2022 Scanner Crash Course

11Jan 2022 by Phil No Comments

On today’s episode, I will go through my slides on my presentation for Ham Radio University, which I normally do every year.

This is my practice run for the presentation that I gave at HRU on January 8, 2022.

If HRU publishes the presentation, we will follow up with a link.

This presentation is for those who are new to the scanner radio hobby, or need a quick reset and want to have a bit of a refresher on some scanner radio topics and terms.

If you need more help with your scanner, you can book me for a 1 hour tutoring session at www.scannerschool.com/tutoring

What You Need To Know

We use scanners instead of two way radios for scanning because:
- Scanners typically have a much faster scan rate
- Have better memory management
- Scanners have a larger frequency range than most two way radios
- Scanners can typically support multiple modes and technologies
There are three main types of transmitting and receiving:
- Simplex: Single Frequency – point to point
  - Mostly used on Fireground and tactical channels
- Duplex: Two Frequencies – point to poing
  - Radio 1 Tx’s on one freq where Radio 2 Rx’s
  - Radio 1 Rx’s where Radio 2 Tx’s
- Repeaters: Two Frequencies
  - All radios Tx on the repeater input frequency
  - All radio Rx on the repeater output frequency
  - Gives a large footprint on radio communication
  - Mostly used on dispatch frequencies
- Analog is the most common transmission type that we could use
  - Used by Aviation, Ham, Rails, Marine, etc
- Digital has better spectrum usage
- Typical Digital Modes in scanning are:
  - P25
  - DMR
  - NXDN
  - (TETRA is used Outside the US. No Scanner can Rx TETRA)
- Trunking Improves Spectrum Efficiency
- Common Trunk Systems are:
  - Motorola Type II
  - EDACS
  - LTR
  - P25
  - DMR
  - NXDN
- Many users can be on a trunk system and voice channels are distributed “on demand”
- If a group is not talking, they do not tie up a voice path
- All users listen for commands on a control channel and only move to a voice channel when told to by the control channel

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