For scanner questions in the future i would suggest comming here and and never listening to the radio shack employees, they know nothing.

+1 on that for sure.

smokeyjones666 · #6 (**permalink**) 11-08-2009, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wogggieee

For scanner questions in the future i would suggest comming here and and never listening to the radio shack employees, they know nothing.

Well, you might get lucky every once in a hundred years with an RS employee - but I doubt it.

Marcopolo456 · #7 (**permalink**) 11-08-2009, 05:44 PM

Thanks for all the info, guys! I have settled on a RS Pro-197 and am hoping they go on sale after Thanksgiving (g).

One final question - I am assuming that the digital Pro-197 will also work on analog signals, right? I want to listen to air and rail traffic, also. (I want it all (hehe).

Raven95150 · #8 (**permalink**) 11-10-2009, 09:38 AM

Wirelessly posted (Palm Pre: Mozilla/5.0 (webOS/1.2; U; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.27.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/1.0 Safari/525.27.1 Pre/1.0)

Yes it will pick up analog too, but if you want to listen to other stuff at the same time a 2nd scanner would be best or you will miss a lot.