Big Den

Hello fellow scoobynetters!

My 1st post & thread for 2006

Can anyone advise what the best airband scanners are for monitoring rally teams & marshalls transmissions? (potentially picking up other common transmissions aswell )

There are some for sale on ebay for less than £20 buy it now!!

I have very little knowledge on this subject & would welcome your advice

Thanks

Big Den

Chris L

You'll need something a little better than that I'm afraid. Do a google search on Yupiteru. Expect to pay around £150 or more for a decent one - even on Ebay. The cheaper scanners often don't have a big enough frequency range and you won't be able to fine tune them to the accuracy needed for the rally team frequencies. Team frequencies normally go down to 3 decimal places or more i.e. 104.xxx.xx

Big Den

Thx Chris

If I was only looking to be able to monitor local & national rallies would this still be the case?

What is the minimum you would require to accidentaly pick up UK emergency services, CB, local authority, etc?

Den

Kuro

Chris,

Is that the same for most other broadcasts?? The chopper coppers love hover about the motorway junctions around here, and I would love to hear them

TopBanana

Before GSM, you used to be able to listen in to mobile calls. Now that was entertaining

Iwan

Something like a Yupiteru MVT7100 would do everything you'd want, I used to have 2 at various times. AOR make some awesome scanners but they tend to be a lot more feature packed and hence more expensive.

scunnered

iTrader: (1)

It's very doubtfull you'd be able to pick up any of the emergency services as they have mostly all gone over to digital radio's. "TETRA" for example.
I don't know about the rally teams though.

Chris L

Kuro - not sure mate. There are nice big books that you can buy from Amazon that list all the frequencies used (certainly in the UK anyway) and who uses them.

I'm no expert on the subject - just based on my experience of using a scanner at rallies. There are quite a few scanner BBSs that will probably be able to answer your questions quite quickly.

TDT

Bear in mind it is an offence under the Wireless and Telegraphy Act to intercept transmissions made by the emergency services - on TETRA or not.

You may also fall foul of the act intercepting transmissions from rally teams.

Need to dig my copy of the act out in the study..........

darlodge

Quite agree
Me and a mate used to sit round getting drunk listening to couples have arguments on the scanner

Darren

TopBanana

I heard a guy getting sacked once. His boss was absolutely ripping into him it was awful.

Also heard a woman who was threatening to tell this poor fella's wife about their little fling

Huxley

IIRC the offence only stands when you act on the information

And Tetra is encrypted

TDT

I know TETRA is encrypted.....coz the people that designed the keys live in a building on the corner of the Horseferry Road Apparently.......

Sorry to be difficult but:

s1(2) RIPA 2000 creates offences of unlawful interception

s5(b)(i) of WTA 1949 makes it an offence for a person to use Wireless & Telegraphy apparatus with intent to obtain information without authorisation.

I'll shut up and go and drink some more Stella

TopBanana

It's actually an offence to listen to anything other than a general broadcast unless you are authorised to do so.

jono300

iTrader: (8)

Can assure you that anything worth listening to these days on scanners is encrypted / tetra, and have read that the major race/ rally teams are now also using encyption.

having owned a scanner for many, mant years can assure you that whats left that can be listened into is very, very boring after a while, unless listening into taxis companies, water boards, bin men is your type off thing !!!!!!!!!!

buy a scanner and see for yourself but please dont spend a lot on it, you seriously will be dissapointed and just what you can actually monitor these days.

The good days are over as far as scanners are concerned !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BOB.T

You best go tell Subaru and Ford that then cos we listen to them at every WRC round we go to...and the RAF etc etc

jono300

iTrader: (8)

Okay mate I must be wrong about rally teams then but can assure you that the major formula one teams are all encypted, RAF not encypted as yet but again most off the other services are - police, fire etc, ambulance now use data exchange so thats rules that out.

but okay fair enough if you listen to Subaru and FORD then they must still be using analogue, but would well imagine that will change soon.

been a radio amateur for comming on 25 years now mate and scanning has been a very big part off my hobby in that time, but for the last 6 months the scanner has probably only been used about three times, encyption is becoming a major thing within most radio traffic these days, and trust me the sytmn that the police nowuse known as TETRA is so sophistated that it is believed tol be uncrackable.

at the end of the day all I am saying is personally I would not spend a lot off money on a scanner due to the majority off radio traffic becoming encypted and most other thing that are not encypted become very boring to listen to after a while !!