I turned on my radio scanner one night, and that was the first thing I heard. It was an excellent example of what makes listening so compelling.
I’m one of those guys. I listen to the radio transmissions of police, fire department, rescue services, amateur radio operators, aircraft, company radios, and the like. I’m a casual listener (probably four to six hours a week). I grab my scanner to listen to when I’m cleaning up the kitchen or folding laundry; that kind of thing. Sometimes I get in the mood to listen on my commute, so I’ll do that for a week or two.
Anyway, the subject transmission was referring to a police standoff. Some nut shot up an adult video store and was now hanging by his car playing with his gun. There were about 30 police officers on the perimeter around him, including snipers. It was all the more fascinating for me, because the parking lot where it happened was essentially in the backyard of my first apartment, so I had an excellent mind’s eye view of the scene. Fortunately it ended without injury.
It’s a lot of fun. Of course, it’s largely voyeuristic in nature. I don’t wonder what’s going on when I hear a siren close by; I turn on the scanner and I know. There was a serious traffic accident two streets over about a year ago, and I heard them call for a Medflight helicopter. It’s pretty cool to be able to tell your four-year-old that a helicopter is about to fly right over his house, and it happens two minutes later. It’s rubbernecking without getting in the way–and I know a lot more than a rubbernecker at the scene anyway.
Beyond the general emergency nature of most of the traffic, it has its particularly depressing sides. More often than not, during a typical listening session I’ll hear a law enforcement call about some piece of shit beating up his wife or girlfriend. I say without exaggeration that I believe domestic violence is one of the greatest problems in our society, and I shudder when I consider that I’m just hearing the reported incidents.
I have a lot to say about violence against women, and I’m working on a post. Watch for it if you’re interested.
Here are some basic things to keep in mind if you’re interested in monitoring radio communications in your area:
- Get a scanner that will correctly receive everything in your area (including digital and/or trunked systems, if you have them). See below for a couple of links that will explain further.
- More channels is better than less channels. I have a 1000-channel scanner, and it’s enough for around here, but 500 wouldn’t be. Probably 1000 wouldn’t be if I was trying to listen in southern California, on Long Island, etc.
- Alpha tags greatly enhance listening pleasure. That means you can assign text to a specific frequency, like “Madison PD,” and it will display whenever your scanner stops on it. You don’t have to remember what frequencies are what, in other words.
- A cable and software to program your scanner by PC makes it a pleasure instead of a chore. I have complex programs that I swap in and out of my radio easily because I have the PC option available. I wouldn’t have nearly as much fun with it if I had to do it all by hand.
My radio is a pretty straightforward Radio Shack PRO-95 (pictured), which you can find for $100 or less on eBay, and for which an inexpensive cable and free programming software are available. It will monitor trunked systems correctly, but can’t do digital. (No digital systems in my area yet, so it’s still just fine for what I need.)
If you’re new to scanning and want to learn more, I recommend RadioReference.com and Strong Signals as good, free places to start.
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You ambulance chaser, you! Ok, I guess you already covered that it is far from ambulance chasing. Sounds fascinating. I have a feeling I’d get so sick of it squawking constantly I’d just turn it off for good at some point. Not that I live in a terribly exciting suburb.
Just what I need… another time sink to drain away the day…
My neighborhood is quiet too; it might be 6 or 8 months between incidents that truly are nearby (within a mile or so). But I can receive reliably up to 25 miles away, and spottily up to 60 miles away, so there’s usually something going on. The standoff with the gunman was about 12 miles east of my house.
One time I got way more information about a small plane crash than was ever reported in the news. I also heard about a chemical leak in a railyard about 15 miles north of my house that was almost a huge hairy deal–like injuries, possibly deaths, widespread evacuations, and national news–but they just did get it contained. Most of the transmissions I hear are crisp and professional, but I heard a “Holy shit, that was close!” that morning.
As much fun as it is, it’s not as good as it used to be. Most first responders carry cell phones and have network access (Mobile Data Terminals; MDTs) in their vehicles anymore. So once a situation is contained, they’ll usually drop to those to sort out the particulars. I’ll hear that an officer intends to arrest someone, for example, but I never hear anything else about it. So presumably when the suspect is detained and on the way to the station, they’re talking about it on the cell phone or computer.
The most exciting things I hear with any regularity are foot pursuits. The involved officers are all over the radios with those. They almost always win, too. Don’t run from the police; the guy escapes on TV a hell of a lot more often than he does in real life. 🙂
Saintseester, once you get it set up it’s all passive, just like listening to music or talk radio. I don’t think I’d enjoy it nearly as much if I had to mess with it all the time. But it’s not like that; grab it and turn it on.