Hey all, I was looking to get a scanner for my truck. I am into aviation and frequent various airports during the spring and summer. I was looking for a unit that is handheld, moderately priced (big beleiver in "you get what you pay for) and has crystal clear receptions . DO they have any that have LCD/digital displays so I can tune into the correct frequency?? Also can you run a bigger antenna to these units for better reception??

I haven't even looked yet. I just figured I would ask for your oppinions first and then check out some units that you recommended!! Thank you all!!

 

Any of your basic Radio Shack models will fit what you want to do.

You won't need any of the fancy bells and whistles to monitor just Air.

The "rubber ducky" antenna that comes with most handheld recievers will get air traffic just fine.
Of course, you can always go bigger and better on the antenna, but most bigger antennas are tuned to specific frequencies and you'll find yourself swapping antennas depending on what you want to monitor.

If you want to migrate over to police, fire, ambulance and the like, then you'll have to spend a bit more.

You'll have to get one that does "trunk tracking"
as most police and fire have moved over to 800mhz "trunked" systems.


Nutshell, basically.


phox

 

also be careful it is illegal in NY to have a scanner in your car

 

Yeah I am not really into municipal stuff too much. I want to say that there is a unit called "Airport Radio" . At least something similar too that.

 

Buddy of mine has a dual trunking scanner from RadioShack with an 800mhz rubber ducky antenna on it. We can hear all of college station and bryan's frequency's clear as a bell. It has the LCD screen on it and everything.

 

Alinco DJ-X3, continuous coverage from .100Mhz through 1300Mhz , that will get you just about everything you could want to hear. Very small hand held that easily clips to the visor. With the rubber duck I can get all of the aircraft traffic i can handle, and I live 60 miles from the airport. Best scanner I've ever owned. Found an 'export' model (no blocks on the old cell freq's) on Fleabay a little while back.

 

I have a Uniden BC-796D because the local system here is now 800 mhz digital. I thought I was going to hate digital as I thought it was going to sound much like Nextel. I was wrong, it sounds much better.

 

Ive had handheld scanners for many years for handhelds I would go with uniden over radio shack. They make the radio shack scanners but the uniden version has a better speaker and sounds better than the radio shack models.

 

Who is selling trunking scanners now?

 

Looky here:
Uniden scanner at www.exportradios.com

 

Shovelhead,

Thanks for te reply.

When I've gone to the site it shuts down my AOL. When I enter it normally, I get a web page not found message.

Is a repair possible?

Thanks!

 

That's the one I'm going to buy next.

A tad bit more than Shaders needs though.



phox

 

Try right clicking on the link, then "copy shortcut".

Then paste the link into Internet Explorer (not AOL).
IE should be able to work with AOL running.


phox

 

This one might be more what Shaders was looking for.

 

Thanks for all of your replies so far!! I went to Radio Shock today and checked out the units. I think all of them had the trunking feature. I remember that back in the early 90's a lot of the volunteer firefighters I knew all had a UNIDEN unit,handheld that is. Thanks again!!