Radio Shack Police Call Book.

[Allan_Love_Jr]

I hope this is the right place to place this. I have kept this book for the longest time now. It is the 2003 edition of Police call. Just though I'd share to you great Scanner users.

 

[randyK]

I used to buy one of those every year when they would come out. But now, with this website, the FCC database, & others, you can find freqs & info for just about anywhere on the internet.

 

[fineshot1]

Police Call is no longer in publication, last year was either 2005 or 2006.

There was a thread on this subject a few months back.

And yes - it was a great info source while it lasted.

 

[gewecke]

Police Call is no longer in publication, last year was either 2005 or 2006.

There was a thread on this subject a few months back.

And yes - it was a great info source while it lasted.

You bet! 2005 was the last issue,and I still have it.
n9zas

 

[SCPD]

Now if someone can find an original Gene Hughes' Police Call from the 1970s with the pink cover, that'll be a find. I used to buy the old Police Call every year with its pages of frequencies that looked like they were typed on an old IBM Selectric. Ah, those were the days.

Dave
KA6TJF

 

[ridgescan]

I miss that book yeah you can find all that on the net but wasn't it cool to have it all right there in one book next to your radio desk PLUS they had tutorials in the front, lists of users for each and every frequency-remember that? It really sucks that it went away.

 

[icom1020]

1975 is the oldest for me. It is the SE region. It was mostly low band. Gene Costin (Hughes) did a pretty good job of collecting data.

 

[SCPD]

1975 is the oldest for me. It is the SE region. It was mostly low band. Gene Costin (Hughes) did a pretty good job of collecting data.

Can you post a photo of the cover so all the young 'uns out there can know what it was like back in the glory days of scanning?

Dave
KA6TJF

 

[icom1020]

it's green It could be 1976 but I'll dig it up

 

[CoolCat]

I had one of those old Police Call books, as well as a old Scanner Master frequency guide, and a Scanner Master "pocket guide". I bought them to program my old BC60XLT and PRO-90 scanners 'back in the day'.

Although I love the RR database, I do miss my old books. I still had them up until a month ago when a water main broke in front of my house and flooded my basement

 

[N8IAA]

I absolutely love my collection of the Police Call book. Any time I need to refer to an old frequency, it's at my finger tips. That last book came with a frequency CD too.
Larry

 

[SCPD]

it's green It could be 1976 but I'll dig it up

Well, here's a photo of the 2002 "pink" book, courtesy of Freq of Nature.

Until searching for a photo tonight, I hadn't realized that Hughes had kept his pink book going that long. I thought he had sold the franchise to Radio Shack years earlier.

Anyway, the pink book covered Southern California from Ventura County to the Mexican border and usually had a page dedicated to Tijuana as well. After I went to a programmable scanner I used to program these Mexican frequencies and could sometimes listen to the "policia" on VHF-Hi when the conditions were right.

As I mentioned before, the pages were usually typewritten in a 10 point Courier font straight from an IBM selectric typewriter, and the book was bound in the middle using staples. Good to see that Hughes' used those corny line drawings on the cover of the pink book right up until the end.

Frankly, by the early '80s I had started using the Radio Shack books with Hughes' name on the cover. Who knew he kept the pink book going as well?

Dave
KA6TJF

 

[RadioDaze]

Last one I bought was '96. Might be an older one at my mom's house, as she still lives in the house in which I grew up... er, older. (Never grew up, myself.) We had them going back into the '70's. Boy, this hobby sure has evolved. We used to use that book to figure out what crystal to buy, ya young whippersnappers!

 

[NWI_Scanner_Guy]

I still have a couple of 1990's editions ('96 and '97 i think) stored up in the attic at my mom's house.

I was saddened to find out that they were no longer published when I got back into the hobby in late 2007. Always loved having all that information right at my fingertips. Of course we still do with the RR, but there was something about having it in print, in book form, right in front of me that the RR can't quite copy.

 

[talkpair]

The oldest Police Call I still have is 1981, which is about when I bought my first programmable scanner.

Up until that time, everything I had was crystal controlled, and the Radio Shack folks were good at knowing what you needed.....They kept the local frequencies stocked.......If you needed a rock for another part of the city, you simply drove to a Radio Shack store in the part of town you wanted to hear.
It sounds crazy now, but that's how it was done.....
Any oddball crystals had to be special ordered.

Along with my collection of Police Call books, is a "Fox Scanner Radio Listings" book for the Kansas City area, which included listings for businesses, utilities, etc.
Fox made a few scanners, but were probably better known for their radar detectors.

Although I never bought one, there used to be a "Betty Bearcat" frequency directory as well.

Back to the original subject........Police Call also had a "Beyond Police Call" directory that covered the entire country.....Copyright on this one is 1994.
These sold out pretty fast when they first came out, and I had to drive around town to several Radio Shack stores to find one. This was a pretty common ritual with the annual Police Call directories as well.
Stores didn't want to get stuck with a big inventory of outdated books at the end of the year, so they simply quit restocking them at a certain point.

The contents are pretty much self explanatory from the pic.

 

[homeinva]

here a photo of the oldest one i have
1975-1976
gene c. hughes

 

[GTR8000]

The first copy I bought was probably the 1989 NYC edition when I got my first scanner. Boy I wish I still had that, it would be really neat to take a look at it now and compare it to what's in use now. I'm certain there are still many frequencies still in use around here.

 

[mciupa]

Have a look at some of the contributor names that are acknowledged near the front of the books , some of them are members of RadioReference.
I recognized a few of them in my 1999 Michigan ,Ohio and New York books.

 

[wrhenker]

OK, you guys are making me feel old.. Yea, i have that last issue of PC as well, along with 2 almost new copies of that pocket guide as well. I also have been collecting RS catalogs since at least 1982. I remember drooooling over the Pro 48 crystal scanner I begged my dad to buy for months. He never did, but I had the last laugh by getting one from E-bay for $5, just for some locals. Those old smelling pages bring back a lot of memories!

 

[eraweeb]

Um... excuse me, but by any chance does anyone have any Frequency Combs for sale?

Now your talking Old School!!!