why multiple scanners?

[mrova]

Mr. Moderator, if this should go to general scanning, sorry. 1alpha kind of raised the question with his asking if anyone has the 500 and 600, and the answer made me wonder this out of curiosity. I have the 500 and an older sportcat 180. I don't have a clue as to how would I use both now and use the 500 exclusively. Why do you folks have multiple scanners and how do you use them? For example, do you have one scanner monitoring police only and another one monitoring fire/rescue? Or similar?
SV

 

[hoser147]

There are lots of answers to your question. Police, Fire, Different Cities, Counties, Digital, analog. Feeds. You just kinda gotta go with what you can listen to and comprehend. If you get an Incident happening in one place then you can lock onto it and fire up another. Some are in different parts of the house. Im sure Im forgetting some. Hope this helps Hoser

 

[Raven95150]

I use one scanner to monitor my county's digital system and another to monitor fire dispatch frequencies from all around my area because they are still simulcast on analog VHF. Also, right now I'm actually listening to a large incident with a fire in an apartment building and about 10 FDs on scene. With 2 scanners, I can listen to fireground operations on digital and still hear the dispatch channel on analog. Even with 2 scanners going, I'm still not hearing everything because they are using 3 fireground channels and an EMS tac channel.

 

[bwinking]

depending on what's going on ,I've had 3 or 4 scanners on. one scanning and the others on specific channels ,so I wouldn't miss anything. this year has been busy with the floods etc.

 

[gmclam]

2+ scanners

In the old days the way it worked was the more channels (conventional frequencies) you scan, the more likely you are to miss something on a specific channel. It does not work that way with Trunked Radio Systems. The "problem" is that the (GRE) scanners I have are not able to simultaneously monitor the control channel of a TRS while scanning other frequencies. In order to avoid missing anything on a TRS, the scanner must constantly monitor the control channel. If the scanner stops on the CC slightly late, unlike conventional channels where you just miss the start of a transmission, you miss an entire transmission.

So to "solve" this problem, I use one scanner just to monitor my local TRS and a separate scanner to monitor all conventional stuff. More scanners are brought out when there is an incident and want to lock onto specific channels.

 

[1alpha]

I have no less than 2 at a time. My city is very busy FD wise. Always have 1 dispatch channel and 3 tac channels going at once. When it slows down some nights i`ll monitor police and fire.

 

[trixwagen]

During situations like undercover operations like drug busts, I have my digital scanner on the frequency used by special operations and my analog scanner tuned to the city police frequencies. When stuff is going down, everyone is transmitting at once, so you are getting half the story if you're locked onto only one frequency. It is interesting to hear different departments working together on the same case.

During a major fire or disaster-type scenario, I'd say multiple scanners are a must.

During more mundane times, I like to keep one scanner strictly on air bands, for example, and the other keeping track of fire/police/base operations and so on.

I think I need more scanners.

 

[LEH]

I listen to multiple scanners. One has my local multi jurisdiction digital trunked system loaded. Another has neighboring analog trunked systems that I monitor. I have a third scanner that I use for specific incidents where I can monitor things like fire ground ops.

Two scanners are nearly always going.

 

[MOTORHEAD3902]

When I first began building up the equipment at my listening location, i had the goal (notice I said GOAL) of a separate radio for each band being fed with a band specific antenna. This was my intent anyway.
I try to stay within that general design, but there are cetrtain freqs that are loaded into every scanner regardless of its' designated band.

 

[NYRHKY94]

I listen to 3 actively, one for my local PD/FD, one for a neighboring city EDACS system and one for a nearby airport. I also have 4 others running live feeds 24x7. C'mon now....you can't have too many scanners ;-)

 

[altec]

Unitrunker

I plan on using my old 800MHz scanner for trunking software decoders like unitrunker.

 

[wa8pyr]

The "problem" is that the (GRE) scanners I have are not able to simultaneously monitor the control channel of a TRS while scanning other frequencies. In order to avoid missing anything on a TRS, the scanner must constantly monitor the control channel. If the scanner stops on the CC slightly late, unlike conventional channels where you just miss the start of a transmission, you miss an entire transmission.

Not correct, on multiple levels:

1) No radio continues to monitor the control channel while listening to a voice transmission, not even Motorola radios. However, there is low-speed subaudible handshake data sending information on the voice channel regarding the active talkgroup on that channel. This low-speed data is, in fact, what the original model Pro-92 monitored to enable tracking of trunked systems.

