Whistler trx-1

[Lynch68]

I'm looking to buy my wife the trx-1 from scannermaster.com preprogrammed with Lexington and Richland county in South Carolina . I know that the sheriff's office is encrypted so that we won't be able to hear them . My real question is will we be able to hear the city police like Columbia , Cayce , West Columbia and the other neighboring cities . I don't want to spend that much money on a scanner if the police all only talk on the encrypted channels . Is there anyone here that could tell me how much police activity we could actually hear ?

Any help is appreciated . Thanks

 

[sossanator]

I live on the Richland/Lexington border and yes, you can hear all those cities. Some regions of Columbia PD can only be herd on specific sites so you might want to program in more than just one site if your interested in getting all. I mainly stay on the Harbison site and the Lexington Simulcast. Richland and Lexington counties are both encrypted but Columbia, Irmo, W. Cola, Cayce, Forest Acres, Etc. are mostly non encrypted with the exception of some TAC channels. I even get some SLED activity on one of their non-encrypted channels.

 

[N2IXX]

If you want to listen to the Simulcast sites (almost every town and both Lexington/Richland county are on it) I would recommend the SDS-100 handheld. I have the whistler TRX-2 and I just gave up trying to listen to the Palmetto 800 system on it and went and bought an SDS-200. I have much better results with the SDS-200, it handles Simulcast which the TRX-1 and 2 will not.

 

[doctordialtone]

Any help is appreciated

As N2IXX says, the only scanner capable of effectively monitoring a heavy Simulcast area is the SDS series from Uniden.

The handheld version is the SDS100

Good luck!

 

[sossanator]

I have both the Whilstler WS1065 (Desktop/Car Mounted) and the WS1040(Hand Held) and I have not noticed any issues on any of the simulcast sites on the Palmetto 800 system.

 

[brian]

You might be advised to read this thread: SHEP, specifically post #27. It's possible (even likely) that many of the Law Enforcement agencies you are interested in may soon encrypt their communications. There's no way to know this with certainty, or know when this change might happen. If you invest $600+ for a scanner with the primary intention of monitoring Columbia-area law enforcement, only to find they encrypt shortly after, that would be sub-optimal. Be prepared for that possibility.

 

[Lynch68]

Thank you all for the help and suggestions

 

[DBrianB]

I'm looking to buy my wife the trx-1 from scannermaster.com preprogrammed with Lexington and Richland county in South Carolina . I know that the sheriff's office is encrypted so that we won't be able to hear them . My real question is will we be able to hear the city police like Columbia , Cayce , West Columbia and the other neighboring cities . I don't want to spend that much money on a scanner if the police all only talk on the encrypted channels . Is there anyone here that could tell me how much police activity we could actually hear ?

Any help is appreciated . Thanks

Don’t waste your money on getting them to program it. The TRX scanners are really simple to program if you have a computer. If you do it yourself you can filter out the channels you don’t want. Also you can search different ranges and find channels not listed on radio reference database. As far as simulcast goes I live in Oconee County and its all simulcast and mine has no problem.