Hobbyist Radio Communications Monitoring

Updated 18 September 2023.

I've been a monitoring hobbyist since 1974. I started by listening to my dad's scanner. He was a volunteer firefighter, and bought it to keep track of fire and police calls in our county. It was a crystal-controlled unit with about a half-dozen or so channels. That was enough channels to hear the county fire dispatch, local police, county sheriff's office, state police, and the fire dispatch channels for the counties next to ours. I later learned that my neighbor was the supervisor for one of the local home heating oil delivery services, and had a programmable Bearcat scanner. He used the scanner to monitor his company's delivery trucks. I wondered what signals I could hear. I bought a multi-band portable radio at a local tag sale. The radio tuned the VHF public safety and other bands. I found highway departments, two local taxi cab services, my school district's bus frequency, air traffic control frequencies, and a couple of local 2 Meter ham radio repeaters. Shortly thereafter I acquired a Realistic PRO-2020 20 channel scanner with band search function. The scanner was a vast improvement over the multiband portable.

These days my primary scanners are a Whistler WS1040 I bought a few years ago, and a Radio Shack PRO-43 I've had since the early 1990s. I don't have anything newer that does P25 Phase 2, DMR, or NXDN because I don't have $600+ to buy a new scanner that may become ineffective. Encryption is becoming more common on the newer digital modes. Increased encryption use limits how useful a new scanner would be for monitoring digital modes. I keep my eyes open for older scanners being sold cheap at hamfests and radio swaps because even if they are only 16 or 20 channel units they are useful for priority monitoring a frequency or two. My most recent acquisition was a 1970s vintage Radio Shack PRO-12 4-channel mobile for a few bucks with power supply at a radio swap meet. The radio's frequency selection is crystal controlled, but it was reasonably priced, looks cool, and has some good frequencies installed in it that I would like to priority monitor, particularly a few low band fire dispatch channels that often get skip. At the same radio swap one of the vendors had a small quantity of analog Bearcat scanners that were about 10 years old for $30 each. That was a reasonable price, and something like that would be perfect for getting your feet wet in most places. The majority of what I listen to is analog FM or AM. Only about ten percent of my monitoring targets are P25 phase 1. My state is now mostly on a P25 Phase 2 system, but many state agencies still maintain some off-system communications that are analog. The same applies to local rural part-time police departments that are dispatched by the state police. Your mileage may vary, so do your research.

I have learned that the more you try to monitor, the less you actually hear. Try to keep your monitoring efforts to the essentials. The essentials are the municipality you live in, and the ones next to it. If you work in a different municipality than where you live, and can hear it on the scanner, then you might be interested in listening to that one too. The practical purpose of communications monitoring is to know about what's going on where you live and work, so you have extra time for reacting to an event or incident that might affect you in some way. That busy city twenty or thirty miles away may be busy and generate lots of interesting radio traffic, but chances are none of it is going to affect you. There are frequencies however that are mostly quiet until they involve something that crosses a jurisdiction and might be heading in your direction. Those frequencies will let you know when something notable is going on in the big distant city that might affect you.

Practical communications monitoring targets and activity are all around you if you keep your eyes open to what is going on around you. On the way to work last month I was driving behind one of the local contractor's support vehicles. When I see working trucks such as the one in front of me, I always start looking at the roof for antennas. This time I caught the distinctive loading coil that only belongs to a Wilson T2000 CB antenna. This is not the first time I've seen a working vehicle so equipped. My WS1040 will scan though all 40 legal CB Channels in less than a second. A 25-28 MHz. band search would take a little longer, maybe three seconds or so. Why 25-28 MHz.? That is the frequency range just above and below the legal 40 channels used by "freeband" CB operators. This is not the first working truck I've seen sporting a CB rig. Just about every highway or construction contractor vehicle I've seen in this state has evidence of a CB installation.

For the most part I am a casual situational awareness monitor. Unless I'm actively doing hobbyist SIGINT I've got a handful (50-75) of frequencies that takes about a second or two to scan through, and I keep it on in the background with an ear tuned for specific traffic that may cause me to pay more attention to the receiver.

Articles

28 February 2023 - Monitoring Town Channels

Monitoring Spread Spectrum Communications from the September, 2005 issue of the now defunct Scanning USA Magazine.

Videos

May 17, 2012 - Trying different types of detectors with a crystal radio set.

May 17, 2014 -At The Notch in Amherst, MA monitoring the K2DLL CW beacon.

May 28, 2022 - A foxhole radio made from "blue blade" safety razor blade for the military history display at FDR Home, Hyde Park, NY for Memorial Day 2022.

Links

Intercept Radio

FCC General Menu Reports - When this site isn't working, use the FCC Universal Licensing System (ULS).

DX and Amateur Radio Home Page at World Radio History

30APR2023: Consolidated Frequency List of VHF/UHF scanner allocations. A little on the old side, but useful.

18SEP2023: Frequency Log of analog (AM & FM) VHF/UHF scanner frequencies. Logged at my monitoring post.