CB radio or police scanner?

My Bearcat works fine, and i can listen to highway patrol, local Police, weather, fire, news, and so forth. Bearcat BCT8 scanner, and i run it my two radios, and a radar detector/laser in my CMV. I got creative years ago to hide it in a gutted out old radio.

I believe you meant Trunked system, which can still be heard on a scanner, but they jump frequencies in transmissions.

 

CB. If you could monitor them effectively, by the time they said something about you, it would be too late. You might pick up a call if somebody reported you as a reckless driver and dispatch put it out to the units. Most of those calls go over the internet now days. All the units have laptops and run all their stuff themselves. Very little radio traffic anymore. I think the law reads if you use it (scanner) to avoid the police, they can confiscate it. So sure as the world if you ever got caught going around the scales or a road side check somewhere, you'd lose your scanner right there on the spot. Having one in a personal vehicle ain't the same as having one in a commercial vehicle. They'll just take it and give you a court date.

 

Technically, I could have a radar detector in the truck with me. Both X and K bands are actually also experimental ham freqs... lol good luck in court with that one. Gonna have to subpoena an FCC engineer to testify on that.

 

Since I run local and not OTR, it might be easier for me because I don't have to fiddle with it changing channels, and if I do, I do it at one of my stops for the next area I'll be driving in, but I use the Scanner Radio app and my CB. There have been several times I saw multiple emergency vehicles racing one direction or the other, and had the information available to know where a crash was up ahead, how many lanes, which lanes, etc., and whether I needed to detour or not before I got stuck in the traffic.
I can plug my phone into the stereo so it plays clearly over the speakers.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scannerradio

 

Sorry after the terrorist attacks, the information you seek are now routed through datalink or tactical type nets that regular scanners will not pickup.

My old bearcat here in this area with our police and sherriff literally goes silent when there is a active manhunt or perimeter etc is being established where I am. I have had bad guns run through my particular area with police hunting them. And not a peep on scanner.

Im past that old bearcat now. Im online with thousands of sources of broadcasting all the way from any old county law to the FAA Air Traffic Centers at the National Level.

There is another issue. In the old days you could listen in to phone calls made by regular people in range. Most of that has gone away now. You can probably still penetrate and listen in with the right equipment capable of those frequencies and get into sync with them (Stingray comes to mind which is what the Law uses to literally jump into YOUR cell phone at any time anywhere in sensitive areas like the US Capitol.)

Radio isnt what it used to be to me. The CB radio has mutated into a really bad place filled with negative things and certain illegal activities such as prositution etc. And the scanner does not hear the really good stuff anymore like it used to prior to the terrorist attacks. So why do I follow the radio? Well... online is how I do it. In our state we still use radio in tornado activity (Skywarn) and a couple of other useful tidbits.

I tell you one more thing which I found pretty true if not flat out amusing. Here in the south, if you are with people who have phones and cousins, family, friends everywhere in every little nook and hollow... wait a while. Someone will be sure to hear the news and pass it on.

That stuff travels like lightning if it's juicy or important. Unfortunately it sometimes mutates or becomes a rumor or returns unrecognizable from it's original story.

 

I'd stick with CB and use the scanner app on your phone. I used to take a scanner on trips and it was of limited benefit, at least for me. YMMV

 

That is wrong. Police still have mobile radios on their sides, and radios in their vehicles. I know many of my local Sheriffs, and police. They still use the radio as much as before. Laptops are used for license checks, warrants checks, and to write out reports. I have a scanner at home also, and it is always buzzing with law enforcement traffic, via radio transmissions.

 

There are a couple of top end digital scanners that you can add a GPS sensor and the radio self programs as you move. The uniden home patrol is one.

 

Well they don't much in Arkansas and I thought we were behind in everything....... but what do I know?

 

I've been told that many police departments are beginning to use encryption as a security measure nowadays. True?