What local radio chatter do you listen to on the scanner or...???

[Moleculo]

I occasionally listen to the local fire, police, highway patrol from my city and adjacent cities. I thought it might be interesting to find out what other forum members monitor?

As a side note, I can monitor 4-5+ other close cities fire, police transmissions as they've not converted to digital yet. I can also monitor Wal Mart, Target, and several other businesses...

 

[Highlander_821]

I have one scanner that monitors our statewide (IL) digital trunked system and our county's digital trunked system. The statewide system is mostly state police, but also has DOT, state parks, tollway ops, etc. The county system is police, fire, public works and other municipal and county agencies.

Another scanner monitors the police, sheriff, and fire agencies in all my surrounding counties.

Another monitors the local airport and ATC.

Yet another monitors the two ambulance/paramedic freqs.

 

[9C1Driver]

Not much to listen to around here unless you want to spend a bunch of money. Local police, fire, and ems are all on a Mororola APCO 25 Digital system.

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

It's been a few years since I actually listened to a scanner much. Ever since the RCMP here went 800MHz digital with encryption it's been boring with nothing of interest to listen too.The province went with an 800 MHz TMR system and although I have 800 MHz capability it is not a trunked scanner and I'm just not interested enough to buy one. I'll continue to listen to a mix of ambulance and DOT etc all on a couple of freqs. I do however still have local fire depts programmed as they are still VHF with links to the provincial 800 MHz TMR system.

 

[park]

I have been a scanner listener for over 30 years. I have the same problem

"Local police, fire, and ems are all on a Motorola APCO 25 Digital system"

Here in central Texas just about everyone's gone to the above and I’m not spending the money to follow them, yet. Most of the fire / EMS still send the initial page out on VHF so that works for me.

Still have my first scanner, a Radio Shack PRO-78 8 channel (crytals require) looks and works like new!

 

[Cat Driver]

I've got a Bearcat BC898T an all I can listen to is the city an county an fire here. All of the state police an others have went to the trunked system an I have noooooo idea how to program this thing to get'em. The instructions are way above my head I guess.:headbang


Ron

 

[davegrantsr]

NOTHING! a $600 apco25 SCANNER is not conducive to FUN. my local FD's still use 46mhz....sometimes. 49mhz portable phones/baby monitors are pretty much non-existant as well. today sure isn't like the old days of listening to cell phone conversations! who used what drug in the neighborhood was interesting enough, but who was 'doing' who was even better!

 

[WX2MIG]

Geographic location, profession, and general interests having the strongest bearing on what we like to entertain ourselves with, I'm kind of an oddball when it comes to monitoring radio traffic......:w00t:

I'm a professional fire fighter / EMT...on the job for 23+ years now. I've listened to, and participated in a lot of radio traffic during that time, and when I'm off duty it's about the last thing I want to hear. We have Motorola pagers that activate if we have anything that goes to a second alarm, when that sounds I listen, otherwise I could care less what happens. The only exception to this rule is during hurricanes or Nor'Easters, and that's only because I'm responsible for the 3 army surplus M-35 storm trucks our dept operates.

Early in my career our Police dept used the 400mhz band, and we would monitor their traffic in our stations, This was mostly because the dispatchers would alert them to fires, motor vehicle accidents, and water rescues before they would notify us, and we would get a head start on the call if it was in our response district. They have since gone to an 800Mhz digital trunk system, and we can no longer monitor them.

I used to drive the other guys nuts because I'd take out all the frequencies to other area FD's and replace them with HAM repeaters, and VHF Marine channels. I found listening to some HAM chatter, and who's catching what fish a lot more interesting than listening to a bunch of ear pearcing alert tones being transmitted over the various FD and EMS bands on VHF.

The down side to my scanner apathy has bitten me where the sun don't shine a couple of times recently, and I missed a couple of recalls because I never carry my pager. Missing a recall means they got something big, and need everyone off duty to come in and man the station, it also pays time and a half.....

This is one of the reasons I decided to get a new Yaesu VX-170, I'll be able to yack on the local HAM repeaters, monitor the VHF Marine bands, and listen to my Fire Dept while I'm out on a remote back bay sod bank fishing...