Many of us, when we first started to seriously get into scanners, kept some sort of listing of the local frequencies for our own reference. Some of us shared them with others and a small number published them commercially. I did all three.
When I first started to listen to stuff other than the two channels our local police department used (the regular channel and the “Night Channel” which was actually the Public Works channel after they went home for the night) I kept a couple 3x5 file cards with the local frequencies, mostly copied from the list at the local Radio Shack or the weird electronics shop in town called Mykroy (I have mentioned the old Mykroy/645 Electronics store in other Tales). My mom was the librarian at the local grade school so had an unending supply of 3x5 cards available from the card catalog.
I had a card for Wheeling (my hometown), Buffalo Grove (next town west), Deerfield (next town north) and one each for the State Police and Cook County Sheriff. Some of the local Radio Shack stores would make a copy of their local lists for 25 cents so I collected a few of these and integrated this info on my cards.
Eventually the card collection grew as my hobby did, I had cards for the local airports when I got Aviation capable scanners, railroads when I started chasing and listening to trains and more towns and counties as I started to drive. Eventually I converted to a standard wire-bound notebook as they were cheap and easy to obtain from the local K-Mart.
When I started working at a nearby police department as a dispatcher we shared a fire channel with a couple of neighboring towns. At one of them worked a guy named Dan, we became good friends soon as we shared a love of scanners. He also had copious notes of local scanner frequencies and we soon shared copies of each other’s notes since we had access to copy machines at work.
We both also had IBM Selectric typewriters at work. His used a non-serif type ball as that was the standard for their radio logs. Our logs used a serif font, but I was able to scrounge a non-serif type ball from one of the city offices and kept it for those lonely midnight shifts and used it to type out the radio lists. My handwriting was (and still is) atrocious, they called me “R Chicken Scribble” as that was the way my signature looked like. Typing was the only way to make my stuff legible.
Dan and I would share notes and when our notebooks got too messy with penned-in corrections and updates, we would retype it in a specific format. We had a couple other partners in this list, most notable Scott (“Scooter”) who was kind of a mentor for me in all things radio. Scooter was an expert of radio systems, and I could listen to him for hours on road trips as he explained how things like PL tones, repeaters and later, trunking worked.
When we were ready to retype our list Dan would do one section and I another, we would then make a couple copies of our parts and exchange them and give a copy of the whole thing to Scooter and perhaps some other lucky individual. We created a specific layout that allowed consistency in presentation, and it worked really well for us.
Later on, when I joined RCMA we were introduced to the “PL List” by our Tactical Cabbie friend Brant (See the Tale I wrote about him a while back). This brought a whole new aspect into our lists as we never needed to include this information. Neither of us had PL-capable scanners yet so PL tones were pretty much useless at the time. I really grew to be interested in PL tones and eventually took over the PL List after I entered all of Brants data into a database on my buddy Bob’s computer before I got my own.
Meanwhile we met other RCMA members that had their own lists and we all shared copies. One notable one was John Arendt (again the subject of another Tale). He produced a guide to the Illinois State Police radio systems called “Code 101”. The title derived from how a trooper would report on-duty on the radio. The State Police had radio and timekeeping codes in the days before CAD was the norm. The system was called TIPS, I think it stood for “Traffic Information Planning System”. Activity codes were used to keep track of duties, Code 101 was routine patrol in your assigned area.
The ”Code 101” book was published in several editions. When a new version was made available there was a line out the door for them. It really was so much the definitive guide to Illinois State Police radio that the Springfield radio shop for the state police bought multiple copies. I have a copy of the 3rd Edition, the second to last version in my files but the last one, the 4th Edition with the yellow cover is a prize that eludes me. I had my copy but must have misplaced it when I moved to Arizona a decade ago. If you have a copy of the 4th Edition, please let me know and I will gladly pay for copying/scanning and mailing costs for a copy!
Eventually I was approached by a guy out of Boston and asked to make a scanner guide for the Chicago area. He came out to Chicago and met with several of us, and we all agreed to create the Scanner Master Illinois Communications Guide that came out in 1993. During the production of this guide, I concurrently helped with the Monitor America 2nd edition guide. (I also did a ton of work on the 3rd and last edition a couple years later.)
We took all of our existing data and lists, including Dan, Scott and my combined list, the PL List, and “Code 101” and added in a ton of research and travel around the state to create the Illinois Communications Guide. It was successful but soon a little-known thing called the Internet came along and pretty soon most printed guides were rendered obsolete. While I am a huge fan of RadioReference (then known as Trunkedradio.net) it pretty much killed printed guides like ours as well as more established titles like “Police Call” Why buy and carry a printed guide when you can have the entire world at your fingertips? There are still a lot of people who prefer printed guides out there and I get it. I still keep a couple specific lists of stuff in my car, like a list of the local aviation and railroad channels, but these are for quick reference. If I find something weird that I don’ t know about I will look it up on RadioReference from my phone, iPad or computer.
I spent a lot of time on that old IBM Selectric and our little local guide eventually expanded to 40 or 50 pages. We burned thru countless rolls of paper (copy machines of the day used rolls of paper and cut the pages as they were printed instead of using pre-cut paper like is common today). It was fun and kept me awake at night when falling asleep at the console was a cardinal sin.
I really wish I kept my old lists but over the years most of my old paper files got purged, sometimes by moves to a new home and other times by just clearing out the file cabinets. Some of the stuff I scanned in but not nearly as much as I wish I did today.
