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.

 

[bergamot]

My high school/tech school part time job was at a Radio Shack in the Chicago suburbs in the late 1970’s so here are some random memories. Since I was a ham going for an electronics degree, I sometimes did simple customer repairs in the back room for faster turnaround time than the company repair center. The 12V power supplies were the easiest because it was usually fixed by replacing the transformer (blown fusible link). Although some products were poor quality, stereo receivers, scanners, clock radios, antennas & CB’s were good values. Keeping electronics components fully in stock was impossible because they would often zero out many of our orders. At least once a day, I went out to the parking lot to measure swr for a Cber, a service they really appreciated. Many times I had to debunk the myth that cutting your coax to a certain length lowered your swr.

One day I was showing an expensive speaker system to a customer & to my amazement, he cranked the volume, lit a match & held it in front of the woofer. The sound waves blew the match out & he immediately agreed to buy them. Another time, a regular customer came in accompanied by a man with long hair who he called Bud. I sold Bud some wireless intercoms plus other items & when he handed me his credit card, it said “Marlon Brando”. Somehow at that young age, I realized all he wanted to do was walk into a store & be treated normally like anyone else. So with no drama I said it was a pleasure to meet him, shook his hand & rang up the sale. It made sense he visited the store since he lived in the area as a teenager & occasionally returned to visit friends & relatives.

The free battery card was brilliant marketing. Many customers getting the freebie often purchased something during the visit & the markup on batteries was so high, Tandy didn’t lose much giving them away. It baffles me why we sold so many color organs when it was such a cheesy product. Maybe it was like early video games, which were also lame, but it’s all we had.

 

[a727469]

It would be hard to find service like you provided at RS in many stores today. I too got a few free batteries🔋

 

[IC-R20]

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 still do that now with camera lenses to mark focus points to move between. It's nice when different hobbies translate together like that.

 

[dlwtrunked]

For every place I lived, I have very place I lived, I had a Radio Shack story. In Ohio, while in high school saving my lunch money 50 cents/day for RS, I went to RS just before closing and rushing in, left my keys in the car and locked myself out. I was detained by the police for trying to break into my car using a hanger through a partially down window to try to unlock the car door. In Pennsylvania, I remember a lady asking the RS employee if the VHF or UHF TV antenna should go on top. He replied the UHF antenna should go on the bottom as have a shorter wavelength and therefore could not reach as high above the ground; I loudly laughed and never felt welcome in that store after that. In Connecticut, I remember the manager telling me a long story of his out-of-body near-death experience when he "died" from smoke inhalation in a house fire. In Virginia, I had one store manager tell me RS did not wish to hire technical knowledgeable people as the sold fewer not needed items to other customers. Another manager had me answer phones in the store when I came in to buy something when they were busy with other customers. He told me that was because I knew more about what they were selling than he did. Later I had to ask him to quit giving my phone number to other customers when he could not answer a question.

 

[IC-R20]

For every place I lived, I have very place I lived, I had a Radio Shack story. In Ohio, while in high school saving my lunch money 50 cents/day for RS, I went to RS just before closing and rushing in, left my keys in the car and locked myself out. I was detained by the police for trying to break into my car using a hanger through a partially down window to try to unlock the car door. In Pennsylvania, I remember a lady asking the RS employee if the VHF or UHF TV antenna should go on top. He replied the UHF antenna should go on the bottom as have a shorter wavelength and therefore could not reach as high above the ground; I loudly laughed and never felt welcome in that store after that. In Connecticut, I remember the manager telling me a long story of his out-of-body near-death experience when he "died" from smoke inhalation in a house fire. In Virginia, I had one store manager tell me RS did not wish to hire technical knowledgeable people as the sold fewer not needed items to other customers. Another manager had me answer phones in the store when I came in to buy something when they were busy with other customers. He told me that was because I knew more about what they were selling than he did. Later I had to ask him to quit giving my phone number to other customers when he could not answer a question.

I still remember the crappy scanner lists they got from bearcat1. That said I was surprised any of them could even figure out how to work a scanner let alone program it for anyone.

 

[FedFyrGuy]

Used to stop into the Radio Shack Distribution Center at 100 Tandy Dr in Hagerstown, MD from time to time. They had a "Warehouse Clearance Store" in the front of the building. Occasionally some good buys there. The building was sold in 2015 for $11.4M as part of the company liquidation.

