An Intro To Handheld Radio Scanners
Welcome to our website. Here you will be able to find suppliers of all types of handheld radio scanners. With a wide variety of choices and manufacturers, radio scanners, unlike most radios, can receive signals transmitted at a wide range of frequencies, allowing users to listen in on a variety of different communications including air traffic control,
emergency services (police, ambulance and fire), hobbyists (Citizens Band), race teams, astronauts …etcetera. And to make sure you don’t miss out on the action, these radio scanners have a microprocessor, which enable them to involuntarily detect when a transmission is occuring on a particular frequency.
For a lot of people radio scanning is an exiting leisure activity. Did you know that radio scanners are also called police scanners, police-fire scanners, race scanners, NASCAR scanners, racing scanners, aircraft radio scanners, channel scanners, frequency scanners, and scanner radios among other names. These names reflect a few of the common
topics people like to follow on their scanners. The most common brand names are Radio Shack scanners, and Uniden Bearcat scanners. You will find scanner listings for both of these 2 major brands and also some of the smaller brands and one of the major brands often markets identical scanners under 2 brands.
Legalities In The Us!
The legality of radio scanners varies greatly between jurisdictions. In the US it is a federal crime to monitor cellular phone calls. Some US states prohibit the use of a scanner in an automobile. Although scanners capable of following trunked radio systems and demodulating some digital radio systems such as APCO Project 25 are available, decryption-capable scanners would be a violation of United States law and possibly laws of other countries.
Scanner Features
There is a fantastic popularity in handheld radio scanners, with rechargeable battery packs. Especially with the huge popularity of NASCAR racing, many people now use scanners at auto racing events to eavesdrop on the crew-driver communications at races for example. A few of the recently released scanners are able to track municipalities and police frequencies in the 800-megahertz (MHz) range. This is better known as trunk tracking of computer-proscribed trunked radio networks.
The more expensive scanners can be proscribed by the serial port of a personal computer using special software. This allows the end user with the logging of the various stations but also allows them to duplicate the scanner controls within the software attention. Many of the models today are able to receive the NOAA weather radio broadcasts. This is a fantastic feature during pending tornados or hurricanes.
The Controls On A Radio Scanner
Volume
Squelch – When a station is not transmitting, this modifiable control keeps the speakers muted – silent and free from static. The squelch is active when scanning, searching or manually stepping through stored frequencies. CB radios also make use of this control.
WX button – This feature will be found mainly on newer models. This button typically does a mini-scan of some factory-written frequencies that receive the nationally NOAA weather broadcast reports.
Numeric keypad – This is used for entering frequencies or in merger with the “Limit” button. It is also used a lot for entering upper and lower ranges of a search between two frequencies. Frequencies found during a search can be easily entered with the keypad. But the more expensive models involuntarily store frequencies found during a search.
Search button – This starts the scanner on a continuous loop between two frequency limits, which allows for finding unknown frequencies within a given range. Generally speaking the searches are in the same automatic increments that the Federal Communications Fee (FCC) uses for the given frequency band being searched.
Manual button – This is fantastic as it allows the owner / user manually step through a range of frequencies stored in the scanner. Most of the modern scanners have about 100 to 300 channels available to store frequencies in the built-in memory. But the higher end models have even more.
Scan button – This starts the scanner on a continuous loop through all of the frequency banks, with all the stored frequencies. As soon as the radio scanner detects a radio signal on a stored frequency it stops and when the radio signal ends it moves to the next stored frequency.
Delay button – When the scanner is searching it stalls for a small duration on a frequency before moving to the next one. This way the user can hear the other part of the radio exchange on that particular frequency.
Lockout button – This is fantastic when you for the interim want to avoid the scanner to stop on a stored frequency. For example, when you’re trying to listen to the traffic helicopters in your area you might want to lockout the frequency of a busy airport tower at peak travel time during that time.
Please note that not all scanners come with all the above mentioned features! Most radio scanners do come with a small whip antenna and also an external antenna connector. Also known as attic antennas, they enable you to hear more transmissions at a greater distance.