Intro

In the 1990s, I got into scanning.  At the time, everything was mostly analog, and trunking was just starting to appear.  Cell phones weren't rare, but compared to today, there were.  There were plenty of people that had them, but it was not every man, woman, and child like today.  And they were basic, analog phones, not portable computers with multi megabit data.

The scanner I had was a PRO-60 from Radio Shack.  It was one of their best models at the time.  It had several features that set it above the rest:

• Large-ish (for the time) number of channels: 200
• Non volatile memory
• Very portable, like a walkie talkie, but outperformed some desktop models
• Wide frequency coverage: 30 MHz - 1000 MHz (less analog cell phones, by law, and some of the analog TV bands)
• Triple conversion superheterodyne receiver
• AM and WFM in addition to the usual NFM (WFM = Wide FM as used in FM radio and analog TV, NFM is narrow FM, lower quality used by most other analog radios, police, walkie talkies, etc)
• Included all of VHF Lo, VHF analog TV and radio
• VHF Aircraft Band, Military Airband, Audio from most TV stations and FM radio
• 800 MHz coverage for the new fangled trunked radio systems the police were switching to.

The big selling point for me was the Aircraft and Military Aircraft bands.  These were not common on lower end scanners.  They also both typically used AM rather than FM, also uncommon on lower end scanners.  That's a bit surprising as you'd think AM would be an simple circuit to add.

I still have it.  It's around somewhere; I've actually been tearing my hair out trying to find it recently.  Not so useful as it was anymore, but I still used it to monitor the Thunderbirds in 2017.  The frequencies I programmed in the 1990s were all still there, and it was intuitive enough to program the few changes I needed.  BTW, if you've never listened to the Thunderbirds or Blues at an airshow, do it.  They are awesome to listen to during the show, it's basically like captain america times 6 just having fun in ridiculously high performance aircraft.  When I find it, I plan on using it once again to monitor airband frequencies.

Downsides:

• some gaps in coverage, nothing that matters today
• strong signals would overload the input and cause images all over the place.  You would hear FM radio and analog TV signals on frequencies where they didn't belong, primarily if you used a good antenna.  I never adequately solved this but I imagine it would be doable with some FM band filters and some patience.  It was a lot less of an issue with the actual portable antenna it came with, but with my discone it was a real issue.

Other than that air show in 2017, and a few trips to the airport, I haven't used the thing much since the good old days.

About a year ago, I got into RTL-SDR based radio.  I was absolutely blown away by the abilities and performance of these devices, especially considering the cost.  The low cost has brought me back into the fold, allowing me to get high quality reception of the local P25 radio system for a modest price.  A scanner to do this would be $100s, this was like $21 minus the computer.

Most of the entries here in the near future will be RTL-SDR related, plus the Linux and Windows software and configuration used for reception.  Plus a little info here and there about what I pick up with the old scanner, if I ever find it.