Anyone into radios/Police scanners/ etc?

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Radio is definitely a "Special interest" for me. I've owned shortwave radios, police scanners, I have a ham radio license (all though inactive) and a ham 2 meter/440 Mhz Handheld.

I used to stay up late at night just to listen to truckers on their CB's, filthy language galore

On long car rides I'll usually bring a police scanner and an AM/FM walkman with me to pick up signals along the way.

When conditions are right, I like to search for long range FM broadcast stations, It's possible to get stations in over 1,000 miles away when certain conditions in the ionosphere are right, charged particles and such. It's called "E-skip". and the reception of long distance signals in general is called "DXing". this past Tuesday the entire USA was buzzing with e-skip almost the entire day!. I was getting stations in from Texas and Kansas here in Ohio, and before that, someone on youtube that kind of lives near me was getting in NC, Virginia and Florida.. so cool! I used to DX TV too when analog was still alive.

I'll sometimes bring a scanner to high school football games and listen into the "Raw" feeds of radio broadcasts. You can hear them converse among themselves during commercial breaks and such, it's pretty cool.



I love radio!

were you technician class? code/no code? just curious.


at least in my part of the country [USA] the fcc keeps an active and critical ear out for such. they make examples out of a few, in much the same way as a traffic cop makes examples out of a few speeders to get everybody else back into the slow lane.


i remember on a school field trip bus ride, the bus AM radio was MIA but there was the public service 2-way radio which wandered into somebody else's license territory, and it was fascinating to hear various local businesses with the same frequency chat among themselves.



i miss dx-ing tv stations, but did you know there are people with powerful antenna beam arrays mounted atop 100+ foot masts, with signal amps and such, that can receive nominally line-of-sight ATSC broadcasts from several hundred miles away? i miss being able to watch canadian tv, which reveals american tv [except for PBS] to be the infantile thing it is. PBS is the american CBC. i never had any fancy reception equipment [just an analog sony watchman with me standing atop the roof looking like a fool] and with this basic equipment, i [located in tacoma wa] could pick up stations in medford oregon and in vancouver, CA. i wonder how much better i'd have done if i had a real beam antenna atop a tree. nowadays that is what i have but it is too late to enjoy NTSC now that it has been replaced by ATSC, which is a relatively less robust [weak] system in terms of reception past 20 miles out from the transmitter tower. all my local stations are at least 50 miles away from me, but thanks to the deep fringe "fly swatter" antenna i have atop an 85' tree i can get almost all of them ['cept for KCTS-9 whose southbound signal is blocked by KOMO-4's much taller transmission tower]. channel 9 [PBS] comes in sporadically, much of the time i get a "no signal available" sign on my tv screen. drat, it is the only thing on tv worth watching. the few dx analog stations i got were channel 2, 6 and 8 in canada until they switched to digital. as for digital reception, i tried it with a handheld tv set but got absolutely nothing out in the sticks where i live, even standing atop the roof on my tippie-toes.

i used to listen to "nightcaps" on KSL-AM in salt lake city, that one came in stronger at night, than seattle's KIRO 710! the reason for that is that KSL is "clear channel," meaning it shares its frequency with no other station in north america. the cascade mountain range blocks all my reception of stations east of the mountains. the furthest southern AM station i got was one in san diego. for some reason the california stations come in just as well as the local AM stations at night, in fact they ride on top of a lot of them sharing the same frequency. the furthest my rudimentary FM reception system [boston acoustic receptor HD radio and window-mounted dipole] has dx-ed is vancouver to the north and medford to the south. i can weakly receive one station to the west of me over a hundred miles away, in ocean shores washington. when i was visiting ocean shores, i tried to see if i could dx anything from over the pacific ocean [japan] with my car radio, but got nothing. that would've been cool if i had been able to get anything from there.

I'm a no code tech The radio community around here is kind of dull so It took away from my ham interests.

Man, I've love to have one of those 100 FT Super antennas. I'm sure the neighbors would love looking at it too I do have a DTV Converter box but It's kind of a hassle to use. , so I havn't tried much digital TV DX. Longest i've ever got was WXYZ From Detroit (, about 70 miles away. Maybe I should try it the next time there's an e-skip opening. Analog DX was definately more fun though. I also got Canadian stations quite often from southern Ontario, which was pretty cool because I could get NFL football games not shown on local TV when the tropo was good.

