College Park Police - helping out a new guy

[AudiA4_20T]

Hello everyone,

I'm a student at UMD and often am worried about the crime around here. Usually there will be a crime, but the alert won't come for hours and that's a scary thought.

I'm not really sure what channel the CP police use and am very much a newbie to radios. Do I need something that simply supports Project25 single channel trunking? Or is there more to it?

Also, I know that there are Auxilary Police here to help the College Park police so maybe the radio system isn't as advanced. I'm not really sure.

Any help is greatly appreciated. TIA.

 

[ka3jjz]

Well according to our database, the UMCP system is a simple type 2 analog - see this link (anything in blue is a link of some sort)

University of Maryland (College Park) Trunking System, College Park, Maryland - Scanner Frequencies

However we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start at the beginning. In the blue toolbar under the Scanner Master ad, float your mouse over Wiki and click on Wiki Home. This will take you to our online wiki, which AFAIK is the largest radio-related wiki in the world. In the upper right hand corner, you should see a purple (Ravens go!!) area called 'Links for Newcomers'. This is where I would start. Bookmark the glossary - no matter what technical hobby you might pick, there's always a sometimes bewildering amount of terminology that might sound Greek at first.

Now as to what radio to get - if it were me, and I wanted to hear both the UMCP and PG county systems, there's only one radio that can currently do it - the PSR-800 from GRE. There is a wiki page devoted to that radio here....

PSR-800 - The RadioReference Wiki

I mention PG county simply because I used to work near where you are, and can remember seeing them down in that neck of the woods a lot...an unsubstantiated rumor suggests that GRE will be coming out with a base version of the 800 around Xmas.

Keep in mind that we have a dedicated GRE forum here - that's the best place to ask specific questions about this radio...

GRE Scanners - The RadioReference.com Forums

That should do for now...feel free to ask more questions - lots of folks around here can help

best regards..Mike