Noob in Barrow county

[donny8594]

My wife and I want to scan Barrow police and fire but have no idea what scanner we need. Any help on a scanner choice and where to purchase? Thanks in advance>

 

[MTS2000des]

Barrow county is currently on a digital VHF P25 trunking system, however, this is slated to change to become a P25 phase 2 system on 700MHz by the end of the year, so plan on buying a scanner capable of Phase 2.

Be warned, that police/law enforcement talkgroups are encrypted, and cannot be monitored on any scanner. Fire and EMS and others like animal control are not encrypted, but that can always change at their discretion.

 

[rapidcharger]

The 58 deputy Barrow County Sheriffs Office uses an unnecessary trunking system and they're purposely concealing their radio traffic and activities with encryption which is making a lot of people wonder what they have to hide. That can't be monitored. The county is about to spend millions more on a second trunking system because the first one doesn't work good according to the people who use it.

For the time being, you can listen to the fire and ems dispatch simulcast on 154.16
and is not encrypted. To listen to that, the simplest cheap scanner will do. If you want, you could even use something like the Baofeng two way radios which cost under $40 to listen to that one frequency.

I wouldn't put a lot of money into it because everything is subject to change without notice.

 

[donny8594]

thanks for the answers. guess we will wait for now.

 

[rapidcharger]

If you wait much longer, you may not have anything to listen to at all. But for the time being, this will tune you into 154.16 where you can hear fire and ems calls. As uneventful as it may be for barrow county.
There are a few other frequencies you could put in there to listen to the dispatches simulcasting in neighboring counties also if you wanted to.