Yeah, I used to do AM DX too, not as often now but I'll search occasionally. Once on a shortwave program they mentioned 820 WBAP FT. Worth/Dallas was going to do a call in show all about how far their signal got out, asked people from long distances to call in and such. I phoned them up, told them I was near Cleveland, Ohio, told them the signal faded in and out. They had some guy from the ARRL as a guest, it was a pretty cool show!. I do know I can get Cuban stations quite often, they must run a lot of power down there. I did try messing around with a radio from Hawaii on globaltuners.com, hoping to AM DX stations form Japan/China/Australia/etc but I didn't have any luck.

south of the border the broadcasters are allowed up to 500K watts AM! that is 5 times the maximum permissible american AM radio radiated power. in addition, XERF [250k watts] used an unconventionally modified RCA amplifier that transmitted in such a way that there was a natural reverb in the sound heard on the air, with no reverb circuits in evidence. i can't remember what it was, i'd heard something about a "tuned tank" circuit the station used in its transmitter. i am no electronics expert so i can't really talk about it in any sensible detail.

I have a Ham radio license ( General) also but I never transmit. I do enjoy DXing. I have a nice 80 meter reciever I built from scratch and It gets good reception. ( listened to 80 meter? talk about filthy language). I use to have an old AM radio that I was out of a car and I built a power supply and used it inside the house it was GREAT. I could pick up lots of great stations and night and It had wonderful seperation and sound.
I built up a cool VLF converter for the 80 meter rig. There is a fair amount of noise down there, but lots of beacons and signals I would guess are military in origin and of course WWVB at 60khz out of Colorado.
Right now I have a random length of wire from the house to a nearby tree. It gets the job done but I would like to play around with loops.

Radio is my preferred form of entertainment. Right now, I’m listening to the News/Talk digital channel of my local NPR station (It’s NPR during the day and BBC at night).

I was never a Ham, but I do have a professional General Radiotelephone License (was probably the hardest test I ever took). I never had to use my GROL, but it did help me get my first job and looks damn good on a resume….

I still like DXing on AM occasionally. I have an Eton S350DL. It has a digital display, but it manually tunes. It isn’t that great for SW—really good for AM.


PS

I was just thinking… Seems like I read somewhere about a “community radio” thing—low power FM, I believe. That sounds like a fun hobby for someone with the time (not me currently).

heh, yeah, that and there is the infamous 147.435 repeater in Southern California which the FCC seems to not take much action at all against. I guess they figure it's best to keep the "outlaw" types on one repeater rather to spread them around.





According to wikipedia, they aren't accepting any more applications for LPFMs. Instead they are auctioning off full power stations on vacant frequencies (and we all know who will win those! Clear channel, CBS, etc. $$$)

Auntblabby, I meant to mention There are still a few analog TV stations in the US but they are low power. They have to shut off by Sept 1 2015 I believe the date is. There are a few TV stations using a loophole on channel 6 which audio happens to land on 87.7 mhz to run a radio station. (87.75 to be exact but you can hear it fine on 87.7) They are commonly called "Franken FMs". We have one testing locally, which hs set to launch in a month or so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA-JLFFv2SI

I've had a huge interest for radios since age 12! I love scanners, CBs, FRS or anything having to do with receiving or transmitting. I always wanted to become a ham radio operator but never really persued it. I love scanners and remember always trying to get the junky crystal scanners I had to work right. Even though I'm only 28, I've had alot of dealings with crystal scanners lol. With all this new technology now, I just use a scanner app for Android to listen in to radio transmissions (although I'm screwed if I'm not in a WiFi hotspot). I too would stay up late at night constantly scanning the citizen's band channels for any activity. At one point I purchased a cheap AM/FM/VHF Air-Band receiver from Radio Shack and rigged up a 6 foot telescoping antenna for it.
On the job with an electrical contractor, I would always have my little Motorola FRS radio on me just to listen in to transmissions from all the different companies on the site. Sometimes I bust out the cheap SW radio and tune it to the LW band and listen to Philly, PA KYW newsradio which is 6 hours away.
Sometimes I would rig up a wire for an external antenna for AM on the old stereo and try to see how far I could pick up. We also used to goto Hamfests in Ohio and that was like heaven for me lol

it's pretty easy to get a ham license now, especially the technician license. No code requirements or anything. It's gotten so easy some of the purists have made a big uproar over it.


I don't own a cell phone but even if I did, I don't think I would ditch my scanner for an app. Radio waves too magical for that


Yep, 1060 AM. I used to remember where most of the big wattage "Clear channel" were on the dial but I''ve forgot a lot of them. (The East coast ones anyway, probably as west as KMOX St. Louis. It came in quite handy if there was a certain baseball or hockey game I wanted to listen to.I listened to the Red Wings and Tigers on WJR 760 Detroit all the time, and KDKA Pittsburgh had the Penguins. There was 1190 WOWO out of Ft. Wayne Indiana who aren't a 50,000 watter anymore.

Did you have much luck getting the European Broadcasters on LW?





I'm guess you've been to the Dayton Hamvention then? That would be fun to go to but i've never been.


