If you have been reading my drivel over the past few years you have probably figured out that I am a scanner guy. I was actually one of the “Scanner Guys” before I retired from that gig a while back. I have always had scanners over the past 5 decades but sometimes a scanner just doesn’t fit the bill. I have used a wide variety of radios over the years that are not scanners, at least not in the sense that we usually think of these days.
I had a few tunable receivers for VHF High and VHF Lo bands back in the day. These were difficult to find specific stations and frequencies as the tuning dials were imprecise and one had to wait for the station to talk and try to find them. If you missed them, it could be a long time before you found them again. One rick I used was to use an index card lined up on the tuning dial and marked the location of my favorite frequencies once I located them. While not perfect, the tuning on these was sloppy enough to make this work.
Later some of these tunable receivers also had a crystal slot or two so that you could use either the crystal channel or tune the dial. It was a step up, and for the time, it was considered state of the art but crystal scanners were not far behind, and these tunable receivers were usually relegated to the closet or a shelf in the garage someplace.
This tale will focus more on radios that I have used in conjunction with scanners, when I wanted to monitor a single channel, do some band searching or had a specific purpose in mind. Over the years I had dozens of various radios that were not scanners in the sense that we know them today.
Some of these non-scanner radios actually do have a scan function but that usually does not work the same way most scanner users prefer. They may be two-way radios that include a scan function or a Communications Receiver, which usually scan but in ways that really do not provide the same scan functions we want. I call these “Dial-twiddlers”; they excel at manually searching out stuff up or down from a set frequency.
There have been other radios I have had over the years that had no scan function at all. I will mention a few of these along with the “Dial-Twiddlers” and two-ways that I have used mainly as receive radios in my days.
First the “Dial-Twiddlers” These are mostly (in my world anyway) Icoms but a couple other brands as well. My current favorite, and probably the favorite radio I have ever had is the Icom R8600. Unlike some of us (and you know who you are) I have had only the one I currently have and have not/will not sell it ever in my life, at least until I do. It is the ultimate Dial-Twiddler”, with P25, NXDN, D-Star and of course AM and FM. If it had DMR it would be the perfect radio for me. I love the display, the audio and performance. It is really the best sounding radio I have ever used, even with the internal speaker.
Before that I had a couple R8500’s, several R7000’s and an R7100 over the years. They were great radios but really do not compare with the R8600. I looked at and drooled over the R9000 and R9500 many times but never could convince myself to spend that kind of money. Even the R8600 was questionable but I had saved some royalty checks that was burning a hole in my PayPal account. I was at Dayton setting up the Scanner Master booth with my friend Jonathan and they had one at the HRO booth in the same building as ours. I grabbed it on Thursday afternoon, the day before Hamvention was open to the public since I was worried they might sell it before I was able to get there. The sale price was $300 off the regular price so I was happy to get it then.
As for the other Icom receivers, each of the ones I had worked great as a single channel receiver or for scrolling thru the bands, but the scanning function was not to my liking. The scan rates were slow, and they did not have the same scanning operation as I was used to on more traditional scanners. On Uniden and other consumer scanners the radio scans, stops on an active channel and stays there until the carrier drops (or a second or two after when the Delay is set) and resumes, looking for the next active channel. Icoms and other “Communications Receivers” usually scan and stop on an active channel, resuming after a specific time period. The R7000 could be modified to act like a “regular” scanner, I had EEB do one or two of mine over the years. After that I don’t think I ever used any of my unmodified Icoms of any model for scanning, preferring to just pop in a freq or rotate the knob.
There are other makes of “Dial-twiddlers” I have played with over the years. My buddy Ted had the Yaesu FRG9600, of which he was extremely proud. I played with it at his house a few times, and while it was a good receiver, it lacked low-band, a deal killer for me at the time.
I had other friends with some of the AOR desktop receivers, and while lust-worthy, they weren’t worth the money for me. I had been provided with an AOR DV-1 for a while to write about and, again it was pretty cool, but I wouldn’t spend the cash for it so I did not buy it. I would pay maybe $500 for one but not the $2000 they go for new. The newer DV-3 looks interesting as well.
