was referred here by someone on a YT thread. New to the scanner world so excuse me in advance if I ask what seems to be an "everyone knows that" question. I have to buy one here in the near future for monitoring the Wilson, Karnes, and DeWitt county Sheriff radios (I'm a County Contractor). Looks like 2 counties are analog on one is digital so I got some "figgerin" to do...
Welcome, MT, from the Dallas area,
For
Wilson County, it appears that the Sheriff's office uses their dispatch channel in both analog and digital mode, so a digital scanner would indeed be needed.
Karnes County does show analog at the present, however, they are licensed to use digital. I don't know if they plan to do that, but they are licensed to. They are also licensed for MOTOTRBO (again, no idea of their plans, and no scanner on the market will decode this format).
For
Dewitt County, the Sheriff's dispatch channel, as well as Yoakum FD, are digital. Yoakum Police show to be digital as well, but encryption use is noted. No scanner will decode encrypted transmissions. However, if encryotion is not full time, you could hear anything transmitted "in the clear".
Texas DPS is also digital, if that is a possible consideration.
For current model scanners, you have a number of choices. The two major manufacturers are Uniden and GRE. You'll find comments pro & con on both here in the forums. Many of these boil down to the 'Pepsi vs Coke', or Ford vs Chevy type of personal preferences. For the counties you list, any of them will do the job.
Handheld (portable) models:
GRE:
PSR-500,
Pro-106 (made by GRE, sold in Radio Shack stores; identical to the 500 functionally, difference is in front panel layout and R/S includes less accessories)
Uniden:
BCD396XT
Base/mobile:
GRE:
PSR-600,
Pro-197 (made by GRE, sold in Radio Shack stores; identical to the 600 functionally. GRE includes the pc interface cable, R/S does not)
Uniden:
BCD996XT
Digital scanners with a "user friendly" interface:
GRE:
PSR-800
Uniden:
Home Patrol-1
These two scanners have the RadioReference database loaded on a micro-SD card, and can be programmed via a menu system (PSR-800) or by city name (Home Patrol) or zip code.
