I am new to scanner radio. I would like some recomendations as to what to buy. Not sure if I want a handheld or a mobile unit (truck mounted). The reason for my new addition, is of interest as wellas entertainment on the road. Sometimes I travel for hours and would like to know whats going on out there. So let me know what y'all are using. Thanks

 

What band are you looking for? CB, 10m, 2m, vhf police, 800mhz municipal? The police and municipal are going to restricted channels. To transmit on the 10 and 2 meter bands, you should have a license, but I haven't seen anyone checking for them. CB is general use, and the band most truckers are on.

I use a modded Galaxy radio, it has 10m and CB. 10m is usually a bit quieter and useful when you want to get away from the traffic. You need to know what you want to listen to before picking a radio and having WX is a nice feature too.

 

Not sure what I want now. I thought that scanners (not cb radio) all had the ability to recieve from the low 50mhz all the way up to 1300mhz. I thing I need to do some research on what I want or at lease go out to some store and ask some questions.

 

Usually they are limited to bands by the antenna Say VHF, UHF and 800MHz can be separate scanners. What do you want to listen too? CB is 26.965 through 27.405 so you need to go lower to listen to the truckers.

I am not too sure what your going to hear in the 1.3GHz range, probably cordless phones and wifi networks. A lot of cities run the 800MHz now, but I think that is digital or part digital and you would need a decoder to listen to it. I suspect the race crews are in the UHF say 100+MHz band or probably 2m. Old police radios I recall being in the 50's and another set in the 120's or 130's, but that was 2 decades ago.

 

One more thing...
I've noticed a lot of the scanner antennas that you can purchase from Radio Shack and the "big box" stores don't seem to cover (recv) very well on anything above 801.-802+ freq. Like ReAx already stated, in most circumstances you will need a digital decoder to recv that traffic.

I've also broken my recv'ng antennas up, I have seperate antennas to cover my 800s and another one to go up to 1.7GHz+ (I believe it went to 2.4GHz.) My higher freq. antenna is also being used under my Trunking modem.

Also... all of my antennas (other than my stand-alone cb) are all 3/4" NMO mounts.

So I have:
1- window scanner antenna,
1-440-480MHz, (Radio use only) -NMO
1-1.7GHz-2.4GHz, (double back for scanner/trunking modem) -NMO
1-800-880 MHz (with 3-more coming) double back for scanner and radio use. -NMO
1- cb (radio use only) -bracket mount
1-digital decoder

All that is so I can recv Everything that my scanners can reach (freq. wise)

 

I think I need to rethink this through. I thought....at one time.....I thought all I had to do is choose a mobile or handheld scanner and just learn how to use it and enjoy what's happening out there. Well now I know I need to plan things a bit more and learn what's what and how I want to use it. Can anyone suggest a good web site to do some learnin.

 

At one time or another... there was a website by the name of Scanner shack (or similar) that had a bunch of good "Need-to-know" info on scanners. I can't seem to get it to pull up on google... (heavy filters on the work PC)
You or another user might get it to go...

 

ARRL has a ton of info on ham radio, 2 and 10m but I think there is a third band.