wrote:

I'm thinking about purchasing a new scanner.

The one I have now is a handheld, probably
about 8 years old, Radio Shack 200 channels,
1.3GHz, Hyperscan Pro-26 with an antenna
bought separately (RH77CA Diamond).

I would prefer a desktop scanner that will
scan around 400 channels or possibly more.
I would be willing to spend around $300
or so. (snip)


If you're looking to really improve your scanning capabilities, perhaps
you should be looking at multiple scanners instead. With a single scanner,
your returns diminish at some point as the number of memory channels
increase. This is caused by two factors. First, in general, the greater the
number of memory channels in a single scanner, the longer it takes to scan
those channels, meaning each channel is scanned less often over a given
period. Second, whenever a scanner locks onto a busy channel, you always
miss what is happening on the other memory channels. With a greater number
of memory channels, your scanner will find busy channels more often. But, as
the scanner locks onto those channels more often, you miss more on the other
memory channels.

More advanced scanner enthusiasts solve these problems by simply using
more than one scanner, each focused on a specific range of frequencies. This
allows any one scanner to lock on a busy channel while the other scanners
still scan, insuring the user doesn't miss as much while listening to any
one channel.

Simple scanners are fairly inexpensive. For example, to focus on the
aircraft frequencies, a twenty or thirty channel scanner will often do
nicely. If you're a real real aircraft band enthusiast, you may want two or
three of these. With a separate scanner for this band, you'll be less likely
to miss anything interesting on this band while listening to the police
frequencies.

You could do the same for any specific group of frequencies you want to
scan intensively, leaving your main scanner to cover the frequencies not
covered by the dedicated scanners. Of course, that main scanner should be
the very best for those times when you want to hunt down the really rare
stuff.

Just something for you to think about.


Dwight Stewart (W5NET)

http://www.qsl.net/w5net/