My Life in Two-Way Radio

September 13, 2024 / Richard R. Barron

Updated September 2024

As some of you might know, I am a licensed amateur radio operator. My FCC-assigned call sign is kc5tfz, which is also the custom license tag on my Nissan Juke. I have several friends who are licensed “ham” radio operators. Almost universally, we use our amateur radio privileges less and less. I got my license originally to aid in storm spotting, but like most communications in the 21st century, amateur radio has been, or is in the process of being, replaced by the Internet, or more fundamentally by the “datastream.” Even our personal two-way radio needs are better met by Family Radio Service handheld radios available everywhere. Abby and I each carry one when we hike.

Uniden, Radio Shack, Kenwood, Icom and more; I don’t have a favorite brand, but certain radios have stood out as the best over the years.

I have made a few antennas in my day, like the occasional j-pole or quarter wave, but I was never all that into it. I am actually pretty good at identifying antennas on towers and vehicles.

As I was driving to Utah a few years ago, I had lots of time on my hands, so I decided to make a list of all the police scanners I have owned. It was no small number, due in some part to improvements in technology and changes in the scanning environment, but also due to scanners wearing out and dying. Sometimes even boredom takes a role, and I’ll pick up a scanner as a bargain from a pawn shop or a garage sale just to play with it.

I have a vague recollection of picking up some scanner traffic on an analog multi-band radio I got as a birthday gift when I was a young teenager. I was 15, because I noted it in my journal. “Does this subject want to breath or bleed?” I quoted in my writings. The question was asked to determine if a DUI suspect wanted to take a breathalyzer test or a blood test. I suspect this was on an unpublished frequency, since my radio didn’t pick up the UHF band used at the time by Lawton police. That was my first experience with listening to public safety communications.

This was my communications stack in the mid 1990s.

In 1982, I got an internship in a newspaper in Lawton, and there was a scanner in the newsroom, and one in each of the cars the paper owned that we photographers used. I recall that one of the scanners was the venerable Bearcat III 8-channel crystal-controlled units, and the other a 16-channel programmable. They were getting long in the tooth even then, with the emergence of better microprocessor-controlled scanners, but they got the job done, since Lawton only used about four frequencies on a regular basis.

The Bearcat BC-100 was among the first programmable scanners. Although it wasn't a great radio, it worked, and I used it for a few years in the 1980s. — The Bearcat BC-100 was among the first programmable scanners. Although it wasn’t a great radio, it worked, and I used it for a few years in the 1980s.

I was so enamored of the notion of “spying” on the police and fire departments (which prior to that I thought was illegal) that for my July birthday I asked for a scanner, and my parents obliged. Thus began a hobby that has lasted to this day. The list of scanners I owned throughout the years goes something like this (red ones are dead):

Bearcat BC-150, 10 channel (birthday gift 1982.)
Realistic Pro-21 4 channel crystal scanner (scanned VHF great, but very poor for UHF, which it was supposed to do. I had the front end readjusted a couple of times, which didn’t really help.)
Bearcat III, 8 channel crystal (garage sale, installed in my first car, a 1973 VW.)
Bearcat BC-100, 16 channel, the first ever programmable handheld scanner (bad battery setup, bad antenna design. I later got one from Ebay just for kicks.)
Fox BMP 10/60 10 channel, died decades ago, replaced with a half-working copy from Ebay for$20 in 2023; red LED display plus red LEDs for each channel, with Service Search (installed in VW and later Renault Alliance.)
Radio Shack Realistic Pro-2001, 16-channel, acquired in 2023 for $30 from a guy who called it “untested,” but it works fine. Interesting hybrid of crystal-controlled-style LEDs for each channel plus red LED display on the face.

The Fox BMP 10/60 sits atop the Realistic Pro-2001.

Radio Shack Realistic Pro-31, 10 channel handheld (big radio that uses six AA batteries, hard to carry, but nice and loud.)
Realistic Pro-37, 200-channel handheld. Regarded as one of the best handheld scanners in 1987, I got one from Ebay in 2022. Uses six AA batteries.
Realistic Pro-2006, 400 channel base station. Regarded as one of the best base station scanners in late 1980s, I got one from Ebay in 2022. Sticky keys meant I had to open it up several times to spray with tuner cleaner, but it mostly works. Electroluminescent display is sketchy.
Realistic Pro-2004, 300 channel base station. This was regarded as the base station scanner to own in 1986, so I got one from Ebay in 2022. It turned out that bad soldering during production meant none of these work any more. It looks good in my stack, however.
Radio Shack Pro-2021 200 channel. I bough this radio new in 1986 when it got marked down and discontinued, but despite the fact that it scans too slowly, it receives well and is loud and clear. I had it my car for a short time in the early 1990s, and it currently resides in the garage. In early 2024, I saw one in mint condition on Ebay for $25 and bought it, so I have two of these.
Cobra SR-15 100 channel handheld (with leather case, one of the best handhelds I ever owned.) Update: in 2020, I found one of these for $10 on eBay and bought it for its nostalgia value. It looks great but doesn’t run well.
Regency MX-3000 80 channel (slanted front, blue display, worst receiver circuit of any I owned.)
Uniden BC760XLT 100 channel mobile. Good audio, good form for car mounting. But mine forgets all it’s frequencies when power is interrupted, so I have relegated it to single-channel listening and band searches.
Uniden Bearcat BC560XLT 16-channel with 2-digit display x2 (very cheap, good speaker – one was destroyed in a crash in 1990.)
Sporty’s Pilot Shop A300 aviation band transceiver.
Icom IC-A3 aviation band transceiver given to me by a ham radio buddy.
Uniden 500 UBC9000XLT 500-channel (most expensive scanner I even bought, died within three years.)
Radio Shack Pro-2026 200 channel
Bearcat BD144XL 16 channel (pawn shop, gave to a friend.)
Radio Shack Pro-23 50 channel handheld (bought for next to nothing from a coworker.)

