What was your first scanner model?

[N9PBD]

Mine was a Realistic PRO-2020. I bought it new in 1980. That thing had a hot receiver for the AM aircraft band (118-136 MHz). The other bands were good, as well, but the aircraft band was where it excelled! I really miss that old radio. I bought one on eBay several years ago, but it wasn't as good of a receiver as my original, so I passed it to a friend that was just getting interested in scanning.

My second scanner was a Realistic PRO-2004. I still have that one. I modified the heck out of it using the Bill Cheek books, and took it with me on my three year assignment to West Berlin in the mid 1980's. Plenty of interesting traffic, both German and Russian, to monitor over there in those days.

 

[coolrich55]

Realistic Pro-42, 10 channel, 512 mhz

My grandmother bought me the pro 42 for my birthday when I was a kid. Still works fine except the light and scan buttons don't work.

 

[sibbley]

Mine was a Patrolman Pro 14 I inherited when my grandfather passed away. I loved watching the 10 amber lights flash as it scanned. I often wonder what ever happened to it.

The first scanner I ever bought was a Regency HX 1500. I bought that when I became a jr. firefighter at 16. I still have the Regency and use it often.

 

[scannersnstuff]

my first scanner was a bearcat four-six. 4 bands. 6 crystals. i loved it. did not really care for the bearcat four-six thinscan. i began monitoring in about 1975, using a panasonic tech800 tuneable. i got the scanner in about 1979. i use to sleep with them on. back then the pd/fd/first aid/roads were all on the same frequency. the cops/roads could chatter all night. never woke me up. when the pd would say "standby for a 10-18", code for a first aid call, i'd wake up.

i hated waking up to find the frequency drifted on the tuneable. there was no real way to find it again,unless you were thumbwheeling around, waiting for them to chat, not even the good old magic marker trick worked.

when i joined the local first aid squad, we use to have the old bulky plectrons to lug around. several of the squad member's purchased handheld scanners. we were told by the squad captain that we could not use them in our car's in place of the plectron. his reasoning was that if you were scanning, you could miss a call. we locked them on the channel we needed to listen to. DUH 1 .

 

[avdrummerboy]

Radioshack PRO-163, loved it so much I bought another one a year later, now I'm two deep with those and two deep with Uniden BCT15X's.

 

[GMB951]

Regency 8ch with the big red lights cant remember the model

 

[K180]

my first scanner

I got my first scanner in the early1970s it was a hard blue case that held 4 crystals

 

[k3fs]

Bearcat 210. Still regret the day I got rid of it. It was still working well. Thought it was the coolest thing at the time.

 

[KR3LC]

Fanon Courier 4-channel VHF H/L

Probably circa 1975. Coolest thing ever. Then I got a BC 210. Then a BC100, the 16 channel handheld. And have not stopped since.

 

[K180]

my first scanner

the scanner I was talking about was a radio shack handheld

 

[WJL]

First Scanner

My first public service reciever was not a scanner, but rather tunable Lafayette Micro P-50 low band
reciever. Tunable and had 2 crystal positions switchable by front panel switch. Still have it and it works,
just nothing to listen to on Low band in my area anymore.

First Scanner was a Tennelec Memory scan around 1974. Was programmed by looking up the frequency
in a book and then entering a 16 bit 0-1 binary code with 2 pushbuttons on the front. Could store 16 channell in Low band, VHF and UHF 450-512. Very advanced at the time. Still have it and it works.

I dont even want to say how many other scanners I have bought since then, if only I had that money.
Stull have every one though and they all work.
currently use 2 PSR-800's and 1 BC296 for digital systems.

 

[wb1ccp]

My first actual scanner was an Electra Bearcat III that I bought around 1975. The best thing about that one was that it would receive the local Fire on 33 MHz and the State Police on 45 MHz without tuning the front end to a less than satisfactory compromise, as had to be done with all the other scanners on the market at the time.

