what does one do with a scanner?

[gandalf23]

Weird old neighbor lady asked me to help throw some stuff out of her garage for her. She'd bought newer junk and needed the room. The only good stuff she was getting rid of was a box of older scanners, which she said I could have. She was not sure if it was stuff her deceased husband had, she thought some of his ham stuff was in there "somewhere" or stuff she'd found somewhere. There are four portable hand held scanners in the box: a Realistic Pro-32, a Regency model HX2000, a Bearcat model BC-100, and a Realistic Model Pro-4. The Regency had batteries in it that were labeled as being installed in 1986, but none of them leaked. All of them look well kept. I have not tested the scanners yet, but assuming they work, what does one do with them?

Oh, there was also a Grundig Satellit 6001 shortwave radio that I grabbed from her trash. Does not appear to work, though. But I'll play with it a bit after it airs out, it stunk pretty badly of cigarette smoke.

[Yogimus]

Ebay.

[Weetabix]

Those sound pretty old but they could be interesting to play with. ISTR that the old Radio Shack ones are more useful.

[randy]

Caveat, I never got into (civilian) scanners. being a SIGINT type and after listening to a couple of wars, day-to-day LE/Fire traffic seemed too much like work and somewhat mundane.

You'd have to research by model numbers, but it is very likely that they can no longer monitor Public Safety bands in 800 MHz after the national re-banding process (Cell carriers paid for a swap of frequencies to put PS together and open others up for Cell use), so even if they did trunk tracking (and I'd bet the Regency and Realistic units don't), you can't monitor Police/Fire/EMS calls, on 800 MHz which is a prime use for a lot of folks. (some are "in the business" and like to keep situational awareness, others because they just like listening).

You could still monitor amateur frequencies, CB, national weather service, and possibly aviation if they are set up for it (AM). Folks in these fields use scanners to supplement their transceivers to monitor more frequencies without the expense of a full transmitter.

In areas where they still use VHF/UHF you probably can still receive, but audio quality may be iffy on the margins due to the recent Narrowbanding of VHF mandated by the FCC.

One of the folks in my office has one at home to monitor the local Amateur Radio SKYWARN traffic as he does not have a license to transmit.

Before re-banding made it obsolete, I had one in my office to scan specific talk groups on several systems to get a heads up if they became active without having to keep several $5,000.00 (NOT a typo) radios on my desk. Have never got around to replacing it.

You might see if there's a local scanner group that could tell you what they can do and might take them off your hands. But if you're not interested in playing with them just to play, Yogi is probably right (did I just write that! )

[PawPaw]

FWIW, (I'm a user, not an enthusiast. I talk on the radio the Sheriff gives me) we're about to switch from the 800 mhz band to the 700 mhz band on our local radios. Lots of yada-yada about better coverage, same crap I heard when we went from UHF to 800 mhz, but I've also heard rumblings that the local cell carriers want all the 800 bandwidth for cell communications, so they're paying public safety to go to 700 mhz.

Whatever, when the Sheriff hands me a new radio, I"ll use it. However, cell phones have revolutionized the way we do law enforcement. Lots of traffic comes across as text messages now, I routinely text my supervisor with questions/updates, rather than put our traffic out over the radio net.

[Yogimus]

Yep, same for our side of the house. Net message comes across requesting a patrol, patrol responds, details come across on text. We had problems with the system, because responding patrols had no idea where each other was, and it slowed down backup. Now we call where we are across the net as well, and send names/vehicle make/etc across text, while maintaining situational awareness via radio.

[HTRN]

Text (SMS) has a big advantage over every other voice communication method in one very important area: bandwidth. When the towers went down, it took out basically the entire telephone system, but SMS continued to chug along, until it too crashed. It was the last service still running ,and IIRC, the first to start working again.

[Greg]

Text (SMS) has a big advantage over every other voice communication method in one very important area: bandwidth. When the towers went down, it took out basically the entire telephone system, but SMS continued to chug along, until it too crashed. It was the last service still running ,and IIRC, the first to start working again.

(Plain)text has limitations, but it's more efficient than ANYTHING else. Old Unix-y types know this.

[Weetabix]

MDT?

[Cybrludite]

Text (SMS) has a big advantage over every other voice communication method in one very important area: bandwidth. When the towers went down, it took out basically the entire telephone system, but SMS continued to chug along, until it too crashed. It was the last service still running ,and IIRC, the first to start working again.

That was my experience during the aftermath of Katrina.