Single Channel receivers have also been a part of my shack over the years. Before Uniden added the Fire Tone Out (FTO) feature to their scanners I had a bunch of Plectrons. I had some already set up on the channels and tones I wanted, like the Illinois fire aid channel as well as a couple from a couple of our local FD’s that I got from the agencies. These came to me out of their trash bins after I helped them replace them with newer Ventronix or Federal alert receivers, they didn’t want them, so I kept them. A few I sent to Bob Wallace, AKA Mr. Plectron, who refurbished them with current tones and frequencies. At one point I had a half dozen set up on local fire tones and a couple more as just plain receivers for local channels.
Once the BCT15 came out I started using them for Fire Tone Out and started to retire the Plectrons I had. I did a project and instead of payment I took a case of BCT15x’s, which replaced the BCT15. These were awesome for FTO use as well as other analog scanning. They didn’t have the awesome sounding audio of a Plectron but were much more versatile.
I also had a couple other single channel receivers, including a couple Motorola alert receivers. While they served the same purpose as the Plectrons I just did not like them. On the other hand, the Motorola Minitor series portable alert receivers were awesome. I had a couple different original series Minitor, one which was issued by the FD I was a member of. After I left the FD, I bought a couple over the years for the mutual aid channel and some local channels, to complement the Plectrons I had at home. Later on, I had a Minitor 2 that was set up for Alert on the Mutual Aid channel and monitor on the Fireground channel.
Beyond the alert receivers there were other single-channel receivers I had from time to time. One of my favorites was the Sonar receivers. These were actually 6-channel radios but only one channel was active at a time, there was no scan feature. They used crystals, I think they were the same as Regency scanners used at the time. I had a couple of these over the years, and they had great audio and sensitivity. These were made in the 1970’s and were pretty expensive but they popped up at hamfests pretty often. I still see these at hamfests occasionally to this day.
Regency had some single-channel receivers, usually of the same case design as some of their scanners. The local airport that my dad flew out of had a Regency receiver on the local Unicom channel in the flight lounge. It could well have been a two-way, but that was 50 years ago and the memory fades. At the time I didn’t have a scanner that did aviation but eventually I got a FlightScan. Dad did have a portable aviation band radio, I think it was an Icom, that he kept in his flight bag. He did bring that out and we would listen to the local activity on that from time to time.
Two-way radios were always a good way to listen to the activity. I have had many over the years, and while some were used to talk on, many more were set up for receive only. Over the years I had a variety of Motorola two-way radios set up mainly as single channel receivers. I happened on a stack of 10 or 12 VHF and a half dozen UHF GM300’s at a hamfest that I made a deal for. They were kind of filthy, I think they came out of a fleet of Public Works and Refuse Department trucks, but they cleaned up nicely and worked well. I programmed them for receive only, set them up on a multicoupler and used them for monitoring the local fire, police and railroad channels. I had a couple other Motorolas, Kenwoods and Icoms over the years that I used like that as well.
The nice thing about using two-way radios as receivers is that they are often more selective and sensitive that a scanner. A scanner has to be all things to all people, while a two-way is intended for a specific band segment. If you program it right, they can be a reliable 24/7 receiver. At work we had a whole bunch of Motorola CM100’s we used as auxiliary receivers for our Public Works, Police secondary and Fire band base radios (MTR2000’s). They excelled at this, and I picked up a couple of these here and there and used them at home for monitoring the local rail channels, replacing the older GM300’s. I also used a couple M1225’s for this purpose.
When out in the field portable two-way radios can be preferable to a scanner at times. Things like battery life, durability and reliability can make a two-way a better choice. For years I used a VHF 99-channel MT1000 as my main railfan radio. I would select the local Road or Yard channel on it and, since it was set up for receive only, I could get a good 12 hours or more on a single charge. It could scan but I rarely did so. I also had a VHF HT600 with just my local Road channels on it that I would use when railfanning around the home area.
Over the years I have had a wide variety of Motorola radios in the car, the VHF ones were used more for listening to the railroads than anything else. While I had our work (police, fire and PW) channels in them (and they were owned by my agency) I often used them for railroad monitoring more than work. I went from Syntor X-9000’s to Spectras, then GM300’s and finally CDM1250’s. As I was in charge of the radio systems, I always had a VHF/UHF set in my car and at home. The VHF ones always had the rail channels, and the UHF ones always had my GMRS channels, and both sets had the local ham simplex and repeaters, except for the Syntor UHF radio, it would not go into the 440 band. Of course, I used them more for monitoring these channels than anything else.