A little tip for you AM Dxers in the US come fall: The smaller wattage stations are required to power down at night to avoid interfering with other stations. Some of them "Forget" to power down on Friday nights if they are airing a high school football game. You can get some stations you probably haven't received this way.

from ten onwards i was drawn to radio stuff and components, we lived in a very remote place and the help I got from others was slight. the local radio club twenty five miles away was arse achingly dull....

i did an awful lot of swl sw only, cld only resolve cw and ssb when a nephew of a neighbour gave me free an ex services comm rx ... my dad was as tight as a duck arse ! ! ... feet of clay etc, did a lot to hinder me .....

anyhow taught myself to pass the written exam at age 15 in 1973, a brief resurgence thirty years later agn taught myself and passed cw ... first time was at the exam i had anyone send to me.

only ever had two QSOs (cw) ... got stagefright and thought sending is not for me ... seemed like gay sex, one after the other and little depth to it!

because i got zero congrats (or anything, zero passivity) from arse faced wife here I went crazy smashing the beautiful TS520 transceiver repeatedly into the floor of this room...... from that we agreed i never go near amateur radio agn.

I was homebrew mad as akid and even on the resurgence thirteen years ago and many aspects of the hobby fascinated. seldom met hams but used to 'look out' for antennas if we drove out .... wld literally knock on the door (age twelve - sixteen) and say hello...cos i was a kid they were always hospitable... its part of the hobby.

heavy and serious sw swl during my years twelve to seventeen (ie 1970 - 1975) filled the void (creating my own world) when it was obvious i didn't gell with other kids, partly most horrified me and on reflection partly they were as thick as pigshit..... so slow and predictable!!. school was mostly hell, got increasingly worse (tho was crap enough at the beginning, got moved around needlesssly) and because of what i experienced I never wanted to bring kids into this world.

Actually I was wrong with my memory, the Hamfest was in Bulter, PA lol. In in reference to the comment about using a scanner app on my portable devices is so I can listen to my hometown's police and fire transmissions. It works beautiful for that. I also have a Bearcat 30-channel handheld for use of local transmissions.

Time for a Brit to reply methinks owing to how things here are different from the US

Myself, I have had a radio interest for a few years, just not had much chance to use it, was on CB on and off, most recently for a few weeks in May this year, I have a desire to go further and get an amateur licence but things just got in the way (something I mentioned in another post about radio).

I have several PMR446 sets (these are the European equivalent of the FRS but they operate, as the name states, in a portion of 446MHz), I also use a piece of software on my "shack" computer called Free Radio Network, which you can use either as a gateway or with a microphone and headset.

I also own 2 receivers that can tune onto the amateur 2-meter band so sometimes have a listen to the local repeater, though it's been dead of late, it's Echolink and IRLP enabled.

CB, amateur, PMR446, airband, and business bands are all that is really able to be picked up on a scanner (I live well inland so marine band is usually dead) aside from the normal broadcast bands, the emergency services have moved to digital services that can't be listened in to unless you have the right equipment but it's illegal to listen to the police especially in the UK, the rules regarding that is you can only listen to anything meant for reception by the general public.

yeah, depending where you live in the US, some police/fire/emergency crews are digital and/or encrypted. There is another system called "Trunking" which is basically multiple/random frequencies in a "talk group". There are some scanners that can follow trunking systems but without that, they can be difficult to follow. The Police/Fire/etc are perfectly legal to listen too though as long as you don't try to decode encryption and/or use anything for personal gain. Mobile and cordless phones are illegal to listen too but I believe that's impossible to do anyway (encrypted). Newer US based scanners have the mobile phone frequencies blocked.

It's rather trivial to decode GSM signals, if you can get your hands on a receiver that will pick up those bands. There have been a number of people who have broken GSM encryption on phones. That still doesn't get around the fact that mere possession of a receiver for those bands is a felony, however.

I remember listening to cordless phone calls on the scanner around the year 1997 when they had a bunch of 49MHz phones on the market lol

I have a question maybe someone could answer....on some US police frequencies there are intermittent broadcasts of what seem to be Morse code and only last maybe 5 seconds in length, what is it actually? If it is Morse code, I'd love to find an Android app that'll decode it

heh yeah, you really had to be careful not to give out any personal info if you had a cordless/and or cell phone (credit card info, SSNs, etc), you would never know who was listening. I remember trying to pick up my own 49 Mhz phone and fortunately the thing was scrambled. You could also pick up cell calls on UHF TV channels in the high 70's/low 80's. They eventually nixed those channels so tv's from then on only went up to 69. (then the cell phones were on the rest.) Heck, there was a time when cordless calls could operate slightly above 1600 khz. the FCC eventually extended the AM band to 1700, so some AM radios could pick up cordless calls! I dont think there were too many of these phones in existence however.



It most likely is morse code all though I don't think any of the police dept's around here use morse. I've always wanted to learn morse but always too lazy to bother