Scanner Tales: Radio Shack Stuffage

[ladn]

I remember the era of "scanners," which weren't scanners at all. Radio Shack made tunable receivers. When they were tuned, they received about half a megahertz so you always fought the terrible noise of several competing frequencies being received at the same time.

My first "scanner" was one of those circa 1970! It was tunable, VHF HI/LOW. Like @es93546 said, accurate tuning wasn't possible, but it worked fairly well for that time period where agencies had fewer frequencies and 30 KHz bandwidth channels.

 

[IC-R20]

Except when you were in the middle of a project and you ran out of solder, you could be back to work in in 20 minutes.

Same day delivery in a lot of cities now.

 

[es93546]

My first "scanner" was one of those circa 1970! It was tunable, VHF HI/LOW. Like @es93546 said, accurate tuning wasn't possible, but it worked fairly well for that time period where agencies had fewer frequencies and 30 KHz bandwidth channels.

View attachment 169457

My memory of these things was correct! In the L.A. Basin there were so many frequencies that were active that a tunable receiver still had a lot of noise. I could not afford the $100 price tag on these, so I dealt with the handheld version. I noted that when the Regency crystal scanners came out the price was $100 also. I didn't know much about radio then, I should have waited and gotten the Regency VHF High and Low version. I wish those would have had more than 8 frequencies.

I started out being a law enforcement fan, but once I left L.A. and got a firefighting job with the USFS, I became a fire and natural resource agency fan. The Regency only had a 5 MHz receiving width. To get the USFS I had to take my radio to our (the National Forest I worked on) radio tech to retune the peak to about 170 MHz. I was still able to get the PD and FD in Flagstaff, but I was able to pick up the Kaibab, Coconino and Prescott National Forests. All operated on simplex with one or more remote bases scattered around. I was able to pick up most lookouts on those forests and they were often employed as "human repeaters." They would relay the traffic from a unit that wasn't able to hit the remote base.

My first wife did not like "the monitor" as she called it. That until the Radio Fire of 1977 burned intensely right next to Flagstaff where we lived. The day it started I got home from work to find about 5-6 neighbors on our porch listening to the scanner in the living room. So much for the useless "monitor." Unfortunately that relationship ended in divorce, but 7 years later I married my second wife. Boy, what a difference! We've now been married over 30 years. She turns the scanner on in the morning before I do. She is really into it. That interest started when both of us became members of our town's CERT organization sponsored by the PD. We made a lot of friends with members of that department, so we like to keep track of what they face.

 

[N9JIG]

So how many of you had a piece of masking tape along the dial on these old tunable receivers with pen marks for your favorite channels?

 

[es93546]

So how many of you had a piece of masking tape along the dial on these old tunable receivers with pen marks for your favorite channels?

I knew a guy who used different color tape cut real narrow and he put it directly on the tuning screen. Yellow meant this P.D. and green another and so on. I don't miss those days. I really got into it when I bought my first programmable scanner in 1978. They had been out since 1976 or earlier, but I didn't have the money at the time. We moved to another state and it would have cost $40 to update the crystals in the Regency, so I didn't do that. I waited until I had the bucks for a BC-210. Shortly after I bought it the BC-220 came out. It had 20 channels and was air band capable. I used the 210 for about 5 years before replacing it with another Uniden scanner.

 

[N6JPA]

Back in the 1970's when I was a snot nosed kid I would ride my bicycle to the nearby RS store. At first the manager thought I was just a bother, but I had a paper route and was soon buying SWL Radios, Scanners and CB's with my money. I purchased radios from RS until about 2005, but then everything went online. Don't forget if you got a battery card when you bought batteries(AA for my portable scanner) you could earn free batteries.

 

[Falcon9h]

I remember the era of "scanners," which weren't scanners at all. Radio Shack made tunable receivers. When they were tuned, they received about half a megahertz so you always fought the terrible noise of several competing frequencies being received at the same time. You really could not tell exactly where you were tuning, so once you received what you wanted to hear you left it there. My first receiver from Radio Shack was a handheld that really performed quite badly. Their receivers were sold under the brand 'Patrolman." I bought it in 1968 along with my trusty Police Call. There were larger desktop receivers that tuned in a smaller spread. I could not afford one of those. A neighbor of mine had a friend that mounted 2-3 of these things under the dashboard of his vehicle with 1-2 of them mounted to racks on the center hump of his vehicle. He had small. very narrow, strips of tape on the display that made it a shorter effort to tune in various frequencies. While he had less of the "receiver wars" it still occurred.

Then in late 1970 I bought a Regency TMR-8 VHF High crystal scanner. It only had only 8 channels. There was so much I was missing with such a limited number of frequencies on just one band. I still have every crystal I ever bought and of course the radio with the flashing red lights. I don't remember where I bought it.

I remember that if I had a technical question I went to Henry Radio in west L.A. I think it was on Olympic Blvd. just west of the 405 freeway. They helped me a bit with a very cheap receiver that had some of the HF spectrum. They helped me design and build a dipole that went from one of our house's lot boundary back to the house. It must have been at least 60 feet long. I spent all kinds of time tuning in weak frequencies and eventually was able to receive "Radio Hanoi." This in 1968, with the war in Vietnam at its height. The thrill of DXing caught me right then and there. Henry Radio was fully staffed with expert "Ellmers" behind the counter.

I bought a few things at Radio Shack because there was on of them about 2 miles from home. But, even then, with little experience, I thought that most of their products were of "marginal quality," to be kind.

I'm with you. I had a couple of the tunable receivers. I'd like to find one now for shts and giggles and to be nostalgic. Build quality of the early scanners was good, not so much for later. I have a pro-97 and I'd be afraid to drop it. It's a good scanner though except fot the tinny audio.

 

[Falcon9h]

My first "scanner" was one of those circa 1970! It was tunable, VHF HI/LOW. Like @es93546 said, accurate tuning wasn't possible, but it worked fairly well for that time period where agencies had fewer frequencies and 30 KHz bandwidth channels.

View attachment 169457

Great looking receiver though! Gonna try to find one.

 

[Falcon9h]

My first "scanner" was one of those circa 1970! It was tunable, VHF HI/LOW. Like @es93546 said, accurate tuning wasn't possible, but it worked fairly well for that time period where agencies had fewer frequencies and 30 KHz bandwidth channels.

View attachment 169457

Great looking receiver though! Gonna try to find one.