Hi all,

I'm shopping for a scanner for Christmas to give to my brother. He's
in the local volunteer fire department, and though he carries a smaller
hand-held scanner provided by the department I'd love to get him
something larger and something with more features.

I checked http://www.cityfreq.com/ and it shows my brother's VFD
frequency is 154.22 so I need something that'll hit that plus hopefully
the other area departments plus city, county, and state police
departments if possible. I know next to nothing about scanners, so I'm
not even sure if this is possible now'days. I'm looking at the Radio
Shack PRO-2018 scanner, and according to the specs it will do my
brothers' VFD's frequency. Any pros or cons to this one or any
suggestions on another model? Here's a link via tinyurl -
http://tinyurl.com/3kste

Thanks for comments or suggestions.

Ringo

On 20 Dec 2004 06:47:18 -0800, "Ringo Langly"
wrote:

Hi all,

I'm shopping for a scanner for Christmas to give to my brother. He's
in the local volunteer fire department, and though he carries a smaller
hand-held scanner provided by the department I'd love to get him
something larger and something with more features.

I checked http://www.cityfreq.com/ and it shows my brother's VFD
frequency is 154.22 so I need something that'll hit that plus hopefully
the other area departments plus city, county, and state police
departments if possible. I know next to nothing about scanners, so I'm
not even sure if this is possible now'days. I'm looking at the Radio
Shack PRO-2018 scanner, and according to the specs it will do my
brothers' VFD's frequency. Any pros or cons to this one or any
suggestions on another model? Here's a link via tinyurl -
http://tinyurl.com/3kste

Thanks for comments or suggestions.

Might help to tell us what STATE he's in so to make a proper
suggestion - i.e. he may need trunked, or may not.

Evan
--
To reply, remove TheObvious from my e-mail address.

Hi Evan,

Sorry, he's located just outside of Waco, Texas.
Thanks and take care,

Ringo

Evan Platt wrote:
On 20 Dec 2004 06:47:18 -0800, "Ringo Langly"
wrote:

Hi all,

I'm shopping for a scanner for Christmas to give to my brother.
He's
in the local volunteer fire department, and though he carries a
smaller
hand-held scanner provided by the department I'd love to get him
something larger and something with more features.

I checked http://www.cityfreq.com/ and it shows my brother's VFD
frequency is 154.22 so I need something that'll hit that plus
hopefully
the other area departments plus city, county, and state police
departments if possible. I know next to nothing about scanners, so
I'm
not even sure if this is possible now'days. I'm looking at the
Radio
Shack PRO-2018 scanner, and according to the specs it will do my
brothers' VFD's frequency. Any pros or cons to this one or any
suggestions on another model? Here's a link via tinyurl -
http://tinyurl.com/3kste

Thanks for comments or suggestions.

Might help to tell us what STATE he's in so to make a proper
suggestion - i.e. he may need trunked, or may not.

Evan
--
To reply, remove TheObvious from my e-mail address.

Hi Evan,

Just a follow-up. I went to Radio Shack today during lunch and bought
the PRO-2018 scanner. I did lots of research on newsgroups and other
sites, and all had positive feedback on this little scanner. It
doens't do digital, but my brother can take this back and exchange it
for a digital model if he wants that feature. They started at around
$160 or so.

I can always take it back if someone else has other ideas, but with
Christmas being a week away I didn't want to wait too long.
Thanks for any feedback or comments.

Ringo

Well, guess he made his decision without our input....

A 2018???



Hi Evan,

Just a follow-up. I went to Radio Shack today during lunch and bought
the PRO-2018 scanner. I did lots of research on newsgroups and other
sites, and all had positive feedback on this little scanner. It
doens't do digital, but my brother can take this back and exchange it
for a digital model if he wants that feature. They started at around
$160 or so.

I can always take it back if someone else has other ideas, but with
Christmas being a week away I didn't want to wait too long.
Thanks for any feedback or comments.

Ringo

Dan Conti wrote:
Well, guess he made his decision without our input....

A 2018???




Hi Dan,

I still want the input of this group because I can take this unit back.
It's just getting close to Christmas so I wanted to get something now,
even if it's returned after Christmas.

Do you have feedback on this model or another that's around $80 with
more features? I opened it last night to program it for my brother,
and it worked quite well! I put in many of the local frequencies from
cityfreq.com, and setup the weather alert. Thus far it's working
great! I left it on last night scanning the local VFD frequencies for
a while then the HAM frequencies, and it picked-up quite a bit of
chatter. I even brought it to work today, and it picks-up all our
handheld radios perfectly.

Like I said, if I find something else which can be bought locally with
more features and at the same price I'll definately return this, but
thus far it looks like it'll work great. I am no expert however, so
please enighten me if I'm wrong or missing something. The only feature
this doesn't have that I'd like to get is 800Mhz, but I've yet to find
one of these for less then $150 -- which is way out of my pricerange.
Have an awesome holiday season, and take care,

Ringo