Public Safety Home Monitoring Hobby

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rakotter

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Mesa. Arizona
Im guessing i cant be the only one who's hobby is monitoring the traffic cam, CAD and radio, for fun.

My girlfriend thinks its a weird hobby, but hey, at least its not expensive.
Well, i take that back.

Who else has this hobby and gets those funny looks from your wife?

Heres my public safety monitoring site, good for warning my buddies over social media before they head to work:
For the Phoenix area
Rays Public Safety and Monitoring


Cheers
 

DJ11DLN

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Mar 23, 2013
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2,068
Location
Mudhole, IN
Well my lady friend did not know what scanners were or what they were about when I got back into the hobby several years ago. Since then she's become somewhat addicted to hearing the traffic and the amount of awareness of happenings around the area that comes with it. She has her own scanner now, I keep it updated (since she is admittedly "technologically-challenged," LOL) and answer questions when she hears some bit of jargon not covered in the pages of "cheat sheets" I provided for her. She especially likes hearing my voice when my VFD is out on a run.:wink:

IMHO, your girlfriend is the weird one, not you.:cool:
 

KR7CQ

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May 20, 2013
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Phoenix
My wife finds it interesting, you just have to break them in easy, and make sure to explain what certain things mean because it's all Chinese to them. Give them a translation when something happens....don't push radios too much at first...work them in slowly.
 

Phoenix805

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Aug 1, 2009
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481
Location
NW Phoenix and NW Ohio
My wife has never complained about my scanner habit and in fact talked me into spending the extra money for a digital/trunking scanner 10 years ago when I wanted one but had trouble justifying the cost. I always have my handheld scanner when we're out and I never gave it much thought as to how much she listens, but she occasionally asks questions (like what was that address, or where's station 46, or what's a 10-17, etc.) so I know she listens too.
 

ActionJackson

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Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
60
Location
Fire HQ
My wife calls the scanner the "squawker". As KR stated I had to ease her in slowly explaining things that were going on around the neighborhood. Took her to a wildland fire and she totally loved hearing the aircraft talking to air attack (my buddy was the ATGS). As she saw the action and heard it on the radio I guess it finally clicked and now when we go on trips the scanner (RS PRO-163) is on in HER car and she has her HT in her bag so we have comms. The kicker was when she voiced her strong disappointment at our local law enforcement for going digi-encrypt and a pursuit ended in our next door neighbor's yard just three days after they flipped the switch. Gotta love a gal who backs you up in your hobby.
 

K9DAK

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Dec 16, 2010
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Wauconda, IL
Gladys & Abner

My wife had no clue what a scanner was until we got together. I've been scanning for over 40 years. But she got into it pretty quickly when we had a few incidents near our house that we heard about on the scanner. She now refers to us as Gladys & Abner (think Bewitched)... and was just as annoyed as I was when our new Lake County system came up about 95% ENC, just weeks after I bought my WS-1088!
 
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