... and then I realized I have no clue how to use it lol. I've had this thing for months and all I can kind of get on it is the weather broadcasts. I've looked up the frequency for my home town and did my best to program it but so far I have not been able to get a single voice. I got it at a discount because the radio shack was going out of business but it was still pretty expensive. It would be nice to actually make it work. I've seen some manuals in the resources and I've found a few posts on scanners here. I was hoping someone could give me a few tips. Does anyone know anything about these? RadioShack PRO-651 Handheld Digital Radio Scanner
If your local CopShop/Fire Dept have converted to digital, then you are out of luck, with an analog Scanner.... Try looking at the local HAM Repeater Frequencies....
RadioReference.com - Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference has both scanner lists and a technical section - I found it of great use for my P-25 local PSA system. Then they encrypted the thing, so I had a $500 brick......as far as listening to police/fire services./
The little rubber duck antenna on that radio isn't the best for grabbing signals. If you are in the city, there should be plenty of signals to pick-up though police and fire might be encrypted. If in the sticks you might give it some help. Add an external antenna. Something like this... Amazon.com: Tram 1410 Broad Band Discone/Scanner Base Antenna: GPS & Navigation AT
Sure. Here's one. Build A Simple VHF/UHF Scanner Antenna - A Police Scanner Antenna For The Price of Parts! But the truth of the matter is that you will be a lot happier buying a ready made. A search for scanner antenna on Google will kick up more skyhooks than you'll ever want. Not too difficult to find reviews, either, but bear in mind that the reviews are often written by folks that have an axe to grind.
@BTPost ... so if you get a digital scanner, can you listen in on the digital emergency radios in the area? We recently had a fire a couple of canyons North of here, and I turned on "broadcastify.com" and I could only hear the local city up the road police reports, a car had apparently been hit, and all "4 tires were up", but nothing on the fire, which would have been EMT and COOP Fire departments and Forest Service fire units, nothing. Rancher
Likely they were Encrypted Comms.... Even if you have a Digital Capable Scanner, they will NOT decode Encrypted Comms, unless they have a Decryption Chip, AND the appropriate Encryption Key, loaded... If you do NOT have those, you hear NO AUDIO, at all...
Locally I have been using some free scanner apps. 5-0 Radio Police Scanner on the App Store 5 best police scanner apps for Android