For aviation I had an Icom A14 for a while that I used for listening to the local airports. I decided to sell it when it fell between the seats of my car and the PTT button got pushed. It was set on the Unicom channel for the local airport, and I have to assume it was transmitting for a couple minutes before I figured it out. I started using a BC125AT or BC260DN for plane watching after that. I did pine over some of the Icom aviation band mobile radios but could never break down and spend that kind of cash for a two-way radio that I could never transmit on. At least the others were either cheap, provided to me by work or I could transmit on them.
I have also used some ham rigs mostly for monitoring. While I am somewhat active on ham radio and GMRS I use my various dual banders these days more for monitoring than anything else. Over the years I have had a wide variety of dual-banders in the car and at home, including Icom, Kenwood and, more recently, Anytone. Most of the time they are set up to listen to the local railroad channel and perhaps out local GMRS channel, but I rarely talk on them these days except on our weekly nets. I guess I am just not that popular anymore. At home I leave my Icom D5100 on our local 2M simplex channel and an AT D-578UV on the GMRS system, the second receiver on each is on some channel or another for monitoring. Over the years I have found some ham rigs received very well on the 160-162 MHz. railway channels. My old IC2800 and one of my TM-731A’s worked great there, weirdly my other 731 did not work well on the rail channels at all. Later I picked up a Kenwood dual-bander that the transmitter was shot on, but the receiver still worked quite well, it was used to monitor 155.475, known in my area as ISPERN, the police mutual aid channel.
I have found that some of the dual banders have had decent performance on the AM aircraft band and are a good way to monitor the local Unicom or Tower channel while saving the scanner for CloseCall and other monitoring. My AT-D578UV works good enough for aviation to make it viable while sitting at the airport, although it is not quite as good as a scanner on aviation. It does the job, however.
In summary, sometimes the best scanner for the job isn’t always a scanner. Most two-way radios are in receive mode 99% or more of the time anyway so they should have good receivers, even if limited to a smaller range of frequencies. Specialized radios, communications receivers etc. are often extremely useful in the shack.
I had a few tunable receivers for VHF High and VHF Lo bands back in the day. These were difficult to find specific stations and frequencies as the tuning dials were imprecise and one had to wait for the station to talk and try to find them. If you missed them, it could be a long time before you found them again. One rick I used was to use an index card lined up on the tuning dial and marked the location of my favorite frequencies once I located them. While not perfect, the tuning on these was sloppy enough to make this work.
Later some of these tunable receivers also had a crystal slot or two so that you could use either the crystal channel or tune the dial. It was a step up, and for the time, it was considered state of the art but crystal scanners were not far behind, and these tunable receivers were usually relegated to the closet or a shelf in the garage someplace.
This tale will focus more on radios that I have used in conjunction with scanners, when I wanted to monitor a single channel, do some band searching or had a specific purpose in mind. Over the years I had dozens of various radios that were not scanners in the sense that we know them today.
Some of these non-scanner radios actually do have a scan function but that usually does not work the same way most scanner users prefer. They may be two-way radios that include a scan function or a Communications Receiver, which usually scan but in ways that really do not provide the same scan functions we want. I call these “Dial-twiddlers”; they excel at manually searching out stuff up or down from a set frequency.
There have been other radios I have had over the years that had no scan function at all. I will mention a few of these along with the “Dial-Twiddlers” and two-ways that I have used mainly as receive radios in my days.
First the “Dial-Twiddlers” These are mostly (in my world anyway) Icoms but a couple other brands as well. My current favorite, and probably the favorite radio I have ever had is the Icom R8600. Unlike some of us (and you know who you are) I have had only the one I currently have and have not/will not sell it ever in my life, at least until I do. It is the ultimate Dial-Twiddler”, with P25, NXDN, D-Star and of course AM and FM. If it had DMR it would be the perfect radio for me. I love the display, the audio and performance. It is really the best sounding radio I have ever used, even with the internal speaker.
