How do I use my police scanner?

Question

I have a Realistic Pro-41 10 channel direct entry programmable scanner. I have tried putting in local "channels" with no success. I really have no idea how use it or where I can find frequencies. I don't even know if I can pick up police channels. Are they encrypted or something?

Answer 1

Go to a Radio Shack store & ask them.

Answer 2

If you do a search for your county for police scanner codes you should fine them.  I did it for my county.  Also fire etc etc .....

Answer 3

Think of your scanner as your car stereo, and the police/fire department radios as a radio station.  When you're searching for a radio station on your car stereo, we all know the numbers that come up.  99.5, 102.5, 107.9, etc.  Those are called frequencies.  So, what you're looking for are the police radio frequencies, not channels.  Those channels in your scanner are simply there to keep all the stored frequencies organized.  Similar to the buttons on your car stereo, where you keep favorite radio stations stored.  Some scanners have 50 channels (you can store 50 frequencies), 30 channels (store 30 frequencies), and others have a billion channels.  Yours can only store 10 frequencies, because it's only a 10 channel scanner.  

Since yours is an older model, I'm assuming that it must be very easy to use.  To enter a frequency, press the number keypad and then press Enter.  Enter the frequency exactly as shown.  It's always going to be in this format: 100.0000  So you're going to start by pressing the first three numbers, press the dot after, enter the last four digits, and then press ENTER.  For example, let's say that the frequency for your local police department is 460.5000.  You would begin by entering 460, pressing the dot, entering 5000, and pressing ENTER.  When I got my first scanner, I was also a little stumped myself.  I thought that the scanner was going to automatically pick up the local action all by itself.  After carefully reading the manual, I realized that I had to enter everything myself, lol.

You can find scanner frequencies by doing a search on yahoo or google.  Simply type in "John Doe County scanner frequencies" or which ever county you live in.  You can also go to radioreference.com and search for you county there.  Your scanner is not only limited to police,fire, and ambulance crews, but you can also listen to security, local schools, department stores, etc.  Of course, you'll have to know or find the frequencies for the radios used on such locations.

Some counties do have digital and encrypted radio systems, but not many.  You can't get any of the digital and encrypted systems (not yet, at least).  If it's only digital and not encrypted, then yes, but those scanners can go up to $500.  Other counties have something called trunked radio systems.  Trunked systems hop from one frequency to another.  You'll need a trunk-capable scanner to keep up with trunked systems, but those scanners are close to $200 or more.  If you start to enjoy the hobby, you'll eventually move up to a more advanced scanner with lots of cool features and capabilites.