[Lucky225]

A lot more complicated then the old days of having separate frequencies for seperate channels, some rural areas might still operate like that but for the most part everything uses trunked radio systems today. Trunked systems allow a group of a limited number of frequencies to be used by different agencies. All the radios used on the trunked network listen to a data channel. When someone in one agency keys up on their channel or 'talk group' the trunked network allocates a frequency that isn't being used at the time for the person to talk on, and this information is transmitted over the data channel to let all the other radios on the network know what frequency to listen to for the selected talk group they are monitoring. It gets even more complicated with digital trunked systems that encrypt the audio over a digital data stream. RadioReference.com - Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference is a good start to find out what type of scanner you should get for your area. Most areas have analog trunking, and a pro-97 from rat shack is good enough, some have digital trunking that would require a pro-96 or uniden bcd396t.