Cowman
Member
Right now I've got a BC350C. It works, but it has some shortcomings that have been bugging me lately.
I basically scan everything... there's police, campus police, staties. There's also some fire/ems. I've actually met some people scanning for FRS signals(and replying with my own radio). I listen to air traffic, sometimes I grab some wireless gadget like one of my phones and try to pick it up just for the heck of it. Depends on what time of day it is, what I'm interested in at that moment, etc.
One of this scanner's "features" is that each of the banks except "private" comes pre-programmed with a bunch of frequencies. For one thing, almost none of them correspond to what I want to listen to, for another they often do correspond to stuff I don't want to hear. For example the local university's maintinance people use one of the pre-programed police frequencies. I can't delete it, only hit L/O every time I turn the unit on and it stops on one of those. So I'll be listeing to a life or death response to a car accident and suddeny hear "There's a clogged toilet over in Morgan hall..." I also hear the hospital pages which are just paging some number that means nothing to me.
The air/marine bank isn't even programmable. I didn't even know there were planes to listen to until I accidently got one on "search" mode. None of the frequencies in that bank do me any good.(and I'm not gonna even get into how akward programming this thing is) I really want to be able to permanently turn off anything pre-programmed(or not have anything pre-programmed at all) and just put in what I want manually.
I've basically been stuffing everything into the "private" bank and the police stuff into "police" it's kinda akward that way though. I'd like to have a bunch of different banks. Maybe one for police, one for campus police, one for fire/ems, others for other things, etc. It would be really cool if I could scan multiple banks (IE: police and fire/ems) at the same time but if I wanted to just listen to one of them.
I don't really need trunking, nobody here uses it yet that I know of. It might be nice to have if I take it out of town though.
I'm not gonna insist on alpha tagging but I'd really like that feature.
More banks is good, more channels are good. I may not ever use thousands but I've got nearly 30 on my "private" now and I'd add more if I had a more organized system.
Speaking of programming... I'm a computer geek and a PC interface if only just to program is a big plus for me.
I've noticed some scanners get stuff in the 1240-1300mhz ranges. I dunno what's there that I'd want to listen to. But, finding it is part of the fun right? That's a plus but not something I'm insistant on.
Is there any reason not to get a handheld? If they work just as well as a desktop/car mount unit I'd rather be able to grab it and go somewhere.
I don't want to spend a lot, under $200 preferably.
I've been looking at the Radio shak pro-95 and pro-97. Also the Uniden SC230(that's marketed as a racing scanner though, is it limited for other uses?), the BC-246T(a bit more than I want to spend but not out of the question).
I figured you guys might suggest some other stuff or be able to reccomend one of these models. I can't seem to settle on one
I basically scan everything... there's police, campus police, staties. There's also some fire/ems. I've actually met some people scanning for FRS signals(and replying with my own radio). I listen to air traffic, sometimes I grab some wireless gadget like one of my phones and try to pick it up just for the heck of it. Depends on what time of day it is, what I'm interested in at that moment, etc.
One of this scanner's "features" is that each of the banks except "private" comes pre-programmed with a bunch of frequencies. For one thing, almost none of them correspond to what I want to listen to, for another they often do correspond to stuff I don't want to hear. For example the local university's maintinance people use one of the pre-programed police frequencies. I can't delete it, only hit L/O every time I turn the unit on and it stops on one of those. So I'll be listeing to a life or death response to a car accident and suddeny hear "There's a clogged toilet over in Morgan hall..." I also hear the hospital pages which are just paging some number that means nothing to me.
The air/marine bank isn't even programmable. I didn't even know there were planes to listen to until I accidently got one on "search" mode. None of the frequencies in that bank do me any good.(and I'm not gonna even get into how akward programming this thing is) I really want to be able to permanently turn off anything pre-programmed(or not have anything pre-programmed at all) and just put in what I want manually.
I've basically been stuffing everything into the "private" bank and the police stuff into "police" it's kinda akward that way though. I'd like to have a bunch of different banks. Maybe one for police, one for campus police, one for fire/ems, others for other things, etc. It would be really cool if I could scan multiple banks (IE: police and fire/ems) at the same time but if I wanted to just listen to one of them.
I don't really need trunking, nobody here uses it yet that I know of. It might be nice to have if I take it out of town though.
I'm not gonna insist on alpha tagging but I'd really like that feature.
More banks is good, more channels are good. I may not ever use thousands but I've got nearly 30 on my "private" now and I'd add more if I had a more organized system.
Speaking of programming... I'm a computer geek and a PC interface if only just to program is a big plus for me.
I've noticed some scanners get stuff in the 1240-1300mhz ranges. I dunno what's there that I'd want to listen to. But, finding it is part of the fun right? That's a plus but not something I'm insistant on.
Is there any reason not to get a handheld? If they work just as well as a desktop/car mount unit I'd rather be able to grab it and go somewhere.
I don't want to spend a lot, under $200 preferably.
I've been looking at the Radio shak pro-95 and pro-97. Also the Uniden SC230(that's marketed as a racing scanner though, is it limited for other uses?), the BC-246T(a bit more than I want to spend but not out of the question).
I figured you guys might suggest some other stuff or be able to reccomend one of these models. I can't seem to settle on one
