Can of worms topic, I'm sure. To avoid the "how long is a piece of
string" nature of this question, I'll give some particulars.

I'm looking to buy a good basic police/EMS scanner for my father, a
retired police dispatcher, to get back into the hobby (he hasn't
actively listened in a few years). The scanner he has now, an old basic
Uniden model, evidently can no longer handle the frequencies the LEA
has switched to (he's tried to program them to no avail, I'm assuming
it's just because of a shift in mhz to higher bands).

He lives in a suburb of Washington DC so anything with good range that
could get his local city/county frequencies and those of nearby (within
a five to ten mile radius, max) would be great, as would any public
government/military frequencies he might be in the range of. External
antennas are definitely an option, as he's got a roof-mounted dinosaur
he used to use for CB radio as well (going to try to get him back into
that as well).

He's getting "on in age," as they say, and his eyesight is now quite
poor, so anything with a larger, well-lit display would be a definite
plus, but it's not a deal killer as I'd probably be programming it for
him and I don't know that he'd need to see the frequency display to
know the channels after a while (and honestly, I don't know that
there'd be a scanner unit with numbers large enough for him to read).

I'm so inexperienced with this subject that I wouldn't even know how to
approach the topic of pricing. I guess we're looking for a "solid,
middle of the line table-top model," but don't need a lot of complex
bells and whistles he'd have to manage through an array of tiny (and
therefore pretty much invisible to him) switches and dials. I'm really
looking for the good old-fashioned "fire and forget" setup approach, if
such a thing is even still possible. I do see him at least once a week,
so occasional tweaking, if necessary, would definitely be fine.

I realize this is a bit of a broad question, and I'll thank everyone in
advance for the patience and their replies. With his fading eyesight,
he's gotten a bit "down at the mouth," and this is one hobby he used to
enjoy that he could still do given his current circumstances, and I'm
just sort of looking around trying to find something to get him
involved and interested in again that may lift his spirits.

Thanks again--I look forward to your replies. Feel free to reply also
to my email address: kriskane (at) gmail (dot com).