Who remembers cordless telephone convos on your scanner?

[rf_patriot200]

Out of curiosity, i scanned my community last night and about 9 people at 902-928 analog and 3 on 49mhz !

 

[trentbob]

Out of curiosity, i scanned my community last night and about 9 people at 902-928 analog and 3 on 49mhz !

WOW!!

 

[rf_patriot200]

WOW!!

My neighbors were blown away when tv became digital...

 

[exkalibur]

Anyone remember Dino Allsman?

 

[DeeEx]

Anyone remember Dino Allsman?

He’s quoted in the Mildred Monday song

 

[IC-R20]

Ahh yes, the summer of 1996 and 1997, a ten speed, an a low band MT1000 provided HOURS of fun here in the ATL.

I did that 10 years ago with my HT1250 handhelds, pretending to be in the same house with a mysterious second phone was always hilarious. The built in dtmf keypad added to the fun. Unfortunately the 49MHz ones are usually the type where it has to be taken off the base to activate. It would’ve been interesting to take a 33cm handheld as well and see if you could get any bases to activate, there was an old ham blog I read from someone who did that in the 90s while driving around but I can’t find it anymore.

 

[IC-R20]

You know another really fun thing to scan for in the same vein was analog video signals. You used to find tons of those in the 2.4 and 5.8 range and occasionally the odd 900mhz one.
Back in 2010 I used to have a rebranded version of one of those lawmate scanners and ran the RCA output into a Hi8 camcorder I got at the thrift store that had recording inputs. It would scan 900 1200 2400 and 5800 range for signals. Was really fun taking shopping with me, sometimes you‘d find one of the busines suites with a couple of cameras as well as many houses on the drive home.
My favorite find was in a hotel parking lot, they had one hiding low on a light pole in the bushes watching the sidewalk by the road. It disappeared after I couldn’t resist the urge to jumpscare it by putting a small chucky doll up onto the lens.

 

[BinaryMode]

You know another really fun thing to scan for in the same vein was analog video signals. You used to find tons of those in the 2.4 and 5.8 range and occasionally the odd 900mhz one.
Back in 2010 I used to have a rebranded version of one of those lawmate scanners and ran the RCA output into a Hi8 camcorder I got at the thrift store that had recording inputs. It would scan 900 1200 2400 and 5800 range for signals. Was really fun taking shopping with me, sometimes you‘d find one of the busines suites with a couple of cameras as well as many houses on the drive home.
My favorite find was in a hotel parking lot, they had one hiding low on a light pole in the bushes watching the sidewalk by the road. It disappeared after I couldn’t resist the urge to jumpscare it by putting a small chucky doll up onto the lens.

HAHAHA

Yeah, I had an IC-R3 that could do that. But it was very deaf at that range. Worked reasonably well with the quarter sized CCD camera I had that ran on a 9 Volt battery though. 1.2 GHz was the band for this camera.

 

[IC-R20]

HAHAHA

Yeah, I had an IC-R3 that could do that. But it was very deaf at that range. Worked reasonably well with the quarter sized CCD camera I had that ran on a 9 Volt battery though. 1.2 GHz was the band for this camera.

It also cuts off halfway through the 2.4ghz range which misses a lot of cameras just slightly above. I remember universal-radio also sold it with a 9 volt camera like that in the 916mhz range. Same with the R20 the deafness is because it downconverts at the microwave range. Using a native antenna for the band helps but I also have a preamp from long ago when I used to listen to SSB ops in the 2.3GHz amateur band.

 

[spongella]

Great posts. Yes, but not on a scanner - I remember listening to cordless phones on the upper part of the AM band and slightly above. This was in the '80's when cordless phones used 1.6 - 1.8 MHz.

Also, do you know that early wireless printers used frequencies in the CB band? Yes they did. Imagine DX'ing someone's printer .

 

[hanlonmi06]

In early 2000's while in college I had gotten a Yaesu VX1R. While messing around one afternoon in the dorms with it I picked up a cell convo with a very distinct recognizable voice coming through the speaker. I just so happened to be the chief of the volunteer FD I had joined while at school. I have since forgotten the contents of the convo, he had a masonry business and I believe it was business related, but I'll never forget the jaw in the lap sensation I got when stumbling across that!

 

[IC-R20]

Great posts. Yes, but not on a scanner - I remember listening to cordless phones on the upper part of the AM band and slightly above. This was in the '80's when cordless phones used 1.6 - 1.8 MHz.

