Bed Side Radio Set Up

I need to find a better way to organize the radios beside my bed ... there are a few Minitor pagers, XTS3000/2500 radios and a 346xt not in the photo, along with three MT1000s obscured in the back of that pile, with two UV-82s back there as well. I grab them out the back as I head out the door in the middle of the night if I need them.

Sometimes some situations beg for improvement and well it just not going to happen... :-0

Seriously that a nice collection of radios.

mcscanner said:

Sometimes some situations beg for improvement and well it just not going to happen... :-0 )

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Yea, my next solution is just building a rack from scratch, while hunting down smaller chargers. One of my Astro Saber chargers is the old huge charger. "#5" has a 3rd party batter that charges through a side plug which I love, it takes up no space, and the 5500 mAh battery lasts forever. I may try and find an MT1000 gang charger for the four MT1000s and two spare batteries, or hunt down four used NTN4666B chargers since all my MT1000 chargers are the space hog chargers.

If I could just make all the radios "wirelessly charge" I could save a massive amount of space.

Sorry man... On reading my post again I came off harsher than I intended. My bad.

I would say it a good arrangement. Stepped front to back and spread left to right.

sefrischling said:

I need to find a better way to organize the radios beside my bed ... there are a few Minitor pagers, XTS3000/2500 radios and a 346xt not in the photo, along with three MT1000s obscured in the back of that pile, with two UV-82s back there as well. I grab them out the back as I head out the door in the middle of the night if I need them.

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I always felt strange the few times I mentioned occasionally having 4 scanners in the bedroom. I separated mine to the four corners, and would go crazy with them bunched up like that.

rwier said:

I separated mine to the four corners, and would go crazy with them bunched up like that.

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They are next to my bed (two directly behind my bed, on the top of my bed frame) so I can grab what I need as I am heading for the door was still 90% asleep. They go in the same spot every day, every night, so I just pick up what I need without looking.

While some have overlapping programming, they sit on different zones so there is no futzing with anything, no required thinking. At night I typically take most of them off scan and leave them on one channel. When I hear whatever wakes me up, I can throw it in scan as I head for my truck.

By the way ... who's to say having four scanners in your bedroom doesn't make you a tad crazy? We'll just call it 'eccentric'

Good Lord and I thought the 3 scanners I have going at night was a lot and it's just a hobby. That is one cool setup!! thanks for sharing!!

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one infected with the dreaded "NMR" disease!

Nota bene: Need More Radios

I take it there is no wife in the picture. That's an awful lot of radios for a bed side stand. I can see this in a office but bedside? Sorry just point out what I see.


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wise871 said:

I take it there is no wife in the picture.

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Single Dad, three kids. My daughter, who is nearly 16 , also chases news and has her own radios, my 11 year old also has his own radio (he's odd, he likes to listen to the Med channels).

That said, mother of my kids was with me while I was the chief photographer at a daily newspaper, so even with a newborn I had two Minitor II pagers next to my bed, along with a lowband and UHF portable and a desktop scanner for the rest back then.

Now that I monitor two different State Police troops on a P25 800 system, and two immediately local Towns (town/city) on a separate P25 800 system, along with stuff on 33mhz, 46mhz, VHF , UHF, and a UHF P25 Federal trunked system, each radio has its own job. My office is a desk about 20 feet from this table, I had it on my desk for a while, but was a pain in the @$$ to get up all night to grab a radio rather than just lean over.

Shooting news does not stop when you go to bed.

That setup must generate some heat. Have one Saber and a scanner I keep close, but everything else is in other rooms.

Lot of money there too....Motorola makes good gear.
Thank you for sharing.

That makes since, thanks for the explanation.


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PACNWDude said:

Motorola makes good gear.

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Scanners don't seem to respond well to being smacked around repeatedly , being outside in the snow, driving rain, the occasional hurricane, sub-zero temperatures and getting in the path of a spray from a fire hose. Not to mention audio clarity is far superior ,especially in very loud environments, to any scanner.

It is also just easier to clone over systems, when you hear "Meet me on 3" you can just click over to 3 and follow the conversation rather than screwing with a scanner. Makes a big difference when you're looking for what you need to shoot at hectic scenes following Police/Fire conversations.

Got a PM asking about the pink tape on the antennas ... the answer is simple ... When I hop out of bed and go running , those are the three primary radios for my immediate coverage area that I grab.

They are an 800mhz XTS2500, that can scans two different 800 systems at once, an XTS3000 VHF and an XTS3000 in UHF. These three are set up differently than the other radios, to allow me more flexibility in what I need for my immediate coverage area. Each zone is set up to quickly access local coverage usage, such as Tac and Fireground channels. As I'd never hop out of bed running for something 50 miles away, these are just the grab-no-go radios for roughly a 25 mile radius and the pink tape makes it easier to grab them.