One way to make mobile antennas work in more than one band is to include traps, coils, or, in the case of the Diamond NR790A, a combination of the two. The NR790A is a 5/8λ over 5/8λ over 1/2λ collinear antenna. Totaling almost five feet in length, this is a very capable antenna.

Radio Shack Pro-94 1000 channel handheld (confusing “trunk” radio programming, terrible battery performance, tinny audio), in 2024 I gave it to Jamie and Ian.
Radio Shack Pro-2035 1000 channel
Radio Shack Pro-2039 200 channel
Alinco DR M06TH 6-meter amateur (not really a scanner, but will scan 30-50 Mhz in addition to 6m; at home, fed by Cushcraft AR-6)
Cherokee AH-50 6-meter amateur handheld (not really a scanner; 6m; not in use.)
Radio Shack HTX-202 and HTX-404 handheld 2m and 70cm transceivers (not scanners)
Icom IC-2820H, great, very capable dual band amateur radio with full scanning ability, including tone squelch; my primary news-gathering radio in my Nissan Juke
Icom IC-2350H amateur dual-band + public safety, installed as a second radio in the Nissan Juke
Icom IC-207H amateur dual-band + public safety, currently in my stack in the house
Icom IC-V8000, a high-wattage 2-meter radio mounted in the Nissan Frontier
Kenwood TH-79A amateur handheld + public safety
Kenwood TH-22A amateur handheld + public safety
Uniden BD175XL 16 channel (given to me by Abby’s late father)
Radio Shack Pro-2030 80 channel
Radio Shack Pro-2028 50 channel
Uniden BC72XLT “Nascar” handheld 100 channel (one of the best handheld scanners I own because of its small size and good audio.)
Uniden BCT75XLT 300-channel handheld scanner, given to me by Robert Stinson, who bought it and two others at a thrift store, giving one to Scott and one for himself as well.

The Radio Shack Pro-2052 is typical of the scanners from the 1990s, with 1000-channels and analog-only 800mhz trunking. As of September 2024, I haven't exactly decided how I want to deploy it. — The Radio Shack Pro-2052 is typical of the scanners from the 1990s, with 1000-channels and analog-only 800mhz trunking. As of September 2024, I haven’t exactly decided how I want to deploy it.

Radio Shack Pro-2055. After installing an additional quarter-wave on the roof, I poked around a couple of pawn shops and found this radio for next to nothing.
Radio Shack Pro-163. This radio is very similar to the Pro-2055.
Radio Shack Pro-2020 20-channel scanner of 1978 vintage, bought from Ebay for its nostalgia. I took it apart and cleaned it out with contact cleaner, which was a chore, but which worked. I paid about $10 for it. It is the heaviest and largest scanner I own, maybe 10 pounds and the size of a cassette deck.
Radio Shack Pro-2002, a 50-channel radio, also as a bargain from Ebay.
Icom IC-2200H. I got this from a pawn shop for $80.
Baofeng UV-5R multi-role transceiver. This tiny radio is all the rage, so I bought one in June 2019 for next to nothing to see what the fuss was all about. Read it’s review here (link). I had three of them, but the red one seems to have disappeared.
Uniden Pro501HH Citizens Band radio. I got this recently after patiently scouring garage sales, estate sales, and used equipment websites like Ebay, with no luck at all finding anything CB at all. I don’t expect to use it a lot, but the tipping point for me was learning that Jeep events still use Citizen’s Band.
Radio Shack DX-394 all-mode communications receiver, bought on eBay in 2023 as a replacement for my long-dead DX-400, which got done-in by corroded batteries.
Radio Shack HTX-212, 2-meter mobile, bought from “silent key” auction from the Pontotoc County Amateur Radio Association.

The Radio Shack HTX-212 2-meter mobile radio looks good in my stack with it's green display. — The Radio Shack HTX-212 2-meter mobile radio looks good in my stack with it’s green display.

Radio Shack Pro-2052, 1000-channel scanner, bought from “silent key” auction from the Pontotoc County Amateur Radio Association.
Radio Shack Pro-91, 150-channel handheld scanner, Pontotoc County Amateur Radio Association, won’t power up.
Tram 1400, 5/8λ over 5/8λ UHF collinear, silent key auction; put it up outside.
Diamond NR790A, three-section dual band (2-meter and 70-cm) collinear; put up outside.

