/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>224910
vvv
>>225094
This guy is dead on.

Most police departments have switched to trunking systems, if not digital, or digital encrypted. While analog trunking scanners aren't terrible expensive, digital scanners are extremely cost prohibitive.

However, luckily, most Fire / EMS / Security / Public works services still use regular old single-frequency analog.

The best scanners I can advise to most people is the GRE PSR-600 (or Radioshack Pro-197, same thing internally). It does digital, and it's very fast. However, unless you've got about $500 to burn...

The Uniden BC355 is a good entry level scanner. It's analog only, and fairly inexpensive. They're about $90 new, or $50 used. However, it's kinda limited. It's a single-frequency analog scanner. If you want something with a little more capabilities, the Uniden BCT8 is a wonderful upgrade from it, and will cost you about $150. It's analog too, but it can do trunking. It also has faster scanning, and more channel capabilities than the BC355.

Remember though, your antenna dictates your receiving range. That little factory telescoping whip won't receive from very far...

If you're kinda broke. the Uniden BCT8 makes an okay choice for analog only. Handles 250 channels, can do trunking, and will do up to 800 mhz without a problem. They run about $140 new.