Is it still possible to buy a Scanner? And do they work?

MasterLeia

Hello there, I've a few questions on me, Is it possible to buy a Scanner and if so, where can I get one? Can they listen in on emergency service frequencies such as fire brigade or garda? I'm just interested because whenever i hear a siren, I'm always wondering what these lads are going to. Any information would be useful! Thank you!

micko45

yes you can get them, no Guards as they are digital. adverts.ie has quite a few for sale. Antenna that comes with hand held scanners is mostly useless, i have one with a discone (external) antenna.

I have a video for one i sold a while back, you can hear taxis, weston airport, emergency service and Dublin bus,

MasterLeia

Thank you for the info , can you set it to listen to a specific location? Like the town or city you live in? Also if you can , is there any brand in particular you recommend , how much would they be on average? Thank you and sorry for the late reply

micko45

You can only pick up signals within about a 15km radius, more if you have a antenna on the roof. So it would all be localish. I have always been interested in radios so i find the scanners interesting but these days there is not much to listen too. Especially outside the cities.

So i have a uniden 3500 and an AOR AR8200, both are really good and pop up on adverts regularly enough. The AOR also picks up LW, MW and HF. But if you just search adverts for "uniden scanner" the cheapest one would be good enough.

MasterLeia

Ah i see , I looked them up , there are handheld and the ones that are big , what do you recommend? Also apart from online , any shops you think that sell them? Sorry for all the questions haha , Thank you! I'm kinda getting into radios myself!

orm0nd

MasterLeia wrote: »

Ah i see , I looked them up , there are handheld and the ones that are big , what do you recommend? Also apart from online , any shops you think that sell them? Sorry for all the questions haha , Thank you! I'm kinda getting into radios myself!

Gary O'Hanlon Waterford trading as South East Communications

or Long Communications Donegal

MasterLeia

orm0nd wrote: »

Gary O'Hanlon Waterford trading as South East Communications

or Long Communications Donegal

What else can you do with these scanners? Are you able to tune into, let's say RTE and other radio channels ? And stuff like that, also any sites that can teach me the basics of this sort of stuff? Sorry if I'm asking for much, i appreciate it

micko45

Depends on the scanner, cheaper ones are limited in freq range and will not pick up FM, something like the uniden 3500xlt will pick up FM radio, while the AOR 8200 will pick up am/fm/ssb/long wave/etc/ 

You find find some frequencies on boards for example
https://www.boards.ie/b/thread/2056942523

I find the most interesting stuff to be in HF. But that requires a lot more commitment (time/money) to get involved in.

Yep, I find HF much more interesting, picking up Ham operators and radio stations for hundreds or thousands of miles.

Have a listen to my WEBSdr here
http://emeraldsdr.ddns.net:8073/

daveob007

You can still listen to air and marine frequencies and fire Dept. Other than that a lot of radios are going digital and a digital scanner is expensive. Garda are using tetra and no scanner has been made for public yet that can decode tetra. As the other posts are saying HF is definitely worth getting into, you can hear military, air forces and navy from all over the world as well as loads of other stuff.