Worth it to get back into scanning Twin Cities Metro?

[CcSkyEye]

Xcel energy 800 trunked in the Twin Cities is encrypted. As a critical infrastructure it makes sense to have the system encrypted but it was. Sure helpful during power outages to listen to the crews to get a clue on how long things would be down.

I agree.

One of Xcel's towers is basically in my backyard. Call me a dork, but it was interesting listening at times to the outages and other communications even when it didn't directly affect me.

 

[KD0NDO]

Look into SDRs if you aren't going to be using it walking around. $100 cheapo Elitebook and two $35 SDR dongles and my radio monitoring experience is much more enjoyable than it was with a $600 scanner...
View attachment 122515

Any chance you would share your radio id tags? I've been working on a list myself with unitrunker. Maybe swap some info.

 

[tadsmith]

mmtstc can you tell me what software you using to log/display all of those calls on your screen?

 

[KD0NDO]

mmtstc can you tell me what software you using to log/display all of those calls on your screen?

That's Unitrunker

 

[tadsmith]

That's Unitrunker

Thank you! I was able to join the group and download it to try it out.

 

[MCWKen]

Yex, inquiring minds want to know.. SDR’s on the way!. Not spending $600 for an SDS to listen to one talk group on a simulcast system.

I have been using OP 25 for a few years. Had my ups and downs, but now my laptop and desktop run on Linux. I tried VirtualBox, but the computer would take resources away from it, causing poor performance.

Now that both use Linux (Ububtu flavor), OP25 runs very reliably.