New to Scanning looking for advice.

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greywolf123

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Mar 24, 2009
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I'm looking to get back into scanning, I currently live in the Chicago Uptown area and was wondering what kind of equipment I might need.
I would like to listen to Police/Fire as well as Marine and Air. I'm currently using SDR for police but having a hard time figuring out fire and air and was thinking a scanner would probably be easier.

Thank you in advance for the advice.

Owen
 

N9JIG

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CFD is P25 digital for dispatch so you need a digital scanner for them. CPD (for now anyway), marine and aircraft channels are analog so any scanner will work for them. A digital scanner will work for all of them since they also cover analog channels.

ZIP Code scanners (HomePatrol, 436/536/SDSx00) are easy to program but you get less control of exactly what to listen to. A regular programmable scanner (BCD325P2 or BCD996P2 for example) can be set up with exactly what you want if you are willing and able to do the programming. Some scanner dealers also offer programming services, these usually include all the Police, Fire & EMS in the county, so in your case would include the burbs as well.
 

K9DAK

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Rich is spot on... but there are also Whistler / GRE / Radio Shack scanners that will work well too. The PSR-800, PRO-668, WS-1088 come to mind as handhelds, as well as the older PRO-106 / WS-1040 models. There are base / mobile equivalents to most of those. And the most recent models, the TRX-1 and TRX-2 would be great too, also giving you NXDN capability if you need that.
 

Ncfirewire

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CFD is P25 digital for dispatch so you need a digital scanner for them. CPD (for now anyway), marine and aircraft channels are analog so any scanner will work for them. A digital scanner will work for all of them since they also cover analog channels.

ZIP Code scanners (HomePatrol, 436/536/SDSx00) are easy to program but you get less control of exactly what to listen to. A regular programmable scanner (BCD325P2 or BCD996P2 for example) can be set up with exactly what you want if you are willing and able to do the programming. Some scanner dealers also offer programming services, these usually include all the Police, Fire & EMS in the county, so in your case would include the burbs as well.
The 436/536/sds100& 200 can also be set up exactly as you want by doing the programming
 
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