Do You Actually Listen To Your Recordings?

I've read where some people record with their scanner 24/7 and was wondering, for those who do, if you actually listing to all or most of it. I could understand it if you're in a small city but a large city would be quite difficult.

Also, do you record everything in your local area or certain agencies?

Personally I like to record the air bands in case there's an emergency or mishap. But still there are many airports in the Los Angeles area that I'm able to pick up.

Just this weekend there was a small airplane crash at an airport about 20 miles South of me. I wasn't home when it happened but my scanner was set to record. Unfortunately it didn't record any airport traffic but I did hear the LAPD talking about it when it happened on the talk-around frequency.

The biggest "unfortunate" is that the pilot died in the crash, very sad.

Here's the link to the news story if you want to read it.
1 dead, 1 injured in plane crash at Compton/Woodley Airport | abc7.com

Anyway, just wanted to get your thoughts on your scanner recordings.

I used to record those conventional frequencies and talk groups that I know have traffic, but not very much of it. I used "Scanner Recorder" and set it up to record only when there was traffic, which had the effect of cramming the transmissions into much less space.

I don't Hopper but with the SD card in my 536 it does have a record feature. I imagine if I went out and bought a faster,larger card that can hold more data I could record more but to answer your question no I don't.

I have one radio that sits on one system and records all traffic. I use it to go back later and pull the unit ID'S which are included in the recordings.

5 different radios are set up for event recording. They can be set to favorites lists that are pared down to specific tactical channels and using a 2 minute buffer in the radios, if I hear an event being dispatched, I have 2 minutes to hit record and capture the event from initial dispatch. An event can be as short as a 5-10 minute police chase to a several hour search and rescue operation on water, but in all cases, records only those channels specifically involved in the event and only when transmissions are made.

The event folders are named and then copied to a pc application that works great for editing and replaying these events or generating an mp3 file of an event from the individual transmission audio files.

The new radios that record only do so when there is a transmission and they log the date/time, channel, unit, etc so create great records and condense the time.

Mark
WS1095/536/436/996P2/HP1e/HP2e/996XT/325P2/396XT/PRO668/PSR800/PRO652

marksmith sounds like your system is set up very nicely, does what you want it to do but I bet it can be tedious sometimes.

I agree in that the new scanners make it much easier to record. I have a BCD436 with a 32gb microSD card and it records transmissions only, no dead space and saves it as a .wav file. I wish they could be automatically saved to mp3 instead, takes up less space on the card.

wish I had time

Between my job, my two kids,aging mother mowing grass, managing my home which always has something busted in it, I just don't have the time. I had 27,000 messages once on a PSR 800 48 hours I guess, some of it pretty exciting but I lost interest in it.

I have an XTL that records all radio traffic that comes from it. It's been running nonstop since March recording traffic when I first set it up. It records locally and then copies the files to the "Archive" of an External HDD. I've used 34.7GBs of the 111GB drive with over 65,000 audio files.

Do I listen to it? Absolutely. I go back quite a bit to find traffic or simply to replay something I missed. It doesn't take up much space, and I'll clear out a month at a time if I ever get to the point of filling up the drive.

I have 6 scanners that record and they are recording all the time. Some are used to monitor for new activity on different systems and sites (known and very active talkgroups locked out)... others just record what I am listening to at any given time.

Usually about once a week I do a dump of recordings from all of them and then go through them looking for new talkgroups and activity on talkgroups and channels that aren't very active.

I also look at/for relationships in radio identifiers which also helps to identify new talkgroups.

I'd have to look but I have recordings back to the initial release of the PSR800 - millions. Disk is cheap these days.

I have 2 radios on record. PSR800 is for the county 800 system to catch unknown talkgroups. HP1 set up for Another system for the AirForceBase & DoD for unknown talkgroups. I do hear some funny stuff once awhile while recording.

Used to back in the day of recording from scanners & receivers using stand alone analog recorders with VOX which was tedious & time consuming at best, tried it with these new do it all & then some superscanners using various software programs but the time it took to pull up & listen to archival dispatches using a PC I was missing real time stuff which meant repeating what I felt was fast becoming totally nonproductive, always felt like I was playing "catch up", bottom line, no I don't even record anything anymore, it would be nice if :: IPN :: Nationwide Fire & Police Incident Notification offered an audio archive feature for their alerts.

Generally, I record only when I'm trying to find or identify something.

I use the recording functionality in Win500 if I'm trying to catch a new talkgroup or frequency; when it comes to IDing an unknown frequency, I'll use Audacity's VOX function.

