Police/Fire/EMS Radio Scanner in the Home

[Sir John Honeybucket]

Rather than put this into the 'Radio' section, I think it's more general interest ---

Right now, several coastal counties along the Chesapeake Bay are in the middle of moderate coastal flooding, some roads and bridges blocked, some trees down, power lines in roads & etc.  Sitting inside of our house, we'd never know there is a mild emergency and where the danger spots are without our radio scanner.  We are fortunate to live in a rural area where public safety radio is all in the clear - no encryption.  Our scanner runs all day, and I use a micro-FM broadcast transmitter so that we can listen to the scanner from anywhere on the property using a small, portable FM receiver.

An easy way to begin to listen to your local radio traffic is using an APP on your smart phone - UNTIL THE GRID GOES DOWN. No infracstructure would mean no listening to emergency radio on a SmartPhone APP. However, I have such an app on my phone and have used it. Another factor is that 'scanner' APPs don't cover every area, audio is often DELAYED and of course someone else has programmed the scanner(s) the APP is listening to.

Your household radio scanner is LIVE and you can customise it for your specific area, so that you can listen to 'TACtical channels', cooperating agencies &etc.  Living on the coast, some local communication of value is marine band VHF, which is used legally on the water and illegally on dry land - but it's done commonly. Scanning 'Family' radio services, GMRS and local ham VHF/UHF and others, can give you an 'ear' on what your more switched ON neighbors are up to.   I have some people in the region on ham 6 meters on weekends; they call ahead when they are near the house, use radios while traveling in a group of vehicles (small convoy) and other security hahibts, which might make them preppers (you know h.... CRAZY PEOPLE :-)  and possibly worth getting to know.

>>>====> If you can find scanner enthusiasts in your area, I recommend that you do.  For the time taken to share coffee, you'll learn from theiir experience what does, and does NOT work in your local area and probably a gain a good source of loaned/used equipment to get started.


Sir John Honeybucket

[FeedingFreedom]

Great point, scanners are a great resource to know what's going on in your area. I grew up in a Fire/EMS family, we had a scanner in every room in the house, including bathrooms. Radioreference.com is a good resource for frequency lists, you can also download PDF or CSV files for each county. I also keep an eye peeled at yard sales, hamfests, etc. for decent scanners to keep and give out to friends who have no current interest in becoming licensed. Even a 20-channel scanner is good enough for our area, as there aren't that many active frequencies.

Learning the "lingo" before a major incident is important, and every area is different. Some use 10-codes, some plain language, and it helps to learn unit and station numbers to gain your bearings.

[JohnyMac]

Great topic Sire John and comments FF.

I have acquired the frequencies (Public sourced) to all fire and police for my AO and programed them into my HT's. I have also programed them into my MAG groups radios. Of the group only one household listens 24/7 but they typically text out anything important to the group.

Just north of me in NY State, Broome County is going to encrypted comms for the whole county. In an earlier meeting with the Broome County 911 manager about the new protocols that by law, all police, EMT, Fire, etc. must be available to the public. The only exception is SWATT type comms. He looked at   me like I had two heads. In another meeting he brought up my concern and shared with the group I was correct. The groups final decision was to do nothing until someone complained. LOL, ya' got to love government.

Anyway, the average person without a new fangled scanner would not be able to decode the encrypted messages without the codes. Interesting. Well that is Broome County NY and not where I live where our local agencies still only use VHF and UHF signals.

Even the State Police typically use VHF/UHF or cell phones for comms around my AO because their fancy new "trunk system" does not work well in our mountainous region. To make them work, the state would need to install antennas on the top of every mountain which they are doing in Broome County NY to the tune of $10M.

Great thread folks!