Before that I had a couple R8500’s, several R7000’s and an R7100 over the years. They were great radios but really do not compare with the R8600. I looked at and drooled over the R9000 and R9500 many times but never could convince myself to spend that kind of money. Even the R8600 was questionable but I had saved some royalty checks that was burning a hole in my PayPal account. I was at Dayton setting up the Scanner Master booth with my friend Jonathan and they had one at the HRO booth in the same building as ours. I grabbed it on Thursday afternoon, the day before Hamvention was open to the public since I was worried they might sell it before I was able to get there. The sale price was $300 off the regular price so I was happy to get it then.
As for the other Icom receivers, each of the ones I had worked great as a single channel receiver or for scrolling thru the bands, but the scanning function was not to my liking. The scan rates were slow, and they did not have the same scanning operation as I was used to on more traditional scanners. On Uniden and other consumer scanners the radio scans, stops on an active channel and stays there until the carrier drops (or a second or two after when the Delay is set) and resumes, looking for the next active channel. Icoms and other “Communications Receivers” usually scan and stop on an active channel, resuming after a specific time period. The R7000 could be modified to act like a “regular” scanner, I had EEB do one or two of mine over the years. After that I don’t think I ever used any of my unmodified Icoms of any model for scanning, preferring to just pop in a freq or rotate the knob.
There are other makes of “Dial-twiddlers” I have played with over the years. My buddy Ted had the Yaesu FRG9600, of which he was extremely proud. I played with it at his house a few times, and while it was a good receiver, it lacked low-band, a deal killer for me at the time.
I had other friends with some of the AOR desktop receivers, and while lust-worthy, they weren’t worth the money for me. I had been provided with an AOR DV-1 for a while to write about and, again it was pretty cool, but I wouldn’t spend the cash for it so I did not buy it. I would pay maybe $500 for one but not the $2000 they go for new. The newer DV-3 looks interesting as well.
Single Channel receivers have also been a part of my shack over the years. Before Uniden added the Fire Tone Out (FTO) feature to their scanners I had a bunch of Plectrons. I had some already set up on the channels and tones I wanted, like the Illinois fire aid channel as well as a couple from a couple of our local FD’s that I got from the agencies. These came to me out of their trash bins after I helped them replace them with newer Ventronix or Federal alert receivers, they didn’t want them, so I kept them. A few I sent to Bob Wallace, AKA Mr. Plectron, who refurbished them with current tones and frequencies. At one point I had a half dozen set up on local fire tones and a couple more as just plain receivers for local channels.
Once the BCT15 came out I started using them for Fire Tone Out and started to retire the Plectrons I had. I did a project and instead of payment I took a case of BCT15x’s, which replaced the BCT15. These were awesome for FTO use as well as other analog scanning. They didn’t have the awesome sounding audio of a Plectron but were much more versatile.
I also had a couple other single channel receivers, including a couple Motorola alert receivers. While they served the same purpose as the Plectrons I just did not like them. On the other hand, the Motorola Minitor series portable alert receivers were awesome. I had a couple different original series Minitor, one which was issued by the FD I was a member of. After I left the FD, I bought a couple over the years for the mutual aid channel and some local channels, to complement the Plectrons I had at home. Later on, I had a Minitor 2 that was set up for Alert on the Mutual Aid channel and monitor on the Fireground channel.
Beyond the alert receivers there were other single-channel receivers I had from time to time. One of my favorites was the Sonar receivers. These were actually 6-channel radios but only one channel was active at a time, there was no scan feature. They used crystals, I think they were the same as Regency scanners used at the time. I had a couple of these over the years, and they had great audio and sensitivity. These were made in the 1970’s and were pretty expensive but they popped up at hamfests pretty often. I still see these at hamfests occasionally to this day.
Regency had some single-channel receivers, usually of the same case design as some of their scanners. The local airport that my dad flew out of had a Regency receiver on the local Unicom channel in the flight lounge. It could well have been a two-way, but that was 50 years ago and the memory fades. At the time I didn’t have a scanner that did aviation but eventually I got a FlightScan. Dad did have a portable aviation band radio, I think it was an Icom, that he kept in his flight bag. He did bring that out and we would listen to the local activity on that from time to time.
