Who has a scanner thread

watty

The VR500 is unusual as it has USB/LSB/CW and can use a Narrow or normal filter on AM. It's not great for 800MHz to 1300MHz.

1000 Memories and the numeric keypad to type in frequency is good.
A primitive bandscan / spectrum scope built in.

Easy on batteries and if you strip off part of insulation on one cell, an pair of NiMh will charge automatically. BNC aerial socket.
The Rubber Duck is deaf. A Maplin telescopic €9.95 works better (they are conviently 1/4wave on 70cm when closed and 2m when open). Works on R4 LW with a 2m 1/4 wave whip!

Really though with the FT817 I don't need it. PM me if you interested in a S/H one. I also have a late model (real SM chip resistors instead of tube type) Sony ICF2001D with an IF out for DRM/SDR added to tape socket.


My bearcat is UBXC68 80ch UK band scanner. I have no idea what "close call" is I use it to listen to the local Amateur repeaters, marine / coastguard WX report from Lough Derg and receive WX maps on 137MHz on PC via sound card plugged direct to ear socket. I use Discone on chimney as aerial for Satellite. I get the coastguard WX on rubber duck.

Have you a link to POCSAG? What is it? My favorite PC SW are Hamradio Delux, the WX sat image (forget name), Rocky DSP SDR, DReaM and MixW for everything else Radio.

DublinWriter

watty wrote:

PM me if you interested in a S/H one.

Please PM me with your best-price, as I've been planning to buy one new next Monday. I have a Discone somewhere, but it kinda beats the whole going-mobile idea. I could probably use the telescopic whip off my old Fairmate mobile as it's a standard BNC connection.

watty wrote:

My bearcat is UBXC68 80ch UK band scanner. I have no idea what "close call" is

Close Call on the Bearcats lets you automatically tune into a strong local signal. For example, you could be walking down Grafton St. and the Close Call function will automatically tune into the TX of the door security staff, etc. It works on the same principal as bug-hunters.

watty wrote:

Have you a link to POCSAG? What is it?

POCSAG decodes the baudot signals TX'ed by paging companies around the 145Mhz frequency into plain ASCII. It's been around for quite a while and I don't think it's been updated since the late 90's.

PauloMN

DublinWriter wrote:

POCSAG decodes the baudot signals TX'ed by paging companies around the 145Mhz frequency into plain ASCII. It's been around for quite a while and I don't think it's been updated since the late 90's.

I used POCSAG a while back, worked very well with my scanner. Most of what I got seemed to be pager messages for IT service technicians. I'd see what looked like automated messages possibly generated from a unit in a server room somewhere saying that the temperature was too high or something, and requesting an engineer.

<NERD>
Dead interesting stuff IMO - I like decode. I also did ACARS decoding, some great software out for that which plots the plane position graphically on a map on the PC. Given that you're receiving signals from the sky, the range is excellent also even though it's VHF airband - I'd get coverage all over the UK and Ireland, and a few hundred kms off the north/west/south coasts.

Now I want to add weather sat stuff to my list as I've never done that.
</NERD>

DublinWriter

PauloMN wrote:

I also did ACARS decoding, some great software out for that which plots the plane position graphically on a map on the PC. Given that you're receiving signals from the sky, the range is excellent also even though it's VHF airband - I'd get coverage all over the UK and Ireland, and a few hundred kms off the north/west/south coasts.

I played around a bit with ACARS too, specifically the shared ACARS site where people sumbit their local realtime data and you can track almost every aircraft around the globe currently in flight.

I also remember a few sites where people from around the world put their scanners up on line, and you could take control of them for a certain time-slot and play around with listening into local HF TX.

This is something I haven't looked into for about 8 years, I'd imagine there's allsorts of great stuff available now on the Interweb.

watty

This is the 137MHz Weather satellite software for sound card on PC direct to scanner earphone socket:
http://www.wxtoimg.com/

WXtoImg
The world's best weather satellite (WXsat) signal to image decoder.

Simply connect a 137-138MHz FM communications receiver, scanner, or weather satellite receiver to your soundcard and get stunning colour images directly from weather satellites. The only other item you'll need is an antenna for receiving the circularly polarised signals.

The advantage of the Discone is that as it is vertical linear polarised it will pickup the circular polarised satellite from any direction (with 3db penalty), so does not need to track.

What you receive is canaries/Spain to Iceland to France etc with where you are in the middle of the picture.

dxhound2005

I also remember a few sites where people from around the world put their scanners up on line, and you could take control of them for a certain time-slot and play around with listening into local HF TX.

This is something I haven't looked into for about 8 years, I'd imagine there's allsorts of great stuff available now on the Interweb.[/QUOTE]

I think Dx Tuners was the best known one and I used it a fair bit but it is closed now. I tried the R75 on the N2JEU site and it worked fine.

http://monitor-post.blogspot.com/2007/04/dxtuners-rip.html

http://www.dxzone.com/catalog/Internet_and_Radio/Online_Receivers/

Crowman

I am now the proud owner of a Bearcat 3500xlt.
New to the whole scene but already have programmed several Systems and have been happily scanning all weekend...
I'm thinking of purchasing additional software to connect it to my PC I think this will be easier to program it this way.

Close call is really cool feature amazing what i've picked up while out walking
the dog...!

pbirney

I've still got my trusty Realistic PRO-2004 desktop scanner as well as an ICOM PCR-1000 wideband scanner connected via my PC. My antenna is a roof-mounted discone.

My main interests are the aviation bands (HF and VHF). I have not been scanning the bands for some time now but I hope to get back into hobby soon.

~Paul.

telecinesk

Ive a (is this classed as a scanner?) sony swf7600 and a realistic pro-43 handheld which ehm had a few diodes cut and so on giving me a good stretch. Its not the best but better than nothing as it was cheapish. Mods.dk gave me the infor re modding. (warranty beware)
My interest lies between the wxsat stuff on 137 like watty and also what lies between 248mhz to roughly 280mhz. Anyone interested should look up Pj Marsh pages on the net. Oh tried L Band too. Local stuff isnt so exciting here being mainly czech.
"Raaaaaaager" as they used to say.

Sputnik

Just got an Icom R-20.

About €200 less then new from ebay and in pretty much perfect condition.

humaxf1

Hi watty,

Did u get the 40 odd quid discone in Maplin? I'm interested in your coax hook-up for SWL. I have a PCR-1000 (BNC) and I have to disconnect the coax braid, otherwise the RX is attenuated. Is this the norm?

thx

watty

My kids bought me it as a present out of Maplin. It's only really good above 30MHz.


For lower frequencies you need an Aerial matching unit at end of coax feeding a wire aerial. you are really using your coax as an aerial too by disconnecting braid. If you don't have a tunable matching unit the end fed wire should be a little shorted than 1/4 of the wavelenth in meters = 300/MHz

15ft, 33ft, 66ft are three possible lengths for an end fed horizontal wire. You need a matching coil balun (pvc covered wire on a approx 50mm plastic pipe). Try about 8 turns connected to the coax. About 12 turns for the aerial wire, one end direct to a 4ft earth spike and the other end to the wire. Insulate the far end with at least 2ft (60cm) of nylon cord/rope.

Any kind of wire, even washing line. Minimum height off ground 8ft to 10ft. If one end is high (e.g. Chimney) the other should still be < 10ft to allow the earthing of coil to work. If the coax feed is high, then you need a dipole, two wires.

Google inverted L, inverted V, G5RV and Beveridge aerials.