looking for good scanner

[bigshooter]

anybody have any advice for a guy looking to buy a handheld scanner, one that i can plug in to ac power?.

[MNBud]

I've always owned Radio Shack scanners. Currently using a Pro 96. It is AC or DC.

[lenny7]

What is it you want to monitor? That will help determine what you should get.

If you're in the metro region, you'll want to look at one of the digital scanners since they're all going to, or have already gone, to the new Motorola APCO 25 digital system. I have a Radio Shack PRO-95 which is a great scanner, but since it's not digital, it's becoming obsolete.

Assuming that's what you want, your options are the Radio Shack Pro-96 or the Uniden BCD396T. They're not cheap though. The Pro-96 sells for $500 but occasionally it drops to $450. The BCD396T is $510 at Scanner World.

Check out the local ScanFan message board for more info
http://scanfan.hoff.org/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl

and the ScanFan site itself for frequency info
http://www.scanfan.com/

Finally, consider getting your amateur radio license. It will take a little bit of studying, but it's not too tough. Having a ham radio license allows you to legally carry your scanner in your vehicle. A second "Permit To Carry", so to speak. You can take the practice test here:
http://www.qrz.com/p/testing.pl
You'll want to take the Technician's test. These are the actual questions from the question pool that is used. It's quite possible to take this practice test enough time to become proficient enough to pass the test.

[bigshooter]

yes, for the metro, dang those are spendy.......i guess i'll just listen for sirens....

thanks

[lenny7]

The money is in the licensing fee they have to pay to Motorola to decode the signal. It's really a $200 scanner with a $300 fee (my guess). I've been lucky in that Scott county is still analog, but they're in the process of buying into the Motorola digital radio system and will probably switchover late this year, at which point I'll probably have to suck it up and buy a digital scanner. I was hoping the prices would have gone down by now, but such is not the case.

[911scanner]

I've been scanning for somewhere in the neighborhood of 15+ years. That being said, here's the scoop on my side of the world...

RS products, at the moment, are running in 3rd place for those available.

The new GRE product is getting some good reviews, but the proliferation is quite limited due to the newness of the product.

As of today, most consider the Uniden products to be the superior choice(s). 396 is handheld...996 is base unit.

Today's $350-$500 scanner is not your Grandma's 8 channel Realistic with the ascending red lights. The amount of agencies & information you can hear would make your head spin.

Sitting in the west of Hennepin county, I can hear almost all traffic in Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin & Ramsey counties. I sometimes even get to hear traffic from near Rochester & St. Cloud.

Included in that radio traffic would be PD, PD car-to-car for indivdual cities, PD tactical evnts (some), PD undercover (some), FD, FD training, ALS, BLS, life flight type operations, city work crews, county work crews, MnDOT work crews, Inter-agency operations during critical events like chases, fires, raids, large disasters, etc.

Unfortunately, with my scanning hobby of having 4 scanners constantly running, I was in Winona for the biggest scanning event ever in Minnesota. It was Aug. 1, 2007. The scanners were going non-stop for 4 days.

With that mentioned above, the sum of $500 starts to pale in comparison to the amount of interesting stuff we never know,

MM