Two-way radios were always a good way to listen to the activity. I have had many over the years, and while some were used to talk on, many more were set up for receive only. Over the years I had a variety of Motorola two-way radios set up mainly as single channel receivers. I happened on a stack of 10 or 12 VHF and a half dozen UHF GM300’s at a hamfest that I made a deal for. They were kind of filthy, I think they came out of a fleet of Public Works and Refuse Department trucks, but they cleaned up nicely and worked well. I programmed them for receive only, set them up on a multicoupler and used them for monitoring the local fire, police and railroad channels. I had a couple other Motorolas, Kenwoods and Icoms over the years that I used like that as well.
The nice thing about using two-way radios as receivers is that they are often more selective and sensitive that a scanner. A scanner has to be all things to all people, while a two-way is intended for a specific band segment. If you program it right, they can be a reliable 24/7 receiver. At work we had a whole bunch of Motorola CM100’s we used as auxiliary receivers for our Public Works, Police secondary and Fire band base radios (MTR2000’s). They excelled at this, and I picked up a couple of these here and there and used them at home for monitoring the local rail channels, replacing the older GM300’s. I also used a couple M1225’s for this purpose.
When out in the field portable two-way radios can be preferable to a scanner at times. Things like battery life, durability and reliability can make a two-way a better choice. For years I used a VHF 99-channel MT1000 as my main railfan radio. I would select the local Road or Yard channel on it and, since it was set up for receive only, I could get a good 12 hours or more on a single charge. It could scan but I rarely did so. I also had a VHF HT600 with just my local Road channels on it that I would use when railfanning around the home area.
Over the years I have had a wide variety of Motorola radios in the car, the VHF ones were used more for listening to the railroads than anything else. While I had our work (police, fire and PW) channels in them (and they were owned by my agency) I often used them for railroad monitoring more than work. I went from Syntor X-9000’s to Spectras, then GM300’s and finally CDM1250’s. As I was in charge of the radio systems, I always had a VHF/UHF set in my car and at home. The VHF ones always had the rail channels, and the UHF ones always had my GMRS channels, and both sets had the local ham simplex and repeaters, except for the Syntor UHF radio, it would not go into the 440 band. Of course, I used them more for monitoring these channels than anything else.
For aviation I had an Icom A14 for a while that I used for listening to the local airports. I decided to sell it when it fell between the seats of my car and the PTT button got pushed. It was set on the Unicom channel for the local airport, and I have to assume it was transmitting for a couple minutes before I figured it out. I started using a BC125AT or BC260DN for plane watching after that. I did pine over some of the Icom aviation band mobile radios but could never break down and spend that kind of cash for a two-way radio that I could never transmit on. At least the others were either cheap, provided to me by work or I could transmit on them.
I have also used some ham rigs mostly for monitoring. While I am somewhat active on ham radio and GMRS I use my various dual banders these days more for monitoring than anything else. Over the years I have had a wide variety of dual-banders in the car and at home, including Icom, Kenwood and, more recently, Anytone. Most of the time they are set up to listen to the local railroad channel and perhaps out local GMRS channel, but I rarely talk on them these days except on our weekly nets. I guess I am just not that popular anymore. At home I leave my Icom D5100 on our local 2M simplex channel and an AT D-578UV on the GMRS system, the second receiver on each is on some channel or another for monitoring. Over the years I have found some ham rigs received very well on the 160-162 MHz. railway channels. My old IC2800 and one of my TM-731A’s worked great there, weirdly my other 731 did not work well on the rail channels at all. Later I picked up a Kenwood dual-bander that the transmitter was shot on, but the receiver still worked quite well, it was used to monitor 155.475, known in my area as ISPERN, the police mutual aid channel.
I have found that some of the dual banders have had decent performance on the AM aircraft band and are a good way to monitor the local Unicom or Tower channel while saving the scanner for CloseCall and other monitoring. My AT-D578UV works good enough for aviation to make it viable while sitting at the airport, although it is not quite as good as a scanner on aviation. It does the job, however.
In summary, sometimes the best scanner for the job isn’t always a scanner. Most two-way radios are in receive mode 99% or more of the time anyway so they should have good receivers, even if limited to a smaller range of frequencies. Specialized radios, communications receivers etc. are often extremely useful in the shack.