 

[N9JIG]

Used to stop into the Radio Shack Distribution Center at 100 Tandy Dr in Hagerstown, MD from time to time. They had a "Warehouse Clearance Store" in the front of the building. Occasionally some good buys there. The building was sold in 2015 for $11.4M as part of the company liquidation.

One of the RadioShack stores near my hometown seemed to be the regional clearance place, they always had open-box and returned stuff on a table at the rear of the store. It had been some other type store before it's Radio Shack days so was larger than the normal store, probably why they sent the stuff there to get rid of it.

 

[trap5858]

You would think with all of the positive comments from the RR crowd we could have kept the chain alive all by ourselves!

 

[Benjamin0212]

I still use my PRO-90 for air band.

Pro 90 is a great choice, I was using in 2022.

 

[jmp883]

Some great memories being posted here about Radio Shack. I, too, miss Radio Shack. My introduction to Radio Shack wasn't for the scanners, crystals, or parts, it was for their stereo equipment. I had an uncle who turned me on to component stereo systems in the 1970's. He had all high-end Japanese equipment, something I wouldn't be able to afford for years. My first system consisted of an STA-850 receiver (which I still have), a LAB-440 turntable, and a SCT-24 cassette deck. The only non-RS equipment was the ADC Sound Shaper equalizer and the BSR 3-way speakers. That system lasted for years, even after I started buying 'real' components. I was also a fan of their car stereos. Eventually I started buying their scanners, I can't even remember all the different RS models I've had over the years.

It was a great store, just as much fun as my local Harley dealership or my local model railroad hobby shop!

 

[JDKelley]

This brings back memories!

When I was a kid, I had two electronics suppliers - Radio Shack, and CWY. Radio Shack was for all the "common" stuff, and CWY had a full line of NTE and vacuum tubes (I was the go-to guy for fixing tube amps and suchlike. I didn't have a shop, but everyone brought their tube-driven stuff to me. And my stereo amp? Old Seeburg jukebox tube amp. My stereo was pieced together from whatever felt right, and I could play damned near anything except Edison wax cylinders. Four-speed turntable, 8-track, 1/4" reel-to-reel, double-cassette deck, one of the early Philips/Magnavox CD players (they invented the thing,) Betamax video player, VHS video player - I didn't bother with LASERDisc, but I did have two of my three computers connected where I could switch them to the stereo, just for fun. Anyhow.)

Both were within bicycle range (two Radio Shacks!) - but then, so was the rest of the Northern half of the state, to me. It would have taken me a bit, but I could probably have ridden the 300 miles to Chicago (but taking my sailcar was much more fun!) I was a fixture in both of them, I was always working on something. I bought every Forrest Mims book that Radio Shack had, which is how I learned electronics. I got hold of a circuit in one of those books, worked with it, expanded it the way he said, then I had to buy 900 red LEDs [EDIT - 30x30 matrix] and enough perfboard to mount them on, and etched a circuit board for the control electronics, and built myself an oscilloscope. It was funny when I walked up to the counter and asked for a thousand red LEDs, tho. Spent a half-hour convincing them that I was serious, and explaining what I wanted to do with them. Then I had to promise to take the project in to show them (making a case for it was a royal pain, since I had to drill all those holes by hand. Didn't have machines hop classes available yet, so I had to lay it all out by hand, pilot the holes, then drill them out, and use a countersink to clean up the outside of the hole - all with a hand drill! (From CWY, I bult a VTVM.)

Radio Shack scanners were great - while I was following them, I think the PRO-2006 is the pinnacle of their development. It's plenty capable on their own, but there's room for the tinkerer to modify and improve it (and our dear Dr. Rigormortis - Bill Cheek - gave us manuals to do so (and plenty of very interesting mods. I've built two of the 6,400-channel mods. I've cut the "cellular lockout" diodes where I can, but I've also got a Russian Malahit DSP-3 that doesn't even bother blocking those frequencies out.) They were great for a quick place for common discrete components or integrated circuits - as long as you don't need anything exotic. And they kept mall hours (CWY kept banker's hours, which fact I find irritating. I've always been nocturnal.)

The "Battery of the Month" card was also nice - I had four, and I'd figured out the schedules for the managers and assistant managers at each store, so I could get my batteries from each without the other seeing it (I don't know if they talked, and they probably thought it was funny, but I spent at least $50/week there as it was, in the early 80s, so they probably didn't care.)

It was truly sad to see them ditch components and go "in for a pound" on consumer electronics. And around here, Quement has long closed, and Fry's has left, so finding electronic components is a pain (and there's no-one that is open late anymore.)