Use Multiple Radios, hear it all!

[N9JIG]

Listening to an incident near me this morning made me appreciate the availability of multiple radios dedicated to specific uses. Now, I understand that most scanner hobbyists are not as fanatical about this stuff as I am, but this incident can illustrate the idea.

The problem with using a single scanner for very involved incidents is that while a channel is busy you are going to miss all the other traffic. Multiple radios allow you to hear multiple conversations at the same time, you then alter the volume controls depending on the priority of the traffic.

This incident was a bad traffic crash on the Tri-State Tollway at Lake Cook Road. in Northbrook, IL A helicopter was used to remove the patient. The following channels were used:

StarCom21 sites 108 and 115 (State Police District 15, ITHA Maintenance)
159.6600 (RED Center/Northbrook FD, Deerfield FD and L-R FPD)
155.7600 (Northbrook PW) (Used for traffic control on Lake Cook Road)
153.8300 (Fireground Red, used for at-scene and COmmand)
155.0550 (IREACH, an Illinis multi-discipline Aid channel, used to coordinate with Flight for Life)
Lake County EDACS (Sheriff's Police assisting at the scene)
154.4450 (RED North Ops, used for paging out L-R)
470.6125 (Northbrook PD)

I am sure there were other freqs used, these were the ones I heard.I also had radios set up on IFERN (Fire Aid) and ISPERN (Police Aid) but these were not used for the incident.

I used a PSR600 for the StarCom21 traffic, a BC785 for the EDACS system and various scanners for the other channels. By using a separate scanner for each channel I was able to keep up with all that was happening and not miss anything. For example, while Flight was calling Command, the RED repeater was active with other calls, meaning I would have missed Flight altogether.

My wife thinks I am crazy to have over a dozen scanners, 3 two-ways, an HF rig, as well as an R7000 and R8500 in the office, as well as a half dozen radios in the van and a dog's breakfast of handhelds. She may well be right, but it works for me.

 

[OldDeadOne]

That's dedication!

 

[tonsoffun]

Your perfectly right Rich. Actually, last night it snowed here about 3 to 4 inches and hell broke loose on the highways from roll overs to cars in ditches .

Not 1 of my 8 radios where quite last night and very glad I had multiple scanners not to miss any action. my wife rolls here eyes when I mention another radio LOL

 

[hfxChris]

Absolutely right. I don't have as many scanners as that, but I did find good use for my 4 scanners during a fairly recent forest fire near my home.
My PSR-400 was the primary scanner locked on the fire talkgroups used for the incident where the majority of the action was, the Pro-97 was monitoring the natural resources fire and emergency measures/red cross talkgroups and the Pro-96 was monitoring the police talkgroup assigned to the incident as it's digital as well as the EMS talkgroup and the air band for the water bombers and natural resources helicopters.
Even the old Pro-66 saw some action, monitoring fire tone-outs and a couple of simplex channels which were used every now and then. I couldn't imagine doing it all with just one scanner.

 

[Smerri]

I completely agree. When i first got into scanning (which was just over a year ago) I would look at these pictures and could not figure out for the life of me why people would have multiple scanners but now I know. Last night with the Tornado watches in the area, I had all my scanners going. One was on the local Sky Warn frequency, one on the local authorities, one going on the state, and another free to tune to any calls which came over the notification network. Or the other night there was a fatal MVA in a town over, and had 3 scanners working for Fire, PD, and State Police. I have 4 at my disposal, and sometimes feel that this is not even enough to cover everything.

 

[SCPD]

On some wildland fire situations the four base stations and two PRO handhelds (92 and 96) are not enough. I then put two Kenwood amateur handhelds and a Yaesu base unit into use. The ham radios, like almost all ham radios manufactured now, are good scanners when nothing else is available. They won't track a trunked system or decode digital, but almost all wildland fire traffic in the western U.S. is conventional.

Wildland frequencies used on a large fire include FM air to air tactics, AM air to air, AM heliport air to ground, FM air to ground, one or more fire scene tactical frequencies, incident command, agency dispatch, intra-crew frequencies, and federal common frequencies. In addition adjacent federal jurisdictions and the state forestry agency need to be monitored for initial attack activity. Local law enforcement and the state DOT and highway patrol need to be monitored to pick up road closure and evacuation traffic.

