scanSydney

ivahri wrote:If you are going to do that you may as well use an old Tait or Philips radio that have a better receiver than a cruddy old XTS... can't really see the point to setting up a radio to listen to snippets of conversations- that would drive me nuts!

This actually works well if you're in an area where the sites are generally pretty quiet (such as in the ACT.) Gets ridiculous fast if you try it on a site like GPT though.

BerryV wrote:If you want to RX the NSW GRN only via single towers and pass all talkgroups, they will work just fine(in fact, sound better then any scanner). Ive got several W3's monitoring different towers. No affiliation at all. just set it up to scan all freq's on the tower ex control channel and alt control to speed up scan times.

Even if you leave the control channels in the scan list, in the case of a P25 if the radio doesn't see any voice frames it can do anything with when it stops, it'll skip straight along to the next channel.

If you want to RX the NSW GRN only via single towers and pass all talkgroups, they will work just fine(in fact, sound better then any scanner). Ive got several W3's monitoring different towers. No affiliation at all. just set it up to scan all freq's on the tower ex control channel and alt control to speed up scan times.

Yeah have to agree with BerryV and SKYGEN in this instance, have both my Motorola's setup on various sites as a conventional scan. works well i feel. I have tried in on Chullora and its a bit too busy to track stuff, i still do listen in and you get a general snapshot on whats going on but it can get a bit much. they do sound better than any scanner i have. each to there own i guess.

cheers
Matt

Longreach wrote:they do sound better than any scanner i have. each to there own i guess.

cheers
Matt

Most if the time this is because a scanner has a tiny speaker while a commercial radio has a proper amplified speaker.

Get an amplified speaker for your scanner and you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference - and it's a lot cheaper than buying/programming a commercial radio that won't even track the GRN properly.

i agree, I have a speaker on all my scanners and they sound great! The Motorola speakers work the best!

An XTS3000 can be had for under $200 if you look around so it's not necessarily more expensive than a scanner. Less flexible, but given that I've got the equipment already for other reasons and it does the job for me, i'm happy.