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Why Do They Continue To Sell Analog Scanners?

C

casey jones

Charter Member
I read the thead about one of our people having problems with his police scanner, this
compelled me to ask if all law enforcements have switched to digital communications and
you can only hear them on a $500.00 police scanner then why does Uden and Radio Shack
continue to sell Analog scanners?

Cheers

Casey
 
The digital trunked systems are very expensive to purchase, install and maintain. only police forces large enough to extract large sums of money from the sheeple can justify installing them. Most small communities still use conventional analog unless they can rent time on one of the big boys systems. Even some of the big boys are still using analog trunked systems which the cheap scanners can monitor because going to the new digital P25 system is a forklift upgrade that is not in their budgets. If you live in a big city, your out of luck. If you live in Podunk you can probably still monitor Andy and Barney.

Dave
 
Around here, ems and police do use digital trunked systems, but ems uses a non-trunked frequency as a repeat signal for those of us with scanners. You can hear fire and ems calls, but once they are on scene they go to an encoded or trunked digital signal so you never know what they found or had to do. Aviation still uses and likely will always use non-trunked signals. I do get to hear the traffic at my local airport with a cheap Bearcat scanner.
 
I don't really know about the scanners but we are holding onto our VHF stuff against what ever the future brings. Never know what might become useful.
 
Digital communications are great however there are still applications that are best addressed through analog. You will also find that many so called trucked systems are combinations of analog and digital.

like all technologies, there are pluses and minuses to both types of transmission.
 
I haven't bothered with a scanner in years. I use the android LiveATC app from time to time (along with the Flightradar24 Pro app) to tune into the larger airports.
 
In addition, there are still many fascinating things to listen to aside from law enforcement and ems... :ernae:
 
There are some great APPS out there that make it possible to listen, I haven't used an analog scanner in years.
 
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