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A question for News pros..

Uniden's Home Patrol is user-friendly. It's also portable, although not shaped like a hand-held.

GRE, which made many of the Radio Shack scanners, has gone out of business. The GRE line was taken over by Whistler. I have a GRE-500 (same as RS Pro-106) which is a hand-held. It requires hooking it up to a computer for programming, and is rather complicated to use. (I think this is now the Whistler WS-1040.)
 
JRH said:
Uniden's Home Patrol is user-friendly. It's also portable, although not shaped like a hand-held.

GRE, which made many of the Radio Shack scanners, has gone out of business. The GRE line was taken over by Whistler. I have a GRE-500 (same as RS Pro-106) which is a hand-held. It requires hooking it up to a computer for programming, and is rather complicated to use. (I think this is now the Whistler WS-1040.)
Click to expand...


I use apps on my smartphone.

Both "5-0 Radio" and "Scanner+" have free versions which work very well. The latter allows you to record the scanners into e-mailable files. They both can bring in signals near to your location or find ones from far-off and distant police and fire jurisdictions.

Of course, it uses your mobile broadband data plan. Unless, you're on a WiFi.
 
I've always wondered about the delay on the scanner apps. How bad is it and how timely does the news guy's info need to be?

Also, what about cities who dispatch via computer? How do news guys get leads?
 
The Moblile Data Terminals (MDT) are rarely used as a primary mode of dispatch, but are used to convey sensitive information to not put on the air. Even if dispatch is made by MDT, there will generally be follow ups on the radio that could cue a newsie to a hot call.

As to the delay, I couldn't say, but an actual scanner would be more reliable.

As encryption is perfected over longer ranges, the days of listening in will be numbered.
 
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