Do you actually listen to your recordings?

Yes. I do. I have the WS1080. I only have ONE frequency being recorded and it's our Police dept's old talk-around channel. They have encrypted everything in our area. They still use this channel and like to "summarize" each call they've just finished. The stuff they say about folks is hilarious most times. It also gives me information about who is dangerous in town and what areas. THAT is why I listen to the scanner to begin with. To know what's going on around me and what to avoid. They took all that away by encryption except for fire/amb calls. Recording this old analog channel reveals a lot of important stuff too. WS1080 records in the background while scanning so even if I don't hear them live? I will check later.

What do you mean records in the background? If it is not received while scanning g, it does not record. If the scanner happens to be on another channel, it doesn't record.

Mark
WS1095/536/436/996P2/HP1e/HP2e/996XT/325P2/396XT/PRO668/PSR800/PRO652

From the manual Page 32:
Recording and Playback
Your scanner features a powerful audio recording
system that captures transmissions that occur on
selected Objects to the MicroSD card using the high
quality, industry standard .AU audio file format.
For example, a 4GB MicroSD card with a very large
scanning configuration (e.g., 500 MB) still leaves room
for over 50 hours of recording time and thousands
of recorded transmissions! Here are just a few of the
things you can do with the audio recording system:
•
Record all transmissions that occur on talkgroups
or channels that are of interest to you for later
review.
•
Perform attended or unattended** searches for
new frequencies, automatically storing audio with
frequency information for all transmissions found
while searching.
•
Record all transmissions that occur on ALL
talkgroups or channels, providing an instant recall
function to replay a prior transmission that was
missed or unintelligible.
Audio recording is not enabled by default.
If you're scanning, hear other stuff and THAT object you're recording gets traffic? it's still being recorded in the background. It's not like a Tree in the Forest falling, nobody heard it so it never happened. I've been listening to stuff I've missed during the day since I got it in Oct 2014.

I recently started recording overnight and sometimes I review it the next day. I too have a BCD436HP with the default card and so far I haven't removed any files, but I will soon. I need to be more selective when recording. I'll probably start recording more when the radio isn't with me.

I have 10 scanners (at least) that are recording 24x7 at any one time.
All of the scanners have a different 'mix' of frequencies and systems they're monitoring so I can always find one that has a complete set of communications for any event.

I'm using ScanRec Pro and that does VOX recording, broken into 1 hour segments on the hour.
That comes to a total of at least 1440 log & audio files per month, per scanner.

So ..... 14,400 per month for 10 scanners. (I have 12 Terabytes of hard drives per computer)

The archives are saved for six months. (86,400 files for 10 scanners).
Sometimes more than 10

So ................ I don't have time to listen to all of them.
Just selected ones.

The logs are saved forever for certain events and activity. Many are 20 years old or more.

In fact, here's an event from more than 25 years ago that I still have. (News, EMS, Police, etc.)
I used to have an audio file of it on Zippyshare but that has since expired.
Martin anniversary

I normally only save them for the six months.
Which is typically long enough for investigations to take place etc.

I also have people who contact me for specific recordings for specific dates and times.

Rich

Edit: By the way, I also use the logging function to figure out the activity on certain frequencies, agencies, and systems.

i used to record off the scanner to a vox recorder. the audio recording feature in the gre psr 800 is like comparing windows 10 to dos. got it recording 24/7 for early morning activity
im always recording itac, utac, vtac, local pd channel 2, norad

i used to record off the scanner to a vox recorder. the audio recording feature in the gre psr 800 is so much better, giving you the time frequency, talkgroup, doesn't always give the nac or radio id though. got it recording 24/7 for early morning activity
im always recording itac, utac, vtac, local pd channel 2, norad[/QUOTE]

HopperD, I never answered one part of your question: no I never listened to the stuff I recoded, so I stopped!

I record my VHF Fire Dispatch and also the trunked Dispatch and FG talkgroups, and I usually play it back at least every couple of days. Lets me keep track of what went on overnight with other Departments while the pager was closed or while I was gone and out of range. I have an ulterior motive too as our Dispatch has occasionally been prone to goofs in the past and whenever called on this, their own recordings were "unavailable" due to an "unresolved glitch" in their system. I read that as meaning they are not going to take responsibility for their mistakes, so if something serious ever happens as a result of their boo-boos, at least there will be some sort of a record of what really happened. Probably not admissible, but if it exists, there is the possibility of it getting out to the media, which might cause them to reconsider doing the right thing.