It also had a BIG speaker and plenty of audio to drive it. I could put it in an upstairs window and hear it while I was outside working on my car or whatever.

The only annoying thing about it was that the Bearcats had a different I.F. frequency from everybody else; 10.8 MHZ vs. the more common 10.7 so you had to special order crystals. The ones from "The Shack" wouldn't work.

 

[KB5ILY]

My first actual scanner was an Electra Bearcat III that I bought around 1975. The best thing about that one was that it would receive the local Fire on 33 MHz and the State Police on 45 MHz without tuning the front end to a less than satisfactory compromise, as had to be done with all the other scanners on the market at the time.

It also had a BIG speaker and plenty of audio to drive it. I could put it in an upstairs window and hear it while I was outside working on my car or whatever.

The only annoying thing about it was that the Bearcats had a different I.F. frequency from everybody else; 10.8 MHZ vs. the more common 10.7 so you had to special order crystals. The ones from "The Shack" wouldn't work.

Yes, wb1ccp, in 1975 an Electra Bearcat III was my first scanner as well.
It helped get me started in a communications career both public service and commercial. Although I have moved and frequencies have changed over the past 40 years, that first scanner is still sitting across the room from me scanning away.

 

[ratboy]

I had a Regency 8 channel crystal scanner for my first one, it sounded bad, but it worked until 1973 or so when I bought my Bearcat III. My first programmable was a week old Bearcat 210 bought for $40 from a guy I worked with who had bought it for $20 an hour before that from a guy who REALLY needed gas money to get back to LA from Vegas. I still have it and it sometimes works. If you whack it.

 

[CrabbyMilton]

In 1980, I got a BEARCAT 210 as a Christmas present from Mom. I have been hopelessly hooked ever since. I have a pair of UNIDEN 250D's at this time.

 

[902]

The first radio that got me interested in scanning was an AM/FM/""Air"/PB" transistor radio. I could tune aircraft, police, boats, and of course, the NWS on it. For a little kid, it was fascinating. All the airplane chatter from the jets flying overhead. Boats on the Hudson River. But I loved hearing my local police departments going out on calls and trying to listen to fire calls when the siren went off. I was hooked.

After a few tunable radios, my first real scanner was a 4 channel Realistic Pro-6. Then I got a Bearcat 210 and SP-H/L handheld.

Things have just gotten more expensive and complicated since then.

 

[ic_geeps]

First "real" scanner given to me was a Regency 10 Channel Base/Mobile and first one I bought was a Bearcat 145XL. The ability to program a frequency (instead of a crystal) was HUGE and access to the weather channels was just "COOL".

 

[DJ11DLN]

Electra BC3. I grew up listening to one of these, and to a tunable of forgotten brand (Midland, maybe?) prior to that. When the tunable died mom decided we needed the Bearcat (her brother had recently gotten one). Definitely the scanner that gave me the radio bug. But it had to stay when I moved out...luckily, while combing yard sales for furniture and stuff, I came across one. It didn't work and the owners figured it'd been damaged when they moved, because it had worked before. Talked them down to $5 for it (was priced at $20) and discovered it had not one crystal that covered anything in range. Finally scrounged up the $$$ for 8 new correct crystals, bam, it worked fine. Great audio, nice, big speaker. I've still got it in a box somewhere.

 

[desert-cheetah]

It was either a Bearcat, Realistic or Uniden but it was 1989. I had just come back from visiting friends in Utah and had my first "taste" of a scanner when a friend of a friend let me use her 10 crystal scanner for a few days because I was a new EMT. My parents took me to RS where I had planned to get a crystal scanner like hers but the clerk said the crystals were being phased out and in the long run the programmable scanners would be cheaper. I was bummed not to be getting a scanner with the "running red lights" like hers but happy to be getting one period.

 

[Harlock]

Radio Shack Pro-29

My first was a Radio Shack Pro-29. That scanner, along with the original rechargeable batteries, are still active today! It's a great easy-to-program scanner.