It was 1984-1985 and I learned DBase 3 and DBase 4 made a nice green screen page to work with.
How long have you been scanning?
- Thread starter KC0QNB
- Start date
Around 1970. Started with tunable radio, then crystal, then programmable. Had Regency, Bearcat, Radio Shack, and now Uniden 536 and SDS 200. Worked Law Enforcement for 28 years. Police and Sheriff were on VHF Low Band. Then PD went to VHF Hi and used crystal scanner to read Sheriff. Then everybody went to 800 before eventually going to P25 700. Patrol vehicles used 4 channel , then 8 channel before going to current Motorola. Not sure how many channels now. Also had 23 channel CB Radios in vehicle. Lot of water under bridge since then.
Since about 1974. Think I had that same radio. 5 bands on left and 5 more on the right with a slide switch in the middle. I'd been monitoring a few years before that, HF SWL on the Telefunken console and a few other multiband portables.
That Wards radio was the best - listened to CB, WWV, the somewhat overly friendly youth oriented Radio Moscow and other DX.
The VHF was what set me off to go further. I would hear Hams on 2m commuting to and from tech jobs in Silicon Valley. Local police & fire. Mobile phones. The CHP on low band. I upgraded to a Bearcat III so I could hear multiple channels hands free. Then got a Bearcat 210 when it's solder joints were barely cooled off. The '210 was the only scanner until the Radio Shack 2004 came out and I was gifted that one since most of my hobby money was paying for day care and diapers at the time.
Spent some time with a GRE PSR (??) for its SD card recorder and easy PC programming.
Digital encryption made me swap out the 2004 for a BC996P2. That one is still running on the bench, feeding a Broadcastify channel. Listening now is a SDS200, SDS100 and a Homepatrol2 in various
I started in the radio hobby in 1969 with a radio that didn't scan. It was a tunable handheld Radio Shack called the "Patrolman." The performance was poor as it received a wide range of frequencies no matter how careful you were trying to pinpoint something. The squealing was extremely annoying. I started to make a little money my first year of college so in 1970 I bought a Regency VHF High Band 8 channel crystal controlled scanner. The limited channel capacity and not getting VHF Low were limiting. A High Low model came out, but I didn't have the money to get one.
The next scanner was a 4 channel handheld Radio Shack scanner that had easy access to the crystals so I could crystal it up for use at work (Fire Prevention Technician -USFS-Kaibab NF). The entire eastern boundary of the Ranger District was part of the western boundary of the Coconino NF. Being able to hear them was productive.
I could not afford the BC-210 when it came out in 1976, but could when I transferred into a higher pay grad job. The BC-210 was my primary scanner from 1979 to the mid 80's when the BC-300 came along. From there I had a BC-100 handheld, which was my primary handheld until the GRE computer programable scanners came along around 2000. I prefer the GRE's as they seem quite intuitive. They were mainly handhelds. After the BC-300 took a dump, I bought the BC-780, which disappointed me with its slow tone search. From there my base station became the GRE PSR-600 and due to my rural/small town residence is working fine as my base station. There are two Type 2 systems in that I can receive from home, so I bought a BC325P2. I don't travel with it much as I find its operation to be overly complicated. I'm losing my cognitive functioning due to "injuries," which I won't elaborate about.
The next scanner was a 4 channel handheld Radio Shack scanner that had easy access to the crystals so I could crystal it up for use at work (Fire Prevention Technician -USFS-Kaibab NF). The entire eastern boundary of the Ranger District was part of the western boundary of the Coconino NF. Being able to hear them was productive.
I could not afford the BC-210 when it came out in 1976, but could when I transferred into a higher pay grad job. The BC-210 was my primary scanner from 1979 to the mid 80's when the BC-300 came along. From there I had a BC-100 handheld, which was my primary handheld until the GRE computer programable scanners came along around 2000. I prefer the GRE's as they seem quite intuitive. They were mainly handhelds. After the BC-300 took a dump, I bought the BC-780, which disappointed me with its slow tone search. From there my base station became the GRE PSR-600 and due to my rural/small town residence is working fine as my base station. There are two Type 2 systems in that I can receive from home, so I bought a BC325P2. I don't travel with it much as I find its operation to be overly complicated. I'm losing my cognitive functioning due to "injuries," which I won't elaborate about.
N6JPA
A Ham Radio Operator With too much frequency.
I was 8 years old. My brother had a CB base station and I had a Realisitic Patrolman radio. When he talked on the radio it would play on my radio. I thought that then I could talk to the Taylor, MI police. Of course, I didn't understand what was really going on.
MiCon
Mike
1966-ish. I won't bore you with the details. Similar to the other old-timers.
I did the same thing around 1990, I had a nice DBase3 setup that I stored all my frequencies in. I still have the floppy disk, I have no idea if it still works. I tried to upgrade to DBase 4 but for some reason I had a hard time with it so I never did it.
BinaryMode
Blondie Once Said To Call Her But Never Answerd
Circa 1996.
Prior to that I was very fascinated with two-way radio since about 10 when I got some Archer Space Patrol "walkie talkies" for Christmas. Back in middle school I remember asking the campus monitor how far her two-way radio went. I kept talking about it with a friend who told me he had two-way radios which could have been CBs. It was during this time of 1993 I had gotten RadioShack kits for Christmas to build receivers which I took to Edwards Air Force base with my dad to watch the space shuttle land (remember the space shuttle?)
But it all really started in high school while in JROTC where we all had to do a class presentation on a subject of our choosing. My friends in class did their subject on Ham radio and I was interested. My friend let me check out his scanner during lunch and I tried to grab the campus monitor's two-way radios.
