POLICE SCANNER RADIO
Abc's of monitoring "live action" Scanner radio!
A guide to selecting The Best "Police" Radio Scanners
 and a simple introduction to scanner radios and how they work.
by N4UJW Hamuniverse.com (A Ham Radio Web Site)

Please read entire article, you will be glad you did! Buying a  scanner for your particular area or needs could be complicated if you don't know the basics.

If you have ever been on the scene of an auto accident, fire, weather, plane crash or most any other disaster of any type, chances are you have heard the chatter of the police, emergency, rescue and fire crew radios as they go about their daily job of saving lives, welfare, property and enforcing the laws using their radio communication equipment to coordinate and relay information at the speed of light via radio. Or you may have wondered just how those transmissions from private, commercial, and military aircraft sound and what goes on behind the scenes in a disasters with fire departments, rescue vehicles, state agencies, highway patrol, marine, local governments, utility trucks, taxi cabs, ham radio operators and others. 

Most of these agencies, departments, and others transmit and receive on Federal Government assigned frequencies in the Vhf and Uhf range of frequencies above standard broadcast FM stations of the radio spectrum and cannot be heard on your standard car or home radio but can be heard on "Police type Radio Scanners".
Here are some actual audio samples of what you could hear with a scanner below:

Severe Police situation Shots Fired!

Actual Radio transmission from the International Space Station Talking to school students!
(This was a real time transmission on the 2 meter ham band that most scanners can hear!)

"Police" type radio scanners designed to receive these frequencies or bands can be purchased from several sources, new and used with various bells and whistles and are easy to operate. In this article, I suggest and highly recommend one source over all the rest! Scanner Master!

Basic Operation and features of a "Scanner"
The standard "Police Scanner" receiver has a Volume control, Squelch, Scan, Manual, Program and other buttons, switches and knobs to control the receiver functions and the bells and whistles. It comes from the manufacture designed to receive one or more "bands" of frequencies and may have "banks" for each band and may cover a wide range of frequencies authorized for use by public service agencies and lots of other not so well known users like Amateur Radio Operators, (Hams), Federal, State, county offices, utilities, scientific and research, weather, business, TV station live remote broadcast crews and hundreds more. "Police" type scanners are usually designed to receive several VHF and UHF bands and can be purchased with hundreds of programable memory channels. They are available both in base (home setup) and portable models and can operate on batteries and AC power. Most portable scanners can use rechargeable batteries for hours of use or can be operated from a car cigarette ligther adapter. The portable radios come with a small "Rubber Duckie" antenna and the table model (base) radios usually come with a telescoping antenna much like that on a portable AM/FM radios.
Most scanners, whether they are base or portable, can have an external antenna added to increase their range.

What Frequencies are Most Active?

The most active frequencies on the "Police" scanners are the Public Safety related departments such as Police, ambulance and rescue crews along with highway patrol, fire, ham radio and the aircraft frequencies. 24 hour weather can be heard easily on scanners from the National Weather service and is a must in bad weather. Modern scanners are designed to receive a special "ALERT" WARNING from the National Weather Service when bad weather approches. You get the warning first when others without a scanner don't!
The Amateur radio frequencies in the 2 meter and 440 band are also very popular and you may even hear your Ham neighbor's voice on one of the frequencies!

There are two general types of scanners, portable (handheld), and table (desktop) models of which some can be used in your car.
(Check your state regulations on using any scanner "mobile")! See end of article below.

The portable scanners are battery operated and most can be put in a shirt or pants pocket or carried by attaching to a belt. They generally perform well but their range is limited by the short "rubber ducky" antenna.
Usually an external outside scanner antenna can be added for more range.

The table top or desktop scanners usually are more powerful, (sensitive). They come with a telescoping antenna and can be attached to a rooftop or outdoor scanner antenna for more range if needed and have larger physical size and better sound quality due to larger speakers and are usually much easier to us than a handleld scanner if you have small fingers.
 
