Multiple scanners

[edweirdFL]

I like to use multiple scanners in a scenario where one is programmed for transmissions that occur with regularity, and the additional scanners are either sitting on a single high interest channel, or scanning multiple low traffic channels.

The primary scanner is at a lower volume so that when something high interest or rare comes on the other radios, the volume is louder and it stands out. Sometimes it's been so long since I setup the secondary radio that I have to look at my logs to remember why I set it up that way.

Solving frequency and user mysteries is just as important to me as knowing what is going on around me.

 

[Valeriy]

I have seen/heard people who have multiple scanners in their setups.
May I politely ask what the advantage is to having multiple scanners are.

When I am at home I keep more than one scanner and an RTL-SDR connected to my main PC, with the audio feed beamed to a wireless headphone.
The advantage is to distribute the workload in function of the capabilities of any machine.
For example, no Uniden scanner can monitor SSB communications, but an RTL-SDR can.
Furthermore, a 436 is not very sensitive in VHF Low band, a 125 is better.
On the other hand, a 436 is better in VHF High band and UHF.
And so forth...

I recently tried to listen to 4 Broadcastify feeds from 3 major metro area's and 1 rural area at the same time.
This would be the same as having 4 scanner going at the same time.
I found it impossible to listen to because you have 3 people talking at the same time.

War is a hell, isn't it?

So that brings me back to my question, why have multiple scanners. It cant be freq coverage because some say they have 3 or 4 of the same scanner going at the same time.
Bob

The best thing would be to convert all the audio feed into text, in order to be able to search by keywords and gather intelligence (so to speak) easily, with no waste of time, and reserving the direct listening only for funny things (Air band, Hams, etc.) or when out and about.
I haven't tried that yet because don't know which software would be well suited.

 

[RF-Guy-El-Loco]

I have 3+ scanners ON often, one for SC21/ISP, one on locals, one on Kane Sheriff, one sometimes now just LITH PD TG/spare to lock onto any one particular Action channel. Sometimes CPD CW1 also. Depends on my mood. Plus now an SDR dongle to look at the various frequencies, and usually Unitrunker as well running the ISP SC21 system. Some days, I soak it all up, but your brain has to be "tuned" good to be selective in what gets priority. The stereo may also be on but very quiet and muted a lot. Then I read news on the net. For portable, just 3 local channels (or only the ISP) on one scanner when I'm doing active inside/outside things requiring some type of actual work.

The best Listening idea came from my inept disorganization. I have 2 scanners on the left side of my desk, 1 on the right and 1-2 portables on a shelf behind me. They all sound different. They are not All-In-One-Spot. I can't "hear" that way at all. They are spread out around my head. Then I can hear them. But if 2 portables are on, one on the left side of my head, one (or two) on the right side 180 degrees apart and I can take it all in. I worked at broadcast facilities where we had to monitor 3 radio network feeds at the same time for quality, plus do critical audio editing work on other various music shows too, while all the other stuff was blaring. Audio conditioning. Don't ask me about Spacecom Teleport. Like a few dozen video/audio feeds all ON Live at the same time from different directions. You had to put you brain into turbo mode each day before you went in there. I loved it. You get a serious high from it. You hear so many agencies with more dedicated scanners, you hear it all. You can take in more than the police at times, because lets say IDOT/ITHA is following a DUI and now we have two agencies involved on separate TGs for the same incident and IDOT/ITHA usually has a first rate live report of it before the ISP can get there. So you need more scanners when the action starts happening.

 

[scannersnstuff]

At one time, I had 8 radio's running in my shack. This was before my wife left me. LOL. I now have a base scanner devoted to local vhf/uhf frequencies. I have a portable scanner,devoted to select njsp talkgroups, select njics talkgroups, and monmouth county nj, seect talkgroups. My fire pager is almost always on,scanning between our local fire zone dispatch, and my local fd op's channel. I am down to owning 1 base scanner, and a bunch of portable's . I actually prefer portable raidio's.

 

[dlwtrunked]

I have seen/heard people who have multiple scanners in their setups.
May I politely ask what the advantage is to having multiple scanners are.
I recently tried to listen to 4 Broadcastify feeds from 3 major metro area's and 1 rural area at the same time.
This would be the same as having 4 scanner going at the same time.
I found it impossible to listen to because you have 3 people talking at the same time.
So that brings me back to my question, why have multiple scanners. It cant be freq coverage because some say they have 3 or 4 of the same scanner going at the same time.

Bob

A main good reason to have multiple scanner is to have antennas optimized for separate bands on scanners tuned to those bands. and directional antennas might be needed for some stations--using it on only one scanner could eliminate hearing other locations of interest. No antenna works best for everything.

 

[bob550]

I find it interesting that no one has mentioned using the scanner's priority function as a "simulated" second scanner. Not that I'm advocating that, mind you. In fact, over the many years I've enjoyed this hobby, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've activated that function. Like many, there will be times I have multiple scanners in use. Usually, though, one is on my town Public Safety frequencies, and the other will be scanning larger neighboring municipalities. I do use two different external speakers on either side of my computer monitor to allow me to better differentiate the audio.

 

[gmclam]

This thread already has a lot of great replies. The fact is there are as many reason to do this as there are people listening.

...I recently tried to listen to 4 Broadcastify feeds from 3 major metro area's and 1 rural area at the same time.
This would be the same as having 4 scanner going at the same time.
I found it impossible to listen to because you have 3 people talking at the same time.

