[Scan-DC] which scanner to buy?

Mike Agner [email protected]
Wed, 15 Oct 2003 15:18:39 -0400


   Today, Dick wrote:
==================
  I live in Bowie & have a house in Swanton also. That's Swanton in Garrett
  County!I want to buy a scanner that can also be used portable also. I am
  afraid if I put some good $ out, I will find out afterward that all the 
freq I want
  to listed to are scrambles or trunked !!! I need advice.
  I still have my ancient ( 1970s?)GE 4 chanel tunable ( knob) scanner that is
  in  the 140-160 Mhz range. I can hear DC police. It drifts with temp 
change. IE,
  go outside & all tuning is wrong!
  I want to hear Bowie fire & police & likely PG county. Garrett county freqs
  are a unk.
====================
  Things have changed since the good old days, that's for sure.  I remember 
tuning around with a old
Lafayette VHF lo band rx. :.))

  Dick, PG county hasn't gone trunked (at least not yet), tho they do have 
a small trunking system that is
nominally used for their senior transport and schools.  I've built a page at:

http://henney.com/chm/links/mddatah.htm

  which will link you to just about everything that I'm going to mention here.

  For the PG county police, take a look at 'Prince George's County EOC 
frequency list'.  This is actually
a back issue of an old newsletter; skip down to page 5.  Ignore the 
fire/ems freqs listed there; things
have changed here quite a bit.  For that, look at 'Maryland Fire/Rescue 
Frequencies' (that has some Garrett
county stuff there, too).
  I'm afraid that our listings for Western Maryland aren't very complete; 
anyone that knows of a good web page
for this area, let me know and I'll add it.  There's the 'Western Maryland 
Frequencies' link, and under the
mailing lists category, look at ''Maryland' at Long Island Scanner 
Resources'.  Be advised, tho, that these
freqs are very badly dated (for example, it still lists old 37 Mhz freqs as 
State police- wrong).

  If I had to recommend a scanner now, with many communities going digital 
trunked, the only games in town are
the Uniden BC250D/785D (with the digital card) or the RS PRO96.  For 
example, Montgomery county just went
digital, and I would suspect others will follow suit in short order.  I'd 
go with the 96 (and make sure you
buy the programming cable along with it); however, to get you educated, we 
have a page devoted to just
scanners at:

  http://henney.com/chm/links/scanners.htm#SCANPAGE

  That should be enough to get your mind racing for a bit.  73s and 
GL...Mike