When I first started to listen to stuff other than the two channels our local police department used (the regular channel and the “Night Channel” which was actually the Public Works channel after they went home for the night) I kept a couple 3x5 file cards with the local frequencies, mostly copied from the list at the local Radio Shack or the weird electronics shop in town called Mykroy (I have mentioned the old Mykroy/645 Electronics store in other Tales). My mom was the librarian at the local grade school so had an unending supply of 3x5 cards available from the card catalog.
I had a card for Wheeling (my hometown), Buffalo Grove (next town west), Deerfield (next town north) and one each for the State Police and Cook County Sheriff. Some of the local Radio Shack stores would make a copy of their local lists for 25 cents so I collected a few of these and integrated this info on my cards.
Eventually the card collection grew as my hobby did, I had cards for the local airports when I got Aviation capable scanners, railroads when I started chasing and listening to trains and more towns and counties as I started to drive. Eventually I converted to a standard wire-bound notebook as they were cheap and easy to obtain from the local K-Mart.
When I started working at a nearby police department as a dispatcher we shared a fire channel with a couple of neighboring towns. At one of them worked a guy named Dan, we became good friends soon as we shared a love of scanners. He also had copious notes of local scanner frequencies and we soon shared copies of each other’s notes since we had access to copy machines at work.
We both also had IBM Selectric typewriters at work. His used a non-serif type ball as that was the standard for their radio logs. Our logs used a serif font, but I was able to scrounge a non-serif type ball from one of the city offices and kept it for those lonely midnight shifts and used it to type out the radio lists. My handwriting was (and still is) atrocious, they called me “R Chicken Scribble” as that was the way my signature looked like. Typing was the only way to make my stuff legible.
Dan and I would share notes and when our notebooks got too messy with penned-in corrections and updates, we would retype it in a specific format. We had a couple other partners in this list, most notable Scott (“Scooter”) who was kind of a mentor for me in all things radio. Scooter was an expert of radio systems, and I could listen to him for hours on road trips as he explained how things like PL tones, repeaters and later, trunking worked.
When we were ready to retype our list Dan would do one section and I another, we would then make a couple copies of our parts and exchange them and give a copy of the whole thing to Scooter and perhaps some other lucky individual. We created a specific layout that allowed consistency in presentation, and it worked really well for us.
Later on, when I joined RCMA we were introduced to the “PL List” by our Tactical Cabbie friend Brant (See the Tale I wrote about him a while back). This brought a whole new aspect into our lists as we never needed to include this information. Neither of us had PL-capable scanners yet so PL tones were pretty much useless at the time. I really grew to be interested in PL tones and eventually took over the PL List after I entered all of Brants data into a database on my buddy Bob’s computer before I got my own.
Meanwhile we met other RCMA members that had their own lists and we all shared copies. One notable one was John Arendt (again the subject of another Tale). He produced a guide to the Illinois State Police radio systems called “Code 101”. The title derived from how a trooper would report on-duty on the radio. The State Police had radio and timekeeping codes in the days before CAD was the norm. The system was called TIPS, I think it stood for “Traffic Information Planning System”. Activity codes were used to keep track of duties, Code 101 was routine patrol in your assigned area.
The ”Code 101” book was published in several editions. When a new version was made available there was a line out the door for them. It really was so much the definitive guide to Illinois State Police radio that the Springfield radio shop for the state police bought multiple copies. I have a copy of the 3rd Edition, the second to last version in my files but the last one, the 4th Edition with the yellow cover is a prize that eludes me. I had my copy but must have misplaced it when I moved to Arizona a decade ago. If you have a copy of the 4th Edition, please let me know and I will gladly pay for copying/scanning and mailing costs for a copy!
Eventually I was approached by a guy out of Boston and asked to make a scanner guide for the Chicago area. He came out to Chicago and met with several of us, and we all agreed to create the Scanner Master Illinois Communications Guide that came out in 1993. During the production of this guide, I concurrently helped with the Monitor America 2nd edition guide. (I also did a ton of work on the 3rd and last edition a couple years later.)
We took all of our existing data and lists, including Dan, Scott and my combined list, the PL List, and “Code 101” and added in a ton of research and travel around the state to create the Illinois Communications Guide. It was successful but soon a little-known thing called the Internet came along and pretty soon most printed guides were rendered obsolete. While I am a huge fan of RadioReference (then known as Trunkedradio.net) it pretty much killed printed guides like ours as well as more established titles like “Police Call” Why buy and carry a printed guide when you can have the entire world at your fingertips? There are still a lot of people who prefer printed guides out there and I get it. I still keep a couple specific lists of stuff in my car, like a list of the local aviation and railroad channels, but these are for quick reference. If I find something weird that I don’ t know about I will look it up on RadioReference from my phone, iPad or computer.
I spent a lot of time on that old IBM Selectric and our little local guide eventually expanded to 40 or 50 pages. We burned thru countless rolls of paper (copy machines of the day used rolls of paper and cut the pages as they were printed instead of using pre-cut paper like is common today). It was fun and kept me awake at night when falling asleep at the console was a cardinal sin.
I really wish I kept my old lists but over the years most of my old paper files got purged, sometimes by moves to a new home and other times by just clearing out the file cabinets. Some of the stuff I scanned in but not nearly as much as I wish I did today.
