Gardai scanner?

The_Mac

I've always been somewhat enthralled by the fact that the yanks can get those yokes to listen in on the emergency services. I was wondering if there's some scanner like that which works in Ireland? Feel like it'd be a yoke I'd use if I was bored off my tits some night and wanted to know what the craic was around the local area.

sdanseo

They switched to secure radios about a decade ago.

Atlantic Dawn

The marine channel 16 can have some interesting stuff on it but yes typical Garda comms are long gone secure.

The_Mac

So if they're secure are the stuff the yanks use non-secure, or is it that the scanners you see people using are from a long gone era?

The_Mac

The_Mac wrote: »

So if they're secure are the stuff the yanks use non-secure, or is it that the scanners you see people using are from a long gone era?

They are using unsecured networks.

flazio

American law enforcement talk in code. "We have a two eighteen in progress on 8th and 19th"etc so that Joe public listening in doesn't have a clue what's going on unless they learnt the codes. Here in Ireland, you wouldn't have a hope of the Guards learning off that sort of thing so best off to close the network and speak normal english.

cursai

flazio wrote: »

American law enforcement talk in code. "We have a two eighteen in progress on 8th and 19th"etc so that Joe public listening in doesn't have a clue what's going on unless they learnt the codes. Here in Ireland, you wouldn't have a hope of the Guards learning off that sort of thing so best off to close the network and speak normal english.

Why wouldn't you have a hope? Do they not shoot enough people?

Luckysasha

Had a scanner back in the 90’s. Every emergency service was available at that time. Could even get the first generation 086 mobile phones. Guards changed to the tetra system so lost them. Don’t know if the ambulance or fire service is still available. I remember the guards where on 164.150 for Drogheda. Call signs where Papa Alpha. Used to be good crack listening to all the services especially at the weekend when they would be busy. It was also a handy way of finding out where checkpoints where before Facebook came along.

irishrgr

Yeah, the scanners used to be gas, able to listen to all the calls going out and so on, but they've fallen out of fashion. With the advent of trunked digital radio systems, encryption is almost free, so most agencies have gone that way. Additionally, once we got our Mobile Data Computers (MDC), radio traffic dropped by almost 80%. A whole call can be run from the MDC and never break squelch on the radio. Less no nowadays and in an odd reversal, we now find ourselves pushing information out via social media as compared to when radio & TV stations used to pay people to monitor our radio channels. 
The scanners came from a quirk in American law that allowed anyone to listen to any frequency without approval or license. Transmission was regulated, but not receiving. Radio codes are on their way out too except the stupid 10 codes. It has been discovered in the days of interagency responses, plain English seems to work very well (who'd have thought?). IE, it's a traffic collision, not a "10-50", pretty much everyone understands that.

drunkmonkey

Can you still listen to the ambulance services, would be pretty interesting at the moment?

onmia

The NAS moved over to Tetra a few years ago.
DFB are the only ones still on analogue, but they are due to migrate over to Tetra.

LRNM

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Can you still listen to the ambulance services, would be pretty interesting at the moment?

As the other poster said, NAS moved to TETRA many years ago.

I think the fire service made the move also.
Back about 20 years ago a relative of mine had a scanner and we would listen to the gardai/ambulance in the town and it was comically Irish the things that would be said.
Even still today radio comms in Ireland are :pac: at times but it's all trunked so nobody hears anybody else. It's more like making a phone call these days.