What to do with OLD Analog Radios

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chaplainandrews

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I scanned pretty heavy in the 90s and then after 9/11 things began to change toward digital where I live. After that I moved several times and again became hindered by digital. I'm planning to purchase a Digital--but can I still get some use out of the old radios? What are your suggestions?
 

mciupa

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I suppose you could dedicate them to Railroad, Aviation or Medevac monitoring.
 

chaplainandrews

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Right now, I've got Railroad--which is spotty, even being near Richmond Virginia, the Richmond, VA Airport (RIC) and some analog county systems. My radio remains fairly quiet. It is much different from the days of constant traffic.
 

davidgcet

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it depends on the band they are in and what radios they are. analog is not dead, but VHF and UHF bands are going to narrow band so many radios will no longer be legal to use for most services. HAMS can use them, and non-part 90 licensees may be able to use them. other than that, they may be worth a couple dollars for parts or a few hundred depending on what they are.
 

Astrak

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Discriminator tap it, dual boot linux, download DSD and listen in on digital transmissions.
 

b7spectra

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Also, depends what type they are. If they are programmable, there are lots of jurisdictions out there that will gladly take them off your hands since they can't afford to go P25.
 

n2ops

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Youth Ham Radio Club

For programmable Motorola mobile and hand held transceivers we can use them on ham frequencies for our youth ham radio club. KC2RHY Amateur Radio Club > Home We will issue a 501 C 3 tax receipt for their full value. We will consider accesories as well. We can get other brands programmed as well.

Any equipment for our youth center ham radio station would be welcome as well. www.otrym.org

We esp need accesories for Motorola MT1000's belt clips, cases, antennas, gang chargers and speaker mics.

There are nine kids beginning their tech license class on Monday. The equipment will be issued to them.

Jim Sutton N2OPS jim@otrym.org

Thanks.
 

chrismol1

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When just about all public safety goes digital in the county i live in next year, my analog bc346xt thats just a few years old will probably be sold to the highest bidder on ebay. Then I'm going to buy a digital scanner.
 

ridgescan

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Well probably the only digital are your public service so you have a whole other world of stuff to monitor. Rail, boats, businesses, medical, security, public trans, Highway Patrol-it goes on. I keep my BC350A alive for rail, marine, etc. and anytime I want there's a ton of outlying cities here that aren't digital.
 

chrismol1

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Well probably the only digital are your public service so you have a whole other world of stuff to monitor. Rail, boats, businesses, medical, security, public trans, Highway Patrol-it goes on. I keep my BC350A alive for rail, marine, etc. and anytime I want there's a ton of outlying cities here that aren't digital.

I wish I lived in an area with lots of activity like that. The area I live in isn't one of the best places to scan or monitor
 

chaplainandrews

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Rail, boats, businesses, medical, security, public trans, Highway Patrol-it goes on. I keep my BC350A alive for rail, marine, etc. and anytime I want there's a ton of outlying cities here that aren't digital.

That's what I'm looking for. I guess if I just load it up and max it out something will hit it. I'm just looking for the interesting stuff.
 

lynam05

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Hang on to them you never know what can happen! Sometimes its fun to just break out old boxes and see what come across!
 

chaplainandrews

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update

I had some time of the thanksgiving holidays and was able to bring in a neighboring county that is analog. It is a less active county than the one I live in--so the scanner isn't always keying up. I can keep it on much of the day--so it is nice to have around.
 

poltergeisty

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it depends on the band they are in and what radios they are. analog is not dead, but VHF and UHF bands are going to narrow band so many radios will no longer be legal to use for most services. HAMS can use them, and non-part 90 licensees may be able to use them. other than that, they may be worth a couple dollars for parts or a few hundred depending on what they are.

Quick question: Does this include GMRS?
 

W4BOZ

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I always thought the Richmond/Chesterfield/Henrico county areas were great for analog scanning despite the digital public safety megasystem. When I lived in downtown Richmond, I used my Pro-96 strictly for trunking (both analog and digital) and programmed my analog radios with FRS/GMRS/MURS and loads of itinerant business freqs or nearby business or otherwise repeaters. When Richmond EMS was still on UHF, it was always handy to be able to listen to them on a second radio while monitoring PD on a digital scanner. I no longer live in the area but if I remember correctly, there are still some simulcasted FD/EMS dispatch frequencies for the volunteer stations in Henrico. In the end, a lot of the use I got out of my analog radios in that area was more for curiosity than actually listening to anything "important" but I still got a good amount of use out of my radios.

I also used the program Unitrunker with an 800MHz capable analog scanner to let me know what's going on on other talkgroups when I was holding on one TG during an event.
 

chaplainandrews

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After working hard--I've began to pick up other Counties in analog. The EMS does still have a retrans freq--but it doesn't pick very well where I am. The State frequencies aren't bad either.
 

simplec6

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Discriminator tap it, dual boot linux, download DSD and listen in on digital transmissions.

Hi, this comment piqued my interest so I looked into this option. I have a Pro-89, and I did not see any guides to how I would find where I need to tap into it on this inside? I checked out the google results for discriminator tap, and I see that I will need some software and linux to decode it.

The computer part will be a breeze, it's the locating of the part I need to tap inside my Pro-89 that I need help with.


Any input?
 

Guano-

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Throw them in your car fully charged or with adapter. Use them for SkyWarn! Use them for train, public stuff, ect... Anything that still uses Analog.
 
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