Analog Scanner for South Bay Area?

[drwonga]

Hi All!

I'm totally new to scanning and my only experience has been from internet streams. I had a couple questions:

I am debating, is worthwhile to get a handheld, physical scanner, compared to just listening to streams online?

In the Santa Clara area, do I have to get a digital scanner, or can I get by with an analog trunking scanner?

If I'm listening from within my apartment, what could I expect to hear using a standard rubber ducky antenna?

Thanks all!

 

[WA1ATA]

IMO, an analog trunking scanner doesn't make much sense. I'd either go cheap with just conventional analog ($80 for Uniden 72XLT at Fry's, $130 to add 800MHz capability); or then go full digital trunking. Uniden will soon start shipping a new product called the Home Patrol 1. $500 range. You can find some very extensive discussion of the Home Patrol on the forum.

Most public service organizations are still conventional in the South Bay. Other conventional systems include VTA, shopping malls and stores, and GMRS/FRS.

Unfortunately for you, the city of Santa Clara has one of the few trunking systems. You can plug in the various freqs of the trunking system and when things are slow you can monitor things pretty good, but during active periods the conversations jump back and forth between freqs, making it nearly impossible to hear both sides of conversations.

The westside Santa Clara Sherriff's freq is digital for part of the day, so that can't be monitored by an analog radio.

When in the South Bay I use a cheapo Uniden 95XLT to listen to a few of the SJ PD channels, Los Gatos PD, and Campbell PD, as well as the tower freq at SJC. Sunnyvale and Mountain View should be pretty strong for you in Santa Clara.

These I can all receive easily with a rubber ducky antenna from inside my house, but that's at 1000' elevation. Even when tooling around in my car, most of what I want to hear comes in strong with just the rubber ducky.

The CHP, down at 42.5MHz don't come in well with the small rubber duck antennas. If you are within a few miles of a CHP cruiser, you will probably pickup their VHF extender, especially when they are out of their car on a traffic stop.

My suggestion is to pickup a cheap conventional scanner and then move on to the more expensive digital trunking scanners only if you catch the bug.

Charlie

 

[cousinkix1953]

The PRO-164 scanner will handle the analog Santa Clara trunked system. These can be found on line and EBAY for $100 - $125 most of the time.

Sometimes the San Jose CHP is in the repeater mode and you'll hear both sides of the conversation on 42.5 mhz. They simulcast on 453.825 once in awhile too.

The sheriff's detective's channel 156.15 mhz and San Jose PD MERGE channel 453.xxx mhz are also P-25. The 460 mhz systems are analog.

The San Mateo county sheriff is also digital; but you're gonna need a decent UHF outdoor antenna to hear them with a decent signal.

Digital scanners aren't worth the expense, not yet any way. There must be about 5 things that you can hear. I wouldn't buy one until they actived a new P-25 system in the Santa Clara Valley and you hear it on a new scanner. Everything could be encrypted just like Orange county. The sheriff and the city secret police departments have been off limits for a few years now.

They might be worth $500, if you make regular trips to Los Angeles. A pair of banks can be programmed for the LAPD.

 

[Eng74]

If you can swing it go with a digital. HRO, there is one in Oakland, has the GRE PSR-500 for $399.00 and Radio Shack has their Pro-106 for $379.00 on sale. They are the same radio but with the GRE you get better support from GRE with updates for the radio and it has the programing cable and the AC adapter. The one plus with RS is if you get their credit card you can get the 106 and have one year to pay it off with no intrest. If you want to stay with just anolog wwait a little while and the GRE PSR-310 will be out and it is a analog version of the 500 and they will be going for about $200. I haven't used one you might want to look into the GRE PSR-700 oor the RS version the Pro-107. My favorite anolog scanner I have right now is the Uniden 346XT. Works nice in SF and my last two trips up there at night I have sat in the room getting radio id's for SFFD.

 

[SCPD]

Frys has the UNIDEN BCD396T on close out for $299.90

FRYS.com | Uniden

 

[Stealthguy05]

I'm in sunnyvale and all i really need right now/ use are the BC95XLT and BC350c they work fine for day to day scanning in Santa Clara county. I recommend your scanner being 800mhz capable if you want to get AMR medic 91. As for Santa Clara City fire, there is a simulcast of Fire 1 on 153.9650 It has long repeater hangtime which gets annoying after a while though

 

[cousinkix1953]

I'm in sunnyvale and all i really need right now/ use are the BC95XLT and BC350c they work fine for day to day scanning in Santa Clara county. I recommend your scanner being 800mhz capable if you want to get AMR medic 91. As for Santa Clara City fire, there is a simulcast of Fire 1 on 153.9650 It has long repeater hangtime which gets annoying after a while though

Santa Clara city fire occasionally uses 154.44 mhz too, which is the water and power repeater in the day time.

I still wouldn't buy a P-25 scanner at any price until the system is operational. Other people will let you know if everything is still listenable. Digital scanners won't be worth a damn if Santa Clara gets paranoid like the Orange county law enforcement agencies. You'll end up selling it at a big loss.

There will be a lot of improvements and firmware updates, by the time that most of us need a digital P-25 scanner any way. 7734 can freeze over in the meantime. Most of those digital scanners sound like a cheap single-sideband CB radio with a locked transmit clarifier. Try getting more than two people tuned in normally, so they don't sound funny...

 

[drwonga]

Thanks for all the suggestions! Looks like I will have to research a bit more and find out about some of these scanners you have all kindly recommended. I think I will be leaning more towards analog trunking for now, based on some of the comments I've seen so far.

Is it worth it to use the included antenna first, before trying out others?

 

[cousinkix1953]

Thanks for all the suggestions! Looks like I will have to research a bit more and find out about some of these scanners you have all kindly recommended. I think I will be leaning more towards analog trunking for now, based on some of the comments I've seen so far.

Is it worth it to use the included antenna first, before trying out others?

Those rubber duckie antennas don't have much range. You'll hear the repeaters just fine; but car-to-car simplex gets hairy at times. Even those telescoping after market antennas are an improvement. $10 - $20 on EBAY.

The PRO-164 is about the best option for what you want right now...

 

[trooperdude]

The PRO-164 scanner will handle the analog Santa Clara trunked system. These can be found on line and EBAY for $100 - $125 most of the time.

Santa Clara City has not rebanded yet, so make sure whatever you buy will do the 800mhz rebanding tables, if you still want to listen to Santa Clara in January.

Otherwise you buy a brick that can only listen to Med91 and VMC.

 

[cousinkix1953]

The Pro-164 is the rebanded version of the older Pro 97...