All scanners are programable by the user for the particular frequencies or "channels" you may wish to hear and most even "scan" a band or bank of frequencies for active channels and add them to the memory and have connectors to add a recorder or your computer to record the activity while you are away without missing anything!
 
You can also attach earphones to them for private listening! The band scanning and memory functions are extremly useful to the listener if you don't know the frequencies in your area!

Over the many years that I have been involved in Scanning, Shortwave Listening, and Amateur Radio, I have learned that "you get what you pay for", and sticking with well known name brands and popular sellers from a company with a good reputation is the way to go when you want to purchase an item.

Buying "Police scanners" by checking around and using wise buying information is no different than buying any product. You must consider all the pros and cons for your particular use and consider sources of good information wisely. Many companies that sell radio scanners are only in the business of selling scanners as a sideline and that's the end of it. Getting an answer to a question about your scanner, either before or after you buy can be very difficult using a company that just sells them at the lowest price. They are going to try to sell you on the highest priced model with all of the bells and whistles that you may not need in your particular area! So how do you choose the right radio scanner for YOUR area. Read on if you are interested so far!

So what scanner do I need to buy that will work where I live?

If you missed it above, click here to go directly to a form that you can fill out that will help Scannermaster determine exactly what type you need and some scanner suggestions by them! Or simply click the Choosing the Right Scanner and follow the instructions. You will go to the Scannermaster website. Come back here when done. 

More good reading about scanners..don't go away!

"Crowding of the  Public Service Bands leads to Modern Technology advances"

In the larger metro areas, crowding of the frequencies has become a major problem and modern technology came to the rescue with Trunk Tracking.
Since early in the 1980s, when trunking radio systems were first built, public safety scanning had taken a down turn. While trunking systems had generally been a boon to its users, offering tremendous flexibility with limited spectrum, the news media, off-duty police and fire officers, hobbyists, and others were often left out with no options.

I won't put you to sleep with how trunking works; but in a nutshell, trunked systems generally use anywhere from three to 29 frequencies, computer controlled and are controlled by a single data channel, can provide communications for hundreds of groups of users, from the dog catcher, police, to the fire department arson squad on a shared basis. Conversations on trunked systems often jump to other frequencies between replies. It becomes very difficult, if not impossible, on a standard scanner, to follow a conversation when one second your listening to the dog catcher and the next to the Chief of Police on the same frequency!
This is especially frustrating on busy urban metro systems with the standard scanner. A trunk tracking type scanner is a must in large metro areas like New York, Miami, San Franscio, Chicago, etc.

Years ago when many of us first began to scan, we knew that our local police operated on (as an example) 460.100 MHz, the local hospital on 155.340 MHz, fire on another frequency and the local highway department on 37.900 MHz. With trunked systems, you can never tell on which frequency (again, among a group of three to 29 frequencies) a particular agency will use. Many people who monitored, as part of their work, such as the news media reporters, off-duty public safety officials like fire or police, and casual scanner hobbyists like you and I, simply gave up monitoring (scanning) when their local departments went to trunked systems technology.
It wasn't worth the hassle and effort. Those news reporters and off-duty emergency personnel may have suffered, and the scanning hobby, (you and I), suffered, as did the scanner industry.

Up to this point in time I have not mentioned any Brand Names or suppliers in this article:

Uniden was the first manufacture of scanners to stay abreast of technology and changed all of the above!

Their new TrunkTracker scanners, allow you to follow the communications of agencies which operate Motorola analog trunked radio systems.
Simply put, these radios are amazing! They work beautifully, they themselves are extremely flexible, and, perhaps best of all,

TrunkTrackers are a breeze to use and are not priced so only the rich and famous can afford them! They do it all!

A trunked system capable "Police" type scanner requires special technology to listen to or follow this type of system plus as an added bonus, are still able to receive the older systems you may have in your area. In short, they do it all and you can bet your boots that Uniden will stay ahead of technology to supply us with the best scanners for the money. Uniden's popular "Bearcat" models outsell others due to the company staying way out in front of the competition!