I could never find a decent job so I could buy a scanner. Then one day a friend called me asking if I wanted to help weed beet fields for money. I said sure! And during that hot summer I weeded beet fields as far as the eye could see and bought my first scanner at a pawn shop, a Uniden Bearcat 55 XLT.
Latter I got better scanners at RadioShack and took one to school programed to the wireless microphone frequencies thanks to the book Police Call and had it connected to a mini tape recorder kept in my locker. To this day somewhere in my mess I have tapes of the pep rallies.
Heck, I even have a mini cassette tape of when John Glen went into space for the second time thanks to a NASA simulcast on a local Ham repeater.
About 2002 brought P25 voice and trunking and all my scanners were practically null and void. Doing research at the library I found the frequencies at the FCC's website and entered those into my scanner. To my dismay only heard digital noise crap. So I knew something else was at play here. Went back to the library and did some more research and found out the system was P25. So then I began looking for a scanner that could decode that. It was the Uniden BC296D with the card I needed. So I took a job delivering phone books during the very cold late December early January to damn near every house in town and earned exactly the amount of money I needed for the BC296D. Since I was so familiar with how the P25 trunked system worked with all the reading I did prior to getting the scanner, I never really needed the manual and went to hand programming the scanner immediately. I was very impressed hearing digital audio for the first time. Long story short, I showed a police officer my digital capable scanner and he wasn't impressed. LOL! Probably was told or thought nothing like that had ever existed and thus thought he was unmonitorable.
Anyway...
Prior to that I was very fascinated with two-way radio since about 10 when I got some Archer Space Patrol "walkie talkies" for Christmas. Back in middle school I remember asking the campus monitor how far her two-way radio went. I kept talking about it with a friend who told me he had two-way radios which could have been CBs. It was during this time of 1993 I had gotten RadioShack kits for Christmas to build receivers which I took to Edwards Air Force base with my dad to watch the space shuttle land (remember the space shuttle?)
But it all really started in high school while in JROTC where we all had to do a class presentation on a subject of our choosing. My friends in class did their subject on Ham radio and I was interested. My friend let me check out his scanner during lunch and I tried to grab the campus monitor's two-way radios.
I could never find a decent job so I could buy a scanner. Then one day a friend called me asking if I wanted to help weed beet fields for money. I said sure! And during that hot summer I weeded beet fields as far as the eye could see and bought my first scanner at a pawn shop, a Uniden Bearcat 55 XLT.
Latter I got better scanners at RadioShack and took one to school programed to the wireless microphone frequencies thanks to the book Police Call and had it connected to a mini tape recorder kept in my locker. To this day somewhere in my mess I have tapes of the pep rallies.
Heck, I even have a mini cassette tape of when John Glen went into space for the second time thanks to a NASA simulcast on a local Ham repeater.
About 2002 brought P25 voice and trunking and all my scanners were practically null and void. Doing research at the library I found the frequencies at the FCC's website and entered those into my scanner. To my dismay only heard digital noise crap. So I knew something else was at play here. Went back to the library and did some more research and found out the system was P25. So then I began looking for a scanner that could decode that. It was the Uniden BC296D with the card I needed. So I took a job delivering phone books during the very cold late December early January to damn near every house in town and earned exactly the amount of money I needed for the BC296D. Since I was so familiar with how the P25 trunked system worked with all the reading I did prior to getting the scanner, I never really needed the manual and went to hand programming the scanner immediately. I was very impressed hearing digital audio for the first time. Long story short, I showed a police officer my digital capable scanner and he wasn't impressed. LOL! Probably was told or thought nothing like that had ever existed and thus thought he was unmonitorable.
Anyway...
CcSkyEye
Member
Early 90"s when I was 11, maybe 12.
Saved my Birthday and Christmas money and Dad drove me to Best Buy for a BC147XLT.
Saved my Birthday and Christmas money and Dad drove me to Best Buy for a BC147XLT.
Mid 60's with an old Setwart-Warner dial, and it just went from there. I was about 10 when I started more seriously listening to what I could hear on the the radio. Way too many to mention thru out the years. It's been a blast honestly and still is!
It's about radio. It won't bore us.
One of the hams I know worked for Plectron until they closed up the factory the building is still there there was a engine rebuilder for a while now it is a collision repair center.
It's worth picking up a Plectron receiver if you have any analog systems of interest in your area. I have two that came from Ebay. One is on lowband, and the other is VHF-hi. There is very little left on lowband here in NJ - I used to turn it on during band openings hoping it would pick something up. By happy accident, the VHF-hi unit was on the frequency of an FD in the next county. I was amazed at the sensitivity just using the stock antenna - 18 miles away and full quieting. Is G&G Communications in NY still around? They repaired Plectrons and could re-chrystal them as well.
The Patrolman handhelds were usually two-band radios. AM broadcast and either VHF-hi or VHF-lo. I think there was a model with the aircraft band as well. The larger Patrolman portables performed a bit better, but still did not approach the selectivity of a crystal scanner or monitor receiver.
I only have an old GE monitor receiver that I picked up somewhere, and I had an old Metal Motorola speaker hooked up to it. If I remember, it was VHF Hi, it is in storage with all my other old radio stuff.
As a millennial, I'm probably one of the younger people here. I've been scanning the bands for the past 10 years. Started out interested to know what the lights and sirens were from the fire department. Eventually, I started searching the bands for other things to monitor. I love chasing trains and naturally have a scanner with. Spent a lot of time IDing stuff on the commercial bands. Another favorite is logging and tagging RIDs on the public safety system (ARMER) using UniTrunker. I kinda have been trying to get into listening to mediam wave AM radio, but been hit and miss there.
In 1978 I bought my first scanner anyone remember this beast.
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