I live in the Dallas area and would like to buy a scanner and was hoping I could get some insight here.
I want to scan the local police departments and just know what is going on. I would also like to keep track of the weather when it becomes severe.
I here I have to buy a special type of scanner for the Dallas area. Can anyone give any suggestions
thanks for your help
Without knowing exactly where in the Dallas/DFW area you are, it's hard to specify exactly what you really need. If you have not already, you may want to drop in on the
DFWScan Yahoo group & read through some of the past messages to get some more ideas.
For this area, we don't have a lot of digital, yet, but it's on the way. Digital scanners, new, are about $500 or so, although you may find a used one for sale here in the classifieds, or on Ebay, for much less. Other than the decision whether or not to buy digital, or just an analog scanner, there's nothing special required.
The following DFW metro area agencies are either digital, or I have heard/read of plans for them to convert to digital over the next few years:
Grand Prairie Public TRS (mixed digital/analog; fire & police are digital)
Mansfiekd TRS (mixed digital/analog; fire & police are digital)
Texas DPS Region I (includes North Central TX), as well as a most of the other DPS Regions statewide.
Parker County P25 TRS (they also have a none digital LTR sys still in use, but the P25 system is digital)
A number of small federal systems (such as a
system at the Joint Reserve Base in Ft Worth), some federal agencies that are not trunked, but use digital communications on conventional frequencies.
DFW Airport uses a Provoice system. There is no scanner available that will monitor Provoice. Period.
Frisco P25 (this digital system is still in the construction/phase, but when complete, Frisco will move from the Plano system to the new digital one)
East Texas Medical Center- This system is analog at present, but has plans to convert to fully digital (P25) in the future.
There has also been speculation that other currently analog trunked radio systems, such as McKinney, Plano, or Garland, may, at some point, if funding can be obtained, upgrade one or more of their systems to digital.
For digital use now, your two best choices at present are either the PSR500 (handheld) or PSR600 (a base/mobile version for use in your vehicle or home). These two allow you to enter & use the
NAC code employed on digital, but conventional frequencies, such as DPS. Uniden's BCD396T (handheld) & BCD996T (base/mobile) will also handle the digital, conventional or trunked, but do not allow the use of the NAC codes.
I have omitted the Pro-96 & Pro-2096 from Radio Shack. As
lugoffman has noted, there is quite a bit of LTR use in this area. Neither of those units does LTR, and neither will trunk track in the 700mhz range. (The discontiinued predecessor Uniden models, BC296D & BC796D would handle the digital systems as well, but also would not utilize the NAC codes, nor could they deal with 700mhz trunking. More information on each scanner's
Wiki page.
If you want to forego the digital for now, then consider one of the following analog trunk tracking scanners (HH=handheld, b/m=a base/mobile model):
Uniden: BC246T (hh), BR330T (hh, discontinued, but worth looking for); BCT-15 (b/m)
GRE: PSR300 (hh) or PSR400 (b/m)
Radio Shack: Pro-164 (hh) and Pro-163 (b/m)
See the Analog Trnktrackers Wiki
page for links to more information. There are a few other, older, scanners that would work as well. Be sure to look for one that indicates it is likely to survive
rebanding. The Pro-97 (hh) & Pro-2055 (b/m), though good scanners, have been omitted, since neither, apparently, can be updated for this.
All of the suggested scanners will let you monitor the weather and/or storm spotters.
