Newbie help and advice

[JK96]

Hello all. After using my phone to listen to my local RR feeds for that few years, I'm considering making the move to a portable scanner. The obvious question of course, is which ones would be the best choices for my location and anticipated use?

What i know initially:

Area: Primarily on the go in my car within Camden County. Gloucester County will be secondary, with some occasional use in Burlington/Atlantic County. Other surrounding counties possible, but only rarely. Will also use some at home.

Usage: Fire/EMS channels (including dispatch tone channels). Any police, if available is a distant second.

Beyond that, I have no idea if I will find other uses, but am open to the possibility.

Things that I THINK are most important to me are audio quality, performance, ease of use, and long term future use (ie. not upgrading to new device frequently). But if there are others I've neglected, I'd love to know. I know this will not be an inexpensive venture, but also have no intention on going crazy with a lot of additional purchases.

Suggestions on which devices work best here, as well as what type of realistic performance I can expect, or any other info you deem important would be HUGELY appreciated.

 

[Analogrules]

Most ops in that part of NJ are digital, so you definitely need a digital scanner. My BCD436 works great in those counties mentioned. Just keep in mind most PD in that region are encrypted and you won't be able to pick up any local PDs in Camden or Gloucester County at all, except for Cherry Hill. Therefore, you also need to decide whether a $450 scanner is worth it, when you still cannot pick up many PDs. A non digital, analog scanner will be able to pick up the county FD/EMS dispatch tones, but that's about it.

 

[JK96]

No, I'm definitely willing to jump into a digital scanner. PD is of no real importance as its mostly the the fire calls I'm primarily interested in.

So the 436 is a good choice here, and was my initial leaning. Any familiarity with other scanners on these systems? As best as I've been able to make out from reading various posts, it seems very system dependent as to which scanner works best. At this point it seems my only other real options would be one of the Whistlers, either the older 1088 or the newerTRX-1, correct?