hey guys i posted a topic in the other area on cb radios how about police scanners? anyone have one? and are they as addicted to it as i am?
also is there a site on the net where i can find new codes for mine in ontario?
damn OPP have gone trunk and i can only get town police fire ambulance and a whole lot of people talking on their cordless phones AND HAVE I EVER HEARD SOME WEIRD CONVERSATIONS
SEX/DOPE DEALLERS/CHEATTING ON WIFES HEHEHEHE

Yep, just bought one about a month ago from Radio Shack(model pro-90). I live in a small town so there isn't much to listen to. Police, fire, airport, etc. I don't get to hear many good cordless phone conversations but I'm hoping.
I didn't find out till after I bought mine that it couldn't be modified to scan the cellular band. I'm keeping my eyes open for an older used model to come up for sale so I can buy it and modify it.
And yes I am hopelessly addicted. I carry it everywhere and it annoys the hell out of my g/f.
As for a more frequencies, I know that here in Saskatchewan they publish a book listing tons of frequencies people send in.
Check for something similar where you are(maybe Radio Shack)
Does your scanner have trunk tracking? Mine does but I haven't taken the time to figure it out.
For everyone reading this, do not say anything on a cordless phone or cellular that you wouldn't say in a crowded room. Your cordless phone can be listened to from blocks away and your cell from miles away!!

hey thanx for the come back i have a hand held 50 channel pro-44 from radio shack as well the cordless freq start at45.000 and up if your goes that low try them they are way cool.
hey i take mine to bed with me so i dont miss and police chases

I use mine to listen to the USAF repeater here at Cape Canaveral. It is a must for watching Space Shuttle and Rocket launches.

As a former Radio Shack employee(4 years while in college), I recommend the "Police Call" book. It is printed every year specifically for each region of US (and Canada if I recall correctly). If its on the air, chances are its in that book.
Also, check with your local Shack to see if they have a Radio Shack outlet store nearby. That is a good place to find older scanners that are easy to modify. Otherwise check flea markets/pawn shops. There is alot of info on the internet about which scanners are easily modified.

"Police Call" is a good one. So it "Betty Bearcat".

olympic--If your scanner is one of the 900mhz models, you can have it modified to pick up cell phones. One of mine (I have 2-both 900mhz models) will pick them up without modification. The other isn't quite stock anymore and can pick up umm...lots of things. Cordless phones can be fun to listen to.

Baby monitors might be interesting to listen to. Those things will broadcast for blocks!

Slightly off topic...
If you are using a cordless phone, I would recommend using one of the 900 MHZ (or higher) "spread-spectrum" models. The signal is digitized.
The newer digital cellphones can't be scanned, either, when they're in digital mode. Trouble is, you can be handed off from a digital cell to an analog cell, in the middle of a call (as I understand it).
I'm not sure about PCS (Sprint, AT&T, etc.)
They are mostly digital, but may be able to roam analog systems.
IDEN (Southern LINC & Nextel) can't be scanned at all. (They *will* run incredible interference on your car radio, though.)

hey guys radio shack does sell a book in canada i have one from when i got my scanner maybe i need to buy a new one eh
cordless calls are not just interesting they can be down right hilarious or gross
i love the scanner because in the town i live i know 95% off the people so i always know who is in **** and for what i dont know if i asked this in the original post but does anyone have a base station CB? are they worth the money? i really want to get one bad maybe used first though

A few years ago the Canadian federal government made it illegal to listen to cellular conversations.(cordless phones are still legal to listen to, go figure ) In the same law they also made it illegal for retailers to sell or import scanners that could pick up the cellular frequencies. So manufacturers blocked out that band with a simple resistor or diode. People soon figured out how to restore the cell band by themselves. So our law makers, in all their wisdom, changed the law to state that the scanners must be made so that they could not be "easily" modified to restore the cell band.
I have done some searching and they say that the model I have(pro-90) can not be modified to restore the cell frequencies.
Doughboy, there are 25 cordless phone frequencies and I have all of them Its just that the people around here are so boring!
As for the 900mhz DSS cordless phones , I bought one about 2 years ago when they first came out. I have the Sanyo 9171 DSS model. They say not even the military has the technology to listen in because of the digital encoding and the spread spectrum technology. I love the range and sound quality. I've had about half a mile range from mine in town. I'm considering hooking a high gain antenna to the base unit and running the antenna up onto my 2 way tower. I think I could extend the range to a few miles since the technology is better than cellular its just lower power and limited by the small base antenna.
Does anyone know if I can just buy an "amplifier" that would boost the signal from my phone up to 1 or 2 watts?

