iam new to this scanning thing. i recently move to washington from nyc. i seems as if i move smack in the middle of an hot spot. North East area. it seems as though every time i look out my window i see mpd vice every where. there's alwasy young guys hanging across the street from my home but it looks as though there just standing around to me. I want to know whats going on. I would like to buy a scanner but i dont know which one to buy. I want a pretty good one,that can pretty much pick up any signal. it will be greatly appreciated if i can get some help. thanks
First off, welcome to RR. Before I begin, anything in blue or underlined is a link.
To begin the consideration of what scanner to buy, carefully read this article from our Wiki site....
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Scanner_decision
As to frequencies for the DC area, there are 2 sites - one from our online database, another is an external website. you will want to bookmark both for future reference, even if you don't fully understand all the data presented here...
http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?stid=11
http://www.davidschoenberger.net/scanning/dc/washington.htm
The Metro DC PD is on a digital system, so you will need a compatible trunktracker. The various models are listed here. Just click on the model number of interest, and you will be taken to an article that describes it. Notice that many models require the purchase of a USB to serial converter - assuming you have a newer PC that doesn't have serial ports. When you have made a decision as to what scanner you are getting, that can be addressed separately
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Category:Digital_Scanners
The DC area is famous for having so much radio stuff floating around, that most scanners have issues with overloading. This condition won't damage the radio in any way, but it does tend to cause problems - mostly hearing things like pagers and FM stations in bands where they don't belong, or losing sensitivity in some (or many) different bands. The Uniden models seem to do a little better in this regard then the GRE or RS models. Even the radios used by law enforcement sometimes gets nailed with this problem, so we aren't alone in this.
Finally a few guidelines are in order...
* Questions about programming scanners for the DC area should be placed here;
* Questions about a specific model (RS, GRE or Uniden) should be placed in their respective forums - in other words, we have forums devoted to each manufacturer/distributor
* Questions about software (there's lots of that) should be placed in the software forum
It's generally frowned upon to place the same question in more than one forum. Become familiar with all 3 parts of this site - the wiki, forums and database. This is a very powerful site, and it takes time to become familiar with all three, so take your time.
73 and once again, welcome Mike