2) If the scanner stops on the control channel slightly late, it should still pick up that active talkgroup; not only is the CC constantly broadcasting a talkgroup continuation status word and channel assignment, but the low-speed handshake data is still being sent on the voice channel as well. This is how actual trunked radios know to join a conversation which is already in progress.

 

[hfxChris]

I usually have two going; my PSR400 monitors the fire and EMS talkgroups, my Pro96 monitors police which are digital here.
Alternately, if I'm fed up with listening to police (unless there's something interesting happening, I can only listen to traffic stops so much ), the Pro96 suddenly starts monitoring other government agencies, like natural resources. Other times I'll just have the 96 monitoring fire pager frequencies, so I don't miss a toneout.
I also usually have my Pro66 running with Unitrunker.

During a major incident, I'll dust off the Pro97; for example during a big forest fire near my house this summer, the PSR400 was monitoring the fire talkgroup assigned to the scene, the Pro97 was monitoring the natural resources fire crews as well as a the water bombers and helicopters, and the Pro96 was monitoring the police talkgroup assigned for the incident, plus EMS, red cross, and a handful of other EMO-related talkgroups.

 

[gmclam]

Not correct, on multiple levels:

1) No radio continues to monitor the control channel while listening to a voice transmission, not even Motorola radios. However, there is low-speed subaudible handshake data sending information on the voice channel regarding the active talkgroup on that channel. This low-speed data is, in fact, what the original model Pro-92 monitored to enable tracking of trunked systems.

Of course you are correct. I was trying to be too concise in my explanation. But the reality is that if I use one scanner to listen to everything, and another "locked" onto only the local TRS, it becomes painfully obvious how much is being missed over the TRS.

2) If the scanner stops on the control channel slightly late, it should still pick up that active talkgroup; not only is the CC constantly broadcasting a talkgroup continuation status word and channel assignment, but the low-speed handshake data is still being sent on the voice channel as well. This is how actual trunked radios know to join a conversation which is already in progress.

I guess that depends on your definition of "slightly" - a few milliseconds, or seconds. Now I am not talking about any models of recievers or scanners other than the GRE models I have listed below. But I can simply turn off the bank of the TRS and turn it back on while a conversation is taking place and the scanner will not go back to the conversation it was just on. And I know the conversation is still taking place because I am monitoring it on another scanner. Yes, sometimes it does resume; but not enough of the time. So I just dedicate one scanner to the TRS.

Therefore I have at least 2 scanners running 24/7 with others available when there is an incident.

 

[Viper43]

Well I have 19 scanners now, for one recent incident it took 5 just to hear all the talk groups used for that incident. All the scanners except three are connected to a Digital loggers Inc. 16 channel multicoupler so I only need one antenna for those 16 scanners which works out well. 5 scanners follow trunked systems, 3 VHF PD & Fire, 1 Federal govt. 2 air 2 military and 3 misc stuff. The other 3 scanners are mobiles and cover most anything. I do use them to make money though as I am a freelance photographer.

V

 

[torontokris]

In my opinion Id use multiple scanners because scanning through 6000 channels (on a 396 or a 996) by the time you get back to Channel 1 you missed out on a lot of conversations.

19 scanners damn

 

[Lew]

PSR500 - Heap Error

I was uploading (SC Palmetto 800 TRS) from Win500 and got "heap error" and/or 'heap full". I get the same message when I start the Monitor application. Initiallzing scanner did not correct problem. Any help would be appreciated.

Lew

 

[mrova]

Wow!

Man, ya'll have some stuff there! It makes sense how you use them, I am just overwhelmed by all the stuff! I'll just stick with my 500 and 180 and fiddle a bit...not way I could do all that listening!
SV

 

[1alpha]

It gets addicting you will find yourself wanting more.

 

[scannersnstuff]

not trying to be a wise guy,but my monitoring get's split up depending if i'm using portable's or base radio's.while i'm doing some active monitoring i'll have one radio scanning local vhf/uhf public safety,one radio doing njsp aviation only,and one radio listening to my local police <alway's busy>.i also almost alway's have my minitor fire pager monitoring 8 tone set's on our county fire paging channel.i have the capability to switch the pager to just alert on my local f.d. for night time monitoring.sometimes this all get's supplemented by a scanner doing just close call or spectrumsweeping.while i'm at work,and not that busy i'll listen to njsp aviation and some local fire/media buff group's <good for head's up> on major job's.