Northeast Ohio Newbie

[mike529]

I last owned a scanner in the mid 90's. A Bearcat 200. Had lots of fun with it but lost interest after time went by and sold it. I picked up a Radio Shack Pro 37 for $3 at a garage sale this past summer thats gotten me interested in the hobby again.

I live in Parma. If I've done my research correctly I will need a digital scanner to listen to the Parma police? Cleveland too?

I'm looking at Radio Shack Pro 106, Uniden BCD396xt or the GRE PSR 500. Am I looking at the right radio's?

Also, off topic. I 've recently started buying old radios. Am/Fm transistor and tabletop models. Shortwave radio's too. Some of them need repair/parts. Is there any shops or people in Northeast Ohio I can contact. Any clubs or websites? Even with the internet I'm having trouble locating anything that would be usefull to me. Any help appreciated. Mike

[gbearit]

Mike,

I too was recently looking for a new scanner for our area of Ohio. I was also looking at the GRE PSR-500 because of the excellent reviews it was given in the forum section. I ended up purchasing the GRE PSR-800 becasue of the new Ohio MARCS P25 system going into operation right now. If you go to the database page to see the Important Note. I didn't want to purchase a radio just to find out a few months later that it may not be able to recieve our local communications. I am pleased with the radio except that some of the digital transmissions seem garbled and unable to hear correctly. The forum section speaks about this problem. http://forums.radioreference.com/ohi...25-system.html Good Luck.

[budevans]

Originally Posted by mike529

I last owned a scanner in the mid 90's. A Bearcat 200. Had lots of fun with it but lost interest after time went by and sold it. I picked up a Radio Shack Pro 37 for $3 at a garage sale this past summer thats gotten me interested in the hobby again.

I live in Parma. If I've done my research correctly I will need a digital scanner to listen to the Parma police? Cleveland too?

I'm looking at Radio Shack Pro 106, Uniden BCD396xt or the GRE PSR 500. Am I looking at the right radio's?

Also, off topic. I 've recently started buying old radios. Am/Fm transistor and tabletop models. Shortwave radio's too. Some of them need repair/parts. Is there any shops or people in Northeast Ohio I can contact. Any clubs or websites? Even with the internet I'm having trouble locating anything that would be usefull to me. Any help appreciated. Mike

Mike,

You're correct, you'll need a digital scanner to monitor Parma or Cleveland. To make an informed decision you should check out a couple of Forums here on RR.

The radio manufactures/suppliers have forums here (Radio Shack, GRE, Uniden, etc..) . You'll get first hand information from users.

Also browse this (Ohio) forum, you'll find information on a whole range of topics. In gbearit's reply he provided a link to the MARCS P25 message thread. There are many others, start looking at the top of the Ohio forum page for current topics.

FYI, Parma's P25 system is easy to set up and monitor. One big issue you'll read about is P25 LSM (garble). From reports, Parma doesn't have that issue. But, larger systems like the MARCS P25 Cuyahoga County 700 Mhz does cause problems for many scanner users. We'll have to see what happens with Cleveland's P25 system as it goes live.

So browse around and don't hesitate to ask questions.

[davidzimmerman]

Mike i live in Parma i have a GRE-800 in my car and got a BCD396XT for portable use both work and if you buy on of them i'll help you program them to get you going.
i have 2-Motorola CDMS for base radios a VHF CDM1250 and a UHF CDM1250
i have a Motorola XTL5000 UHF in the car with a LOWBAND 33MHZ maxtrac and a YAESU FT-90 and made the GRE800 a mobile scanner.

dave

[mike529]

Well, of the 3 radio's I was looking at, I purchased...none of them. I wound up with the Grecom psr-800.

I happened to be going out east for a fall festival and realised I was going near AES Supply. Haven't been there since the mid 90's. Nice thing is they had all the models i was interested in and more. I really like "hands on" before I buy something. Especially when spending this much money. Since I haven't been into scanning for almost 20 years, I like the idea of no programming or figuring out how program for trunking or whatever that entails.

So far it's really cool! Plug and Play! Put my zip code in and was listening right away! Back in the day with my Bearcat 200 loaded with freq's, I never had this much action! I actually can hear the city I live in police!

Really looking forward to diving in and learning the in's and out's of the radio. I hear the RTA Police as scrambled/garbled, this is encrypted?

Really happy so far. Just need to set up a listening post and get some issue's of Monitoring Times and Pop Comm, haven't read those in years!

Mike

[DJX]

RTA is in the clear on MARCS Moto system.