Olympic,

You really dont need an amp, just a better antenna. If you were to remove the antenna on the base of the phone and replace it with a BNC connector, and then roof mount an antenna and connect it to the BNC connector, you would see a big difference in range. I have seen that done with regular cordless phones and it will do wonders for the range, but the older ones you could recieve other peoples transmissions if they got close with their handset.

scanners are going to become less usefull in the near future. In DE for example the state emergency radio network is now all digital and I beleive encrypted as well. Systems like this are going to become more common.

Same here in Loveland CO theogre. Made mine useless except for weather reports.

How about de-scramblers?

Anyone know where I can buy one? build one?

Descramblers for the scanner?
Or for cable?
There really is nothing useful to descramble scanner signals. Most of that stuff is not really scrambled, just digitally encoded. Although security is a consideration, the main reason it exists is to cram multiple conversations into the bandwidth that would normally carry only one channel.

Also called decoders.

Their sole purpose it to alter the voice of the person talking.

The hometown police have these. My town has a population of 3000. I see no reason to have these. But then again, my locals love their toys. They always have the biggest and best of everything.

Lets see! we are in the O/T category? So how can anything be off topic?? :O

Anyway?? What is a good brand model number to buy??? Just to listen to all the COP-TALK???

Do you have to know all their frequencies??? Or is it best to get a scanner type because I live in a town that the cops have many divisions??

You can see by my questions, I don't know squat about them? But I don't want to put out the bucks to get a weather radio, I want to hear what the bad guys are doing.

Any advice???? Other than getting arrested and riding around in the Cop cars all night?

dogtired,
For listening to cordless phones and 2 way radios(police, ambulance, fire) any cheap hand held or base scanner will do. The more expensive ones just have more features or scan faster.
It is easiest if you know the frequencies of who you want to listen to. You just program them in and your done. Most scanners can be set to scan a certain frequency band, say 150-160 Mhz, to look for frequencies but it will take a while to find who you are looking for.
Cordless phone frequencies are between 43-47 Mhz(there are 25 of them in there) and 2 way radios are commonly between 150-160 mhz. The new 900mhz analog cordless phones are around 905 Mhz. Cellular phones use the band between 870 Mhz and 895 Mhz.

007, I think I know what you're talking about, now.
If I understand correctly, those decoders work by frequency inversion. Sounds kind of like SSB CB traffic, heard on an AM channel.
High pitched sounds become low pitched, and low pitched sounds become high pitched.
We used to call the encoders "Donald Duck boards".
Probably need a BFO (not a "big... anything". Stands for "beat frequency oscillator".)
I'll poke around and see what I can find out.

Radar

It makes their voice all gargled sounding. Almost the same when you talk on a digital phone in a very poor reception area.

It has been almost 15 years ago, but Radio Shack used to sell a little black box called a "decoder". I could kick myself in the butt for not buying one then. 10 years ago, I delivered newspapers,a nd the reporters had the "little black box" attached to the scanner. It had a knob on it, and you fine tuned it everytime the cops went "private".

Also, when the cops decide to go private, they always say "Base, go to code".

Yup!
The little black box was a flea-power transmitter, sometimes called a "spray box". Probably on or near 455 KHz, or 10.7 MHz (both are common local-oscillator frequencies in radio receivers). Its signal mixed with the received "encoded" cop signal in the circuitry of the scanner. This is a similar concept to the squeal that you hear when two radio stations are very close together, except that the "encoded" signal has a built in squeal, and this little black box helps to cancel it out.