If the wildland fire is in the vicinity of a power line I dedicate one scanner to monitoring the utility company whose power line is involved. In my case this is Southern Calif. Edison (SCE), who employ a large and complex analog trunked system so I need a trunked scanner for them.

During a heavy snowstorm I like to monitor the state DOT, highway patrol, county, town, Mammoth Mountain Ski Area (trunked analog), SCE, and snow removal businesses in town. Sometimes I like to listen to an adjacent county using a separate scanner. Then I'm also working 2 meter ham to receive and give out road condition information. Not to forget, I'm also on the Internet watching the DOT road condition site as well as the highway patrol's CAD. A few people in town call me on the phone about weather/road conditions knowing that I'm usually on top of the situation if I have time. Winter storms are my favorite time for radio.

If my wife walks in my office during fires or winter storms that becomes one too many sensory inputs and I have to turn everything down. I have a TV in the office as well, but unlike a big city, we do not have any news stations for the region so there is no reason to have it on.

You are not alone in using multiple scanners. Sometimes you are so busy adjusting volume dials that you can't do anything else!

 

[hoser147]

There is no better way to do it. When you are hearing it unfold its time to fire up a couple more, and then you always get other incidents that you will want to monitor at the same time. This ought to answer the biggest question, that alot of newbies ask," Why so many scanners??"

 

[n5usr]

Yep, that is one instance where my ham rigs also get in on the action as well (since they are hooked to the best antennas on the house). Especially for weather events, when I'm listening to spotters that may be on systems half a state away as they chase things in.

Recently had a manhunt in my city. Normally, two frequencies is all you need - one PD and one FD. That night, they had the adjacent city's officers, some OKC officers and their chopper, and some county sheriff deputies. Naturally they couldn't all coordinate on a single frequency - instead running through their respective dispatches, or (once enough personnel arrived) set up a CP, so multiple scanners was definitely handy.

*Technically* they should have been able to get together on the air. Bethany, Warr Acres and the OCSO all use UHF and are frequently heard on each others' frequencies when working together. (Or sometimes by accident!) And even OKC should have been able to set up a patch from their Provoice system - which would really have helped with coordinating the helicopter. But no...

 

[scannersnstuff]

my town had a 4 alarm plus building fire. i had the following dedicated.

motorola fire pager - monitoring county fire dispatch.all the mutual aid dept's being toned out.

psr-500 - locked on a local fire buff group giving on the scene report's.

br330t - locked on local pd.

psr-600 - locked on local fireground channel.

kenwood vhf-ht - scanning mutual aid fireground channel's.

 

[scannerbum]

multi scanners...

I will also agree, more the better! I have 2055 for local pd's, city police trunked and vhf-hi county sheriff. I place the 7 city talkgroups in seperate banks according to their channel number and place the 3 sheriff frequencies in the remaining 3 banks. I know this waste alot of space but, it makes picking and choosing what I want to hear faster and easier.

I then put the 4 city fire talkgroups in my other 2055, in seperate banks according to channel. The rest of the banks are filled with one frequency per bank that include, county rescue, city rescue and fire pagers.

I also have a 2096 for my local state police talkgroups, set up with individual talkgroups in each bank. I plan on getting a 106 for the same system that I can put other state talkgroups in. I only monitor police and rescue operations so this seems to work the best for me, even though I have alot of unused space.

 

[Stick0413]

I have done the same thing many times. Have several radios dedicated to different things in a major incident (or even a semi-major one).

 

[Stick0413]

I have 4 at my disposal, and sometimes feel that this is not even enough to cover everything.

Yeah it seems like scanners are like money, the more you get the more you want. :lol:

 

[poltergeisty]

I had an idea several years ago to build a device that creates, well a type of trucked audio. HEHE. Basically, the number of scanners * the amount of time spoken on a channel is equal to the delay of the audio you hear for that scanner. Software might do the same thing. Don't know what I could use though. Would have to build it from scratch.

UPMan, don't get any ideas! :lol: (Uniden Product management?)

