[geeks] Radio Scanners

[Doug McLaren]

On Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 12:53:39PM -0500, James Fogg wrote:

| > What I'm looking for is to basically listen to police, fire,
| > ems, maybe some CSX/Amtrak, and anything the local Air
| > National Guard base may have. I'd prefer it to be portable so
| > that I can take it anywhere. I'd guess that my budget for
| > something like this is around $200.
...

| $200.00 can get you some nice models.

Hell, $30 will get him what he wants if he shops around.

Like this item from http://www.austinhams.org/swapnet.htm --

   Chris K5CLC plz email Uniden Sportcat SC150 100ch 29-512MHz HH scanner $30
   Chris K5CLC at sbcglobal.net

though you might need to go higher than 512 MHz.  Either way, used
scanners appear from time to time, just keep an eye out.

| One problem with radios less than 10 years old is that they aren't
| easily modified for full spectrum coverage, and cellphones and certain
| other bands are locked out.

Usually it's just the cell phones, but cheaper scanners tend to listen
to only certain bands anyways -- it's not that they're locking stuff
out, it's that they only chose to include certain things.

You can buy general coverage receivers that will cover everything
(except the cell bands) but they cost more.  Like my Yaesu VR-500,
which will do 100 KHz to 1300 MHz, AM, FM, WFM, SSB, CW.  It'll pick
up any signal in that range except for the cell phone bands at
807-820, 824-849 and 869-894 MHz.  (Not that there's much to listen to
there anymore.)

| I don't think cellphone matters anymore since its all digital now. I
| haven't tried, but I don't think an analog radio can hear digi
| cellphones.

It could, if it were on the right frequency, but it would just be
noise.  It's probably a safe bet that the NSA and similar places could
decrypt digital cell phone conversations directly from the air, but as
far as I know it's not generally possible by your average hardware
hacker.

A more likely consideration is that old and cheap scanners don't do
trunking, which is needed to keep track of many modern radio systems.
Without trunking, it's hard to follow a conversation as the
frequencies may change every time they key the mike.


-- 
Doug McLaren, dougmc at frenzy.com
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