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RadioShack is having a sale on it's model #20-525, 1000 channel Dual-Trunking portable scanner. Normally $250; now on sale for $150. Anybody familiar with this model?
I'm not sure exactly what the 20-525 is... and for some reason I can't get on the RS site to check... but I've had a an RS Pro-94 dual trunk scanner for a couple years and it's done a pretty fair job. The local area uses trunked frequencies for a number of services and the Pro-94 has worked great for these. The trunked channels are in the 800mhz range. For railroad monitoring, it takes a few tweaks and additional items to hear much, at least in the area that I'm in. I live within 8 miles of two BNSF mail lines, but with the 'rubber duck' antenna that came with the scanner, I can only hear the dispatcher and one HBD clearly. The only on-train communication I can get is from the local siding. Generally, the scanner has to be within a mile of the train to hear a clear transmission. At home I added VHF directional antenna on a mast about 15 feet above the house pointing southeast towards a repeater tower. That vastly improved reception, but there is still a lot of communications that I can only hear the line dispatcher's side. That price sounds pretty good for a trunking scanner, but if your only interest is in the railroads, you may be able to find a non-trunking vhf scanner for even less. A buddy of mine picked up a Uniden non-trunk scanner that covered the railroad band, for $36 at a local swap meet. And in my experience, no matter the brand or type of scanner, where you are located in relationship to rail lines and their towers will have a big effect on how well the unit will work, and/or if additional anetnnas, etc will be needed.
I'm planning on getting one of them with my Christmas money.You know what the lady told us at the RadioShack by my house, she said the scanners won't be on sale again till Christmas, the 300 channel one was on sale for 150, the next day the 300 channel one was back to normal price and the 150 dollar one was now the 1000 channel one your talking about. Sales people are outrageous liars and she probably knew it would be on sale the next day because she tried to push us into the high priced (that day) 1000 channel scanner!I got one question about scanners. Do they have to hit the channel number when scanning in order to pickup something or does the scanner automatically play something as soon as it's picked up?Adam-------------------------------Operation Lifesaver Organization -- http://www.oli.org/ Striving to save lives at railroad crossings
Once you program a frequency into a given channel on the scanner, anytime there is activity on that frequency/channel, the scanner 'locks on' to it. When the transmission ends, it goes back to scanning all programmed frequencies sequentially until traffic is found again. You can stop the automatic scanning and have it just sit and monitor a single channel, and most of the current models have a 'priority' feature that allows you to select a channel (or channels) that will lock in on the selected priority channel anytime there is something there no matter what other channels might have traffic on them at the same time.
There are internet sites where you can download all frequencies in a given town, etc., you chose which types you want to download, taxi, RR, aviation, law enforcement, etc. Tip: don't ignore the taxi channels, the drivers talk about the customers after they have exited the car All transmiting stations are liscensed and the FCC database is available to the general public, hence these sites can have _all_ the freqs. according to the last FCC release installment.
I own a Pro-93 RadioShack Scanner. It been very good to me and gets pretty good reception. I recently got a telescoping whip antenna for it, adjusted it to 17 1/2 inches, and I can now hear train crews from about 4-5 miles away whereas I could get only 1-2 miles with a rubber duck antenna. If you're getting this type of scanner, make you sure you buy an AC adapter for it. Batteries will not last very long in these things.Jordan L. La Junta, CO
Don't believe the sales people, they can be very encouraging and sound good but they're there to sell you stuff and make themselves money and they'll lie their butts off to you!UtilityInfielder, you need to rotate your signature graphic so it's upright unless you don't want people to read it.Adam-------------------------------Operation Lifesaver Organization -- http://www.oli.org/ Striving to save lives at railroad crossings
Operation Lifesaver Organization -- 
