You might find that a old commercial motorola or Kenwood portable will have FAR Louder audio than Any of the scanners available, that's why many Railfans use them for monitoring on trackside. Or a earpiece might give you the extra volume.
Motorola. There are cheaper models, like a CP 200 that would work great for railfanning too.
With all the other microelectronics in most scanners, the audio amps are just not capable of much over 500-600mw of audio output to listen at trackside, unless you use some sort of earbud. Commercial portables are Designed for higher audio outputs as much as 2 watts of audio.
They Are available on the used market in Vhf as well. In fact, there's a Xts3000 VHF in the Classifieds here, on RR I saw, the could be programmed with all the AAR channels. You just have to nose around, you'll find them.
True. DID You see the link to the XTS 3000 I sent you from the Classifieds ? Great price too !
Ooops, I meant the OP.
Yeah, that'll work if you stay in your vehicle, but doesn't help much if you're on foot.
Driving a big rig I drove along miles of railroad tracks and have been in and out of rail yards as well. I never felt the need to get up close and personal with trains and their crews. I was able to hear plenty of chatter from a safe distance that way. So, I never took my scanner out of my truck and walked around railroad property with it.Yeah, that'll work if you stay in your vehicle, but doesn't help much if you're on foot.
