Communications Equipment / Radios

Sam Spade wrote:

jshupe wrote:
I was thinking about a scanner as an alternate to the radio, as odd as it may sound.

So....what exactly do you intend to scan for ??
I don't think that is practical at all while you are moving if you think it through.

Police, fire, EMS, air transmissions, or anything else of interest. I always used to listen to my parent's scanner as a kid (in the 90s), but it went quiet and my parents put it away. They said it wouldn't work anymore due to new technology, and I was under the assumption that encryption was preventing anything interesting from being heard over the air until I decided to research it a few months ago to see what kind was used.

I disvovered that while encryption is sometimes used, the real reason was most likely due to either trunking or digital technology. Good radios can work with both of those, but cost a lot of money so I haven't decided whether to buy one yet.

I am looking at the BCD536HP; it supports GPS and has a nationwide database you can regularly update via SD card. It is touted to work well in a mobile environment and designed to address the practicality you were mentioning.

I installed a scanner app on my phone last night and listened to several broadcasts around the country. I found our local ones are quite broken up and low quality, but some of the national ones were nice and you could hear complete conversations (mostly police, EMS). I know that radio is subject to variations in quality, but I think the local broadcasts here are just poorly captured or the person uploading them has an inadequate connection.