I'm totally clueless about this sort of thing, so any advice would be appreciated.
Growing up, my dad had a handheld police/fire scanner and whenever we would hear a siren or hear about something local going on, we would flip it on and just see what was going on. Well, I was just talking to him on the phone, some chicken houses were on fire and he told me to get on my iPhone and use the scanner app and listen to it if I wanted (I recently showed him how I could do it on my iPhone) and I asked if he was doing it on the handheld himself, and he said no - it broke down about a year ago and he hasn't been able to listen for things since.
Well, an idea for his Christmas gift instantly popped into my head.
We live in the upstate SC area, Seneca to be exact where he is located (I'm up the road in Anderson).
What would be a decent, basic, cheapish handheld scanner to get for him to use in this area? It doesn't have to be anything fancy. For the most part he would just keep it on the very local channels and just flip it on when he heard something going on. It doesn't need any bells or whistles, just the ability to pick up the police/fire type of stuff for the area.
What would be something good to look for? Is it possible to get anything that would work for these basic uses in the $50 range or so? Like I said, any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Growing up, my dad had a handheld police/fire scanner and whenever we would hear a siren or hear about something local going on, we would flip it on and just see what was going on. Well, I was just talking to him on the phone, some chicken houses were on fire and he told me to get on my iPhone and use the scanner app and listen to it if I wanted (I recently showed him how I could do it on my iPhone) and I asked if he was doing it on the handheld himself, and he said no - it broke down about a year ago and he hasn't been able to listen for things since.
Well, an idea for his Christmas gift instantly popped into my head.
We live in the upstate SC area, Seneca to be exact where he is located (I'm up the road in Anderson).
What would be a decent, basic, cheapish handheld scanner to get for him to use in this area? It doesn't have to be anything fancy. For the most part he would just keep it on the very local channels and just flip it on when he heard something going on. It doesn't need any bells or whistles, just the ability to pick up the police/fire type of stuff for the area.
What would be something good to look for? Is it possible to get anything that would work for these basic uses in the $50 range or so? Like I said, any help would be appreciated. Thanks!