Also, do you know that early wireless printers used frequencies in the CB band? Yes they did. Imagine DX'ing someone's printer .

Oh yeah those in between for RC and various uses. I still have a keyboard and mouse that works in the 27mhz band. All the mouses use the same frequency as do the keyboards. I can’t remember which though it was like 27.145 for mice and 27.045 for keyboard. With a high gain cb or hf antenna you could often hear them if you have a tower at home or go for a drive around.

 

[BinaryMode]

Great posts. Yes, but not on a scanner - I remember listening to cordless phones on the upper part of the AM band and slightly above. This was in the '80's when cordless phones used 1.6 - 1.8 MHz.

Also, do you know that early wireless printers used frequencies in the CB band? Yes they did. Imagine DX'ing someone's printer .

I've heard (no pun intended) that early 1980s phones used that band. Wireless printers I did not know. I guess that would make since due to that band being part of one of the FCC ISM bands.

 

[IC-R20]

I found someone on YouTube a while back that would post captures of their video finds with the Icom R3

 

[KC3ECJ]

There's some 2010s HP laptops where the microphones can be picked up on UHF if I remember correctly.

Also I have a cable UHF to VHF converter that audio can be picked up from.

 

[TGuelker]

This is why I wouldn't allow my wife to get a cordless phone, until I found the one company that made a 900 MHz FHSS cordless phone. I "believe" the company was VTech.

My blonde wife (curtains match the carpet) was talking on our cordless phone and took it in the car with her and couldn’t understand why she couldn’t call anyone.

 

[N6JPA]

I remember back in the early 1990s, when most cordless phones were operating between 40 and 50 MHz, we accidentally discovered we could hear phone conversations in and around our neighborhood. I was a teenager and had a scanner that you could set to scan up and down that frequency range and it would stop on whatever conversations it would pick up.

It's scary to think that most people had ZERO awareness that their conversations could be freely intercepted over the open airwaves. That wasn't exactly a black box warning printed on cordless phones when you bought them.

I remember there was a court case in town where a man found out his neighbor turned him into the police for something, and he made that discovery by listening to the guy's phone conversations. It did not end well.

I was surprised at how many scanner geeks knew that you could do this, and yet almost no people talking freely on their phones had the slightest clue.

Yeah, I occasionally used to scan the 49 MHz for local chit chat. Most of the time it was boring. Back in the 80's & 90's you could also listen to cell phone towers with an 800 MHz scanner. I never found it appealing to listen to people chit chatting about their boring lives. YMMV. IMHO.

 

[62Truck]

Back when first messing with 900 ham. We used to hang around on 927.500 Simplex. Driving home from work at night I used to pick up a few baby monitors.

One night when hanging out at a friends house we were scanning around the 900 band with his Icom IC-R7000, he also had the TV box for it. We came across a baby monitor, he heard some kind of carrier on the frequency and hooked up a small TV to the TV box, sure enough it was one of those video baby monitors. Crazy stuff..

Another ham buddy used to pick up his neighbors cordless phone on 927.700..

This was all around 2010 ish

 

[N6JPA]

One of our claims to fame here in Central NC is back in 1995 the famous hacker Kevin Mitnick being caught just down the road in Northwest Raleigh. Another gray hat hacker named Tsutomu Shimomura aided a local analog cellphone provider in RDFing/locating Mitnick using an Icom R7000 paired with a laptop and a cell tracking software. This was all done just a few minutes away from where I am currently sitting. There was a lot of ethical questions raised in how Tsutomu was breaking some of the same cell monitoring/tracking laws Mitnick was accused of breaking. RIP Kevin.

Edited to add: The best, fairest, and most accurate account of Mitnick's story is "The Fugitive Game" by Jonathan Littman.
https://www.amazon.com/Fugitive-Game-Online-Kevin-Mitnick/dp/0316528692

Wasn't he raped and killed in prison?

 

[BinaryMode]

I found someone on YouTube a while back that would post captures of their video finds with the Icom R3

The video description says the following:

Scanning the 4 analog video channels in the 2.4 GHz range with an USB wireless DVR receiver.

My blonde wife (curtains match the carpet) was talking on our cordless phone and took it in the car with her and couldn’t understand why she couldn’t call anyone.

BAHAHAHA!

I know a woman in Sweden that would give you absolute hell for using "blonde" like that. LOL! No dummy she is, let me tell you. Knows here way around a computer and cars.