Police Scaner newbie

[Lucozade17]

Hello,

I have a pretty vague idea about police scanners. What my idea is, is that the Police and Sheriff are on channels and they can talk to their fellow officers on the streets and back to dispatch...Or are there different channels or radios to communicate with dispatch and other squad cars. How do you know what frequency your local PD uses and how clearly can you hear them? I'm guessing if they're all on the same channel there must be frequent chattiness between officers and dispatchers and how do they find there time on the radio when other officers are trying to communicate at the same time.

I could do with some really basic information about the whole police scanner thing...help is greatly appreciated!

Mike

[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.

[Lucozade17]

Here is the page referring to the City of Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara County, California (CA) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

Freq Input License Type Tone Alpha Description
460.10000 465.10000 KZT401 BMRF CSQ 1 Dispatch

Mode
FM

I know what Description and Mode is but what do the other functions do? I'm guessing freq and input are what's important.

Also, where would I mount a scanner (say a Uniden Trunktracker)?

Are police scanners illegal?

Are they clear and easy to hear?

How do I know who I'm listening too (Fire, EMS, Police etc)?