What are the laws...

[Asmitty0010]

This may sound like a dumb question but i've been wanting to know and i think you guys can help. Is it illegal to use a Motorola (i.e. Astro Spectra) as your radio to listen to Fire/Police operations around your area? Will the radio work as a scanner if you were to diconnect/never connect the mic? How would I go about programming a radio like the one mentioned above?


Thanks!

 

[car2back]

This may sound like a dumb question but i've been wanting to know and i think you guys can help. Is it illegal to use a Motorola (i.e. Astro Spectra) as your radio to listen to Fire/Police operations around your area? Will the radio work as a scanner if you were to diconnect/never connect the mic? How would I go about programming a radio like the one mentioned above?


Thanks!

Is the Fire/Police operations on a trunked radio system? if so, then yes it's illegal, even if the radio is set to recieve only.

 

[n4voxgill]

it is no more illegal to listen with a motorola radio on a trunked system than a conventional. What is illegal is if the radio has to transmit a signal to affiliate with the system. You would have to find someone, usually a radio shop that has the correct hard and software to program your radio. They could tell you if it must affilliate. But the real bottom line is, radios make poor scanners. they are very limited in scan capability and can't change bands. A scanner is much better to just listen as you have multiple bands and almost unlimited number of channels or talkgroups to listen to.

 

[xevious]

A friend of mine has a Motorola radio that he uses to listen to a trunked system(analog), but he had a jumper plug installed where the microphone goes so it wont transmit & it works just fine.

 

[jparks29]

yep,coming from a guy who used and uses motorola and ge/ericsson/comnet/macom/flavoroftheday equipment, if you have to carry a portable, then yeah, it's nice to have everything in it, especially in high RF environments.......if you're using it JUST as a scanner, stick to a scanner, you'll get a lot less hassles from it, and won't have to worry about getting 20 questions from your local PD as to why you have "one of thier radios"

 

[denseglow]

I've had a MTX825 to monitor Toledo's TRS, he asked me why I had it, I told him and he didn't seem to care. It seems like the smaller departments would care more.

 

[kb2vxa]

Hi Asmitty and all,

Rather than dancing I prefer to give specific answers to your specific questions.

"Is it illegal to use a Motorola (i.e. Astro Spectra) as your radio to listen to Fire/Police operations around your area?"

In New Jersey it is perfectly legal regardless of the receiver employed. The exception is using a radio in the comission of a crime, the state statute mirrors the federal. I guess our state legistators like redundancy and don't know that it's the duty of local and state law enforcement to enforce federal law as well. (;->) In any case I wouldn't put myself at the mercy of local ordinances, for that reason I don't monitor public service frequencies in public if you know what I mean.

"Will the radio work as a scanner if you were to diconnect/never connect the mic?"
With few exceptions tranceivers will receive without the microphone plugged in. As for scanning capability, that depends if it has scanning capability. (;->)

"How would I go about programming a radio like the one mentioned above?"
Either buy some very expensive proprietary software or have someone program it for you.