 

[jeffy]

multiple scanners

Exsmokey, winter weather is my favorite time for scanning. Being retired from our county Highway dept. makes it kind of personal as I know many of the county highway, ODOT, school and sheriff's dept. employees. Being that our sheriff's dept. went digital last year I had to buy a digital (pro 96) scanner. During snow and ice I will of course use the 96 for the sheriff and use my various analog models for the county HWY. dept, school buses, wreckers and so on. This is my first winter with a digital so it ought to be interesting. Forgot to mention I lock in the power company (AEP) during outages due to winter storms.

jeff

 

[N1SQB]

Right on!

I could not agree more with all that has been said on here! Count me in on the use of multiple scanners.
http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2212570980021435046QxiPFC
I just cant see doing it with just one or two. When the action gets good, you just HAVE to have multiple radios going. Otherwise, you are bound to miss something....Especialy when the weather gets bad!

Manny

 

[Turbo68]

I agre with u Rich i wreckin the more radios the better.I have over 20 radios and there was a time when i put all the frequencies in them but now only a got a few 100 frequencies in them and the rest i enjoy monitoring just a single frequency.

Regards Lino.

 

[KC9NCF]

Using what can be the equivalent of four radios, I use my Yaesu FT8900-R since it has two sides for tx/rx and my two HT's gives me desired coverage. Now, if I want to add my Radio Shack Trunktracker, I can monitor a whole lot at once. A dream for just a monitoring station is something I saw at Scanner Master where they pack three receivers into a carry along / mobile pack that has an internal battery.

Scanner Master lets you mix & match a limited number of receivers from Uniden Bearcat together for this deal, but it's almost 3 grand and that's before the optional stuff you can add on.

 

[poltergeisty]

What's so big about a suitcase and three radios? I did this with a Pro-2042 and a 12 volt security battery back in '97. :lol:

Rather have a Nokia N800 and tightVNC...Course you need Internet access.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoUjpKNjEoc

 

[N9JIG]

Building a Go Bag can be quite inexpensive, especially if you are only using scanners. If you want two-ways then you are talking more power needs thus more batteries.

I saw one at a hamfest once where a guy had a nice large Pelican case he got at a hamfest for $50. He put in sealed acid batteries like the ones used in alarm systems in the front (as it was laying on a table open) and had 2 scanners facing forward at an angle above the batteries. (One was a BC796 the other a PRO2096, both the leading edge at the time). Behind/above the scanners he had an Icom dual-band and a third scanner, I think it was a 780.

Inside the box he had a charging circuit that allowed the batteries to charge and/or radios to operate off of 120VAC or 12VDC and an antenna multicoupler. On the rear of the box he mounted a recessed panel with a pair of antenna jacks, a 12 power connector and a computer style AC power connector.

The box was a self-contained monitoring station that he used for traveling, of which he did frequently and usually with rental cars. With a pair of magmounts (one for the scanners and another for the Dual-Band) that had a storage space in the case and a cigar cord he was all set.

The total cost of the box, exclusive of the radios, was under $200. He said he found a decent multicoupler for $10 since it didn't work, he was able to fix it. The batteries were new and cost about $80 ($20 each for 4). The MagMounts were $20 each, the case was $50 and the power circuitry, brackets and panels etc. were made from parts he already had.

On battery he said the radios would work all day, mostly depending on the amount of time he used the dual-bander.

Unfortunately the set-up was not for sale, but I often thought of making one just like it myself. I would likely use a 996, a BC15 and a 780 as well as my Alinco DR-635. I don't travel as much anymore, and when I do I usually have my own vehicle which already has radios, but it would be fun for the annual CARMA Picnics.

 

[SCPD]

I could not agree more with all that has been said on here! Count me in on the use of multiple scanners.
http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2212570980021435046QxiPFC
I just cant see doing it with just one or two. When the action gets good, you just HAVE to have multiple radios going. Otherwise, you are bound to miss something....Especialy when the weather gets bad!

Manny

Very nice looking station! My original scanner does not work very well now, it doesn't have enough sensitivity to pick up much of anything. This after spending a fair amount of money on getting crystals for this area. I do like the flashing lights, there is nothing quite like them.