Police Scanners for Non-Nerds; A Brief Introduction

So;

You work somewhere that gives you a radio, but won't let you add any channels. Maybe you're always curious about the sirens you hear off in the distance. Could be, you're a volunteer for the Fire Department, or the Ambulance Service, or the Emergency Management Agency, but they don't give you a radio, and you can't afford the THREE GRAND for a radio that works on the new regional system. Maybe your kid’s been pestering you for a radio for Civil Air Patrol or the Explorers, and you don't want Junior in trouble. Maybe you do NASCAR, and you want to hear what's going on down there on Pit Road.

All of you have something in common: you need a radio frequency scanning communications receiver, affectionately referred to as a 'scanner'.

I am betting based on experience, most of you have another thing in common... you could care less about the technical end of it. You would just like to listen to whatever you want, and not know how to solder, or program codeplugs, or whatever it is you have to do to make them work.

I wrote this book for you.

This book was also written for someone who doesn't like to read. So, while it would make you smarter on the subject to do so, all you really have to do is skim and read the sections that interest you.

In addition, I also haven’t put a bunch of other information (filler) in here. Maybe you don’t want to further your communications hobby. Maybe you just need a jumping off point. I kept it out of here for you. (Should you develop an interest, or just want to know more gory details, there is a companion book I wrote you are welcome to look into. There’s a ton of data there.)

Oh, by the way, if your car looks like a porcupine, or your house has a 90 foot tower bolted to it, or you have multiple radio licenses, or a lifetime membership to radioreference.com; ah, dude, this book isn't for you. At all. There's going to be a lot of oversimplifications, and generalizations. Crawl before you walk, and all that. Save your hate mail.