Best Way To Set Up Scanner

pinballwiz86 · Mar 18, 2015

I have a bunch of different civil aviation frequencies programmed into various scanners.

"Low, HI, SH." etc.

I came upon the idea of being able to hear the control tower and the airplane by listening to the control tower stream online! (smart idea right?)

Well...I end up being able to hear the chatter on the stream but none of my scanners are picking it up! I do pick up other airplanes talking but I don't hear it on the ATC stream.

So I'm confused. What's the best way to program a scanner? Do I set it up by airport or what? Or is the ATC and airplane chatter low power or something?

Thanks so much for any ideas.

737mech · Mar 18, 2015

Airplane scanning

If you are close enough to hear the planes on the ground then tower should not be a problem as well from the scanner. Have you tried to get your antenna higher? Line of sight is the key, that's why planes are easy to hear from the air. What setup do you have? Just a handheld or base/mobile in the house? If you have a good antenna outside and good coax connecting it to your scanner you might also want to try one last little device called an FM trap. It has helped many scanners in the VHF aircraft band. There are many many posts in the antenna section of the forums that talk about using the cheap FM traps from radioshack and the better ones from PAR Electronics.

pinballwiz86 · Mar 18, 2015

737mech said:
If you are close enough to hear the planes on the ground then tower should not be a problem as well from the scanner. Have you tried to get your antenna higher? Line of sight is the key, that's why planes are easy to hear from the air. What setup do you have? Just a handheld or base/mobile in the house? If you have a good antenna outside and good coax connecting it to your scanner you might also want to try one last little device called an FM trap. It has helped many scanners in the VHF aircraft band. There are many many posts in the antenna section of the forums that talk about using the cheap FM traps from radioshack and the better ones from PAR Electronics.

No, I only hear airplanes flying around. The nearest airport is 150 miles away.

I can hear it only one side. But, I can hear the air traffic controllers online on different feeds talking to the airplanes. But, none of the airplanes are showing up on my frequencies. So, I was wondering what I was doing wrong.

Thank you for your help!

Best Way To Set Up Scanner

pinballwiz86

Member

737mech

Member

pinballwiz86

Member

Similar threads