I had a few Citizen’s Band (CB) radios over the years, and found them to be just as useless as most of the internet is today, littered with vulgar, ignorant, undisciplined chatter.

The Radio Shack Pro-2055 was added to my home stack July 2012. Although it is not able to be rebanded, its low pawn shop price makes it a good choice for local listening in my area.

My wife was annoyed by the daily chatter of the scanner, but I am able to filter it very effectively, and my ears perk up every time I heard a code that corresponds to something that might be newsworthy, like an injury accident, house fire, missing person, high-speed chase, severe weather, and more. The best example of my brain filtering scanner traffic was one night in March 2000. I kept the scanner on at a very low volume level, so that I could barely hear the routine comms, but sirens or urgent voices would wake me, as did, that night, the very urgent words, “The roof of the Ada Evening News is on fire!” After hearing that, I was downtown covering one of Ada’s biggest fires, of the Evergreen Feed Mill, in about three minutes.

So as long as I am able, I’ll be listening.

My main source for scanner frequencies is http://www.radioreference.com/

Nothing says "Get out of bed!" at three in the morning like an urgent voice yelling that downtown is on fire. — Nothing says “Get out of bed!” at three in the morning like an urgent voice yelling that downtown is on fire.

A Day of Chaos and Mystery

April 29, 2024 / Richard R. Barron / 1 Comment

Readers probably know now that tornadoes struck across Oklahoma Saturday night into Sunday morning. I listened to non-stop amateur radio and public safety communications, and when tornado warnings were issued for my location, I brought Hawken, my Irish wolfhound, inside, and sheltered in the center of the house with him and my Chihuahua, Summer.

Those storms passed us without causing any damage, but nearby Sulphur, Oklahoma, wasn’t so lucky, and late Saturday my notes from the radio traffic say, “11:17 p.m., Murrah County is requesting help, houses leveled.”

Knowing I could do little until day break, I planned to go to Sulphur first thing Sunday morning.

The downtown portion of Sulphur was devastated by a tornado Saturday night. I made this image with the drone my newspaper bought for me. Mine was not the only drone in the air that morning.

At the time I left my house in Byng, the water and the electricity were both off. I got a text from the power company saying it was back on at 12:13 p.m., but got home an hour later to find that it was not, so I went to the office to work my photos, video, and the storm story.

Home around 5 p.m., the power was back on, but the water was a muddy trickle. My neighbors said their water was back on. I tried all the faucets inside, but it seemed the pressure was near zero. I decided I need to be able to flush, so I grabbed a bucket and started toward the pond, but quickly checked the outside faucet, which, much to my surprise, was flowing like a waterfall.

Hmm. No water inside, full pressure outside, all connected to the same pipes.

I summoned a buddy of mine, who looked around with me and was just as baffled. We found the tub ran full flow, but the sinks and toilets did not. He then got the idea to remove a screen from the bathroom faucet, where we discovered it was fully clogged with tiny, yellow plastic balls. It looked like resin from the water softener, which shouldn’t be able to make it into the flow.

We concluded that when the house was re-pressurized after the outage was repaired, the shock must have dislodged resin, which traveled to the screens, clogging them.

Neither of us had ever seen this before.

I thanked him, then set out to clean all the screens in the house, with an unexpected result of improving the flow from all the faucets, which is a sign that I should clean them out regularly.

This is the screen from the backroom faucet, completely clogged with resin from the water softener. It is shown with a quarter and a penny for scale.

Movie Prop Mistakes

December 24, 2022 / Richard R. Barron / 1 Comment

Updated December 2022 to include a note about the movie Die Hard.

Often when watching movies, I will simultaneously look up the background of them on Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB), or, if the film has guns, the Internet Movie Firearms Data Base (IMFDB).

I did so recently when I was rewatching the 1995’s excellent Heat, starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. It has a lot of interesting firearms in it, and I wanted to learn about them.

This shot shows a combination of an accurate depiction and a glaring mistake. I actually owed both of these radios and one time or another. I love how they have been temporarily mounted in the vehicle with clear packing tape.

What I found, however, was an interesting mistake, and one that I see over and over in movies about crimes and cops: a shot showing us a signature rifle muzzle device also happens to show us two police scanners. One of them, the top one, is a Radio Shack Pro-2030. The display on it reads 000.0000, meaning it was never programmed, or it was reset at some point and never reprogrammed. Either way, it isn’t working.

The lower scanner, a Radio Shack clone of a Uniden 500 UBC9000XLT (Probably the
Realistic Pro-2036.), displays 470.5375, which is the correct frequency for Los Angeles Countywide police dispatch.

In the movie Die Hard (IMDB), (IMFDB), on the other hand, the TV reporter, a one-dimensional character played by William Atherton, is on the phone when he hears a panicked police call from an LAPD sergeant played by Reginald VelJohnson. I assume this scene takes place in the fictional TV studio, since there do seem to be at least a couple of reel-to-reel audio tape decks in the background, but the scanners supposedly picking up the call are junk fished out of the back of the props department.

Two of the radios appear to possibly be Radio Shack / Realistic Comp