[Scan-DC] Newbie BC245XLT

Fri Jun 6 13:18:46 EDT 2008

Emil, the Trooper helos in our area often coordinate with BWI (Potomac TRACON) as they can traverse their airspace. They will also use frequencies in the 123 mhz band (123.025, 123.10, 123.475 among others) to coordinate with other helos in the area (sometimes the traffic helos will also be found in this neck of the woods. DC area, they are on 122.7 at times). 

As for Maryland data on RR, check this area out - remember anything in blue and/or underlined is a link...

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?stid=24

If you want to read up on the digital trunktrackers, which is what you would need to hear Howard county pd...

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Category:Digital_Scanners

And to get things like the TRACON frequencies, Dave Schoenberger's DC page and his blog, among other things...

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

73 Mike

links editor,Capitol Hill Monitors
Utility Monitoring Central
Wiki Administrator, HF Forum moderator, Radioreference.Com 

--- ebaer at baerzone.com wrote:

From: "Emil Baer" <ebaer at baerzone.com>
To: <ka3jjz at netscape.com>
Subject: Re: [Scan-DC] Newbie BC245XLT
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2008 10:47:26 -0400

Mike-

Thanks for the info. I'll check it out.

I'm in Laurel in Howard County. There are often emergency vehicles operating 
in this area and several times I've seen a helicopter circling overhead. I'm 
curious about what's happening in my neighborhood. Also if there's bad 
weather like the storm we just had I'd like to be able to know a bit about 
what's going on.

--Emil

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <ka3jjz at netscape.com>
To: "Emil Baer" <ebaer at baerzone.com>
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 8:29 AM
Subject: Re: [Scan-DC] Newbie BC245XLT

Emil...

Unfortunately the 245 is becoming less and less useful in Central Maryland 
as many of the trunking systems here are digital, and that's a format that 
it cannot deal with. The only systems I know of that are still monitorable - 
at least for now - is Anne Arundel (evidently in a proving phase with their 
digital), Baltimore county, PG county (conventional, for the most part),and 
I believe Carroll and Frederick counties (Frederick city uses P25 
encryption, which cannot be scanned by anything).

To hear the rest, you will need a digital trunktracker such as the PRO-96, 
PSR-500 or 600 from GRE or the BCD396 or 996 from Uniden. They are quite 
expensive, but at times you may find the PRO-96 (or its mobile brother the 
2096) on sale for a somewhat better price.

As John wrote, become familiar with the data on RadioReference - 
http://www.radioreference.com

Also Dave Schoenberger's DC page is excellent, and has many business and 
special event frequencies RadioReference (often abbreviated RR) does not 
have.

There's still a fair amount of stuff to hear although that little duckie on 
the 245 isn't very efficient below around 400 mhz or so. As mentioned, PG 
county is still all conventional, and the systems above can be programmed 
quite easily as E2-800 (as the 245 refers to them). Be more specific about 
where you are and what you are interested in hearing.

RR also has an extensive Wikipedia section with tons of information on lots 
of scanners, trunking and so forth. In fact, there's an article there that 
has links to overviews and FAQs. That's where I would start off.

73 Mike

links editor,Capitol Hill Monitors
Utility Monitoring Central
Wiki Administrator, HF Forum moderator, Radioreference.Com

--- ebaer at baerzone.com wrote:

From: "Emil Baer" <ebaer at baerzone.com>
To: <scan-dc at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: [Scan-DC] Newbie BC245XLT
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 14:04:22 -0400

I have a BC 245XLT scanner that I'd like to get set up for the Baltimore/DC 
area. I've used some of the basic scanning features, but understand that to 
get Police/Fire, etc. I'll need to use trunk tracking. The manual isn't much 
help in this area. I've found several web pages that list frequencies but I 
don't know how to program them into my scanner. The terms used on the web 
sites don't match the terms in my scanner manual.

Can someone suggest how I might learn to configure trunk tracking for this 
area on my scanner?

Thanks.
--William
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