New User Ottawa Area Looking For Radio Info

[demaeex]

G'day Folks,

I am a new user in the Ottawa area. I haven't bought a scanner yet, I was wondering if someone could give me a heads-up on which scanner would be a good one to pick up (and where) to receive EMS and police frequencies in and around Ottawa. Many thanks in advance for your help

 

[rc1990]

Good afternoon Demaeex, Happy New Year and welcome to the formu,

I travel quite a lot arround the province and I always bring at least one scanner with me. I'm from northern Ontario and I go to Ottawa at least once a year to attend an Ottawa Senators game.

Ottawa emergency services use two systems : EMS and OPP use the provincial system called Bell FleetNet (Bell FleetNet - Ontario Provincial Government Zone 2 Trunking System, Southeast Zone, Ontario - Scanner Frequencies). EMS are in analog mode and OPP are in digital mode (requires a special type of scanner : a trunktracker IV) on the system. Police and fire are on the city's EDACS (Ottawa Public Safety Trunking System, Ottawa, Ontario - Scanner Frequencies). EMS switch to this system when the Bell Fleetnet is down for some reason. However, police can't be monitored with just a scanner - you need to do some modifications to the electrical curcuits inside the scanner and then have a special program on your computer to decode the transmissions.


As for a good scanner, I always prefer handheld scanners since I travel a lot. If you want one in your home that is stationnary you can buy a base or mobile scanner. If you don't want to listen to the OPP, then a trunktracker III scanner will do it. If you are interested in listening to the OPP then a trunktracker IV will be required.

There's a few manifacture of scanners. The most popular are Uniden and GRE. Personnaly, I prefer Uniden and I own the BC246T and the BCD396T. A good trunktracker III scanner for the Ottawa region is the Uniden BC246T (about 200$-250$) or its newer version, the Uniden BC346XT. As for a trunktracker IV, the Uniden BCD396T (550$-600$) will do the trick or its newer version the BCD396XT.

Two great places to order from are:
- Radio World in Toronto (@ Radioworld Toronto : Amateur Radio, Ham Radio, GPS, Garmin GPS, Garmin Motorcycle GPS, Garmin Car GPS, Garmin Truck GPS, Minelab Metal Detector, Garrett Metal Detector, Marine Chartplotter, Fishfinder, Ice Flashers, Ice Fishing, Power-Pole Shallow )
- Durham Radio in Durham (Police Scanners by Uniden Bearcat, AOR, Icom, Alinco trunking - Canada)

Also, check Ebay, Radioreference.com classified and kijiji for some great deals. Also, I read that TorontoKris, a member in the Toronto region, has some good deals on scanner (you can send him a private message). I think he is able to program the scanner before shipping the unit to you. I was able to purchase a digital scanner for half price on EBay. Doesn't hurt to check!

Hope this helps and don't hesitate.

 

[davidmc36]

EMS and OPP are on Fleetnet. Any newish digital scanner will work. Analog will work for EMS and MTO Maintenance. You can't listen to Ottawa City Police with a scanner unless you have discriminator tap and feed that to a computer with program like DSD+

If you look through the database for the systems you want to hear and the compare the types with the capabilities of the scanners you can see which will work.

There are so many variables as to which scanner is the best but if you check out the database and scanners and come up with one or two that you are interested in it would be easier to comment on whether they would be useful in this area.

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