You cannot compare listening to multiple streams being the same as multiple radios. With streams you have to hear what the streams send you; you likely do not know the exact channel you're hearing; channels in one stream might be of no interest to you and so on.

For me, during the day there is so much traffic I can't even keep up with what's going on around me. Therefore during the day one scanner can do the job -- until there is an incident -- in which case you'll want to lock onto the channels for that incident (it can be a few) -- which requires multiple radios.

At night I try to listen to whatever I can receive. This might require antennas pointed in different directions, each connected to a scanner for that area.

A bigger problem I've encountered is how scanners monitor trunked systems. If you're only monitoring a single trunked system and nothing else, great. But as soon as the scanner leaves the control channel, you miss calls. Unlike a conventional signal, when the scanner gets back to the control channel it won't know what it missed. With conventional at least you'll hear the rest of the transmission.

Here in Sacramento county virtually everything (to do with the county) is on a trunked system. That's one dedicated scanner. And as soon as you're hearing a call, you'll miss the next one. Then there is the city of Sacramento, on its own trunked system. Same story. One nice things is many channels are "repeated" on the two systems.

 

[scannersnstuff]

I'm sorry, I think priority on scanner's is lame. Too annoying. Not as bad though, on a faster scanning two-way radio.

 

[ramal121]

When I'm at work driving somewhere I have at least one radio in scan, maybe more. In addition I like AM talk radio to keep me entertained. The mind has a way of keeping track of what's going on and my priority is the various volume controls I can reach at a moments notice.

 

[Ubbe]

I find it interesting that no one has mentioned using the scanner's priority function as a "simulated" second scanner.

Probably because the topic where multiple scanner use. But I use do-not-disturb priority on all scanners that have it. It's a fantastic option, as you mentioned it's almost a virtual second scanner.

/Ubbe

 

[RF-Guy-El-Loco]

Multiple Scanners & Priority

I do use Priority sometimes, but mostly just on Ispern with Conventional channels with a portable. But I do use priority on P-25 digital all the time as Talkgroup Priority, but just for the Ispern TGs. That works much better than it should as it doesn't do the constant interrupt as the conventional channels would. But seriously, having multiple scanners on live means that you're finished (with your friends, TV, social media postings, beer parties, college games, ESPN, etc.) I don't want to miss Anything.

 

[Ed6698]

I almost always have 2 scanners on at the same time. I have 1 for my local county that monitors around 26 agencies with 175 TGs. The other I monitor the state SAFE-T system. If I only used 1 scanner I would probably be missing quite a bit of stuff. Then there are times I turn a 3rd scanner on when things really start to get busy or I just want to monitor a specific thing. I found 1 scanner is not enough a while back when things start to get real busy, I was missing far to many things.

 

[motorcoachdoug]

Sometimes I am even running 4 scanners here in Maryland. Have the local county plus the state wide comms connecting about 8 counties so far. Also have one scanner scanning all the Fed Feq here in the DC metro area as well. When it really heats up and i want to monitor 2 police districts at same time since they are on their own TG not to mention 7 EMS channels plus the State EMS ones as well.

 

[natedawg1604]

I say you can NEVER (hardly ever) have enough radios & scanners, the more the better!

 

[sjgostovich]

More than one scanner at a time.

Why you may ask? Because I can.

 

[Harold]

My primary setup here in the Fort Worth - Dallas area. 1. Fort Worth Fire/NRH Fire. 2. Yagi fed radio for systems to the east.GP. Arlington. Irving. Dallas. 3.North East Tarrant systems/Air Medical. 4. CareFlite DMR/Surrounding Counties. 5. Aircraft, Air Medical/Local Military tower. 6.Analogue News Media 7.HHs ready to be turned on for breaking incidents/police monitoring. 8. MedStar Ft. Worth / Hospitals.

First 6 are always on when I am home. Others used as needed to cover breaking incidents.

 

[captaincab]

I have 2 I use primarily now. A gre psr 300 handheld which I have the county police and fire system In the local mass transit system and the local trunking systems with taxi cab companies. I normally just scan the local cab companies with the county vhf fire dispatch as a priority channel. The pro2053 in the bedroom is set to scan the county pd and fd system. But I keep a seperate channel bank on most of the time with just the local pd sector and tactical channel and the local fd response and tac channel and 2 bordering pd sectors. It is my wife friendly scanner lol. That way I can keep it on at night lol.

 

[darkness975]

I have two Scanners. One is my little portable BCD325P2 and the other is my Home Patrol 2 that I leave plugged in to the same location. I run them both a lot, but more often than not the portable one is with me in the car or wherever I am going.

The times that I do have them both running in the same room it is not usually an issue since they will usually have different broadcasts going at the same time even though they both have the same databases.

 

[sdu219]

As I like to say to people who snicker at my radio hobby/addiction. "some people collect butterfly's or baseball cards. I happen to enjoy radios" If you dont like Ketchup on your hot dog dont use it.
No one is saying to the OP that he has to listen to more than one feed at a time or even like it. Some people cant take the cacophony of radios/dispatchers all squawking at the same time. That is what us professionals do for a living/hobby and like pro sport players, some people just are not cut out for it. Stick with what is comfy to you.

 

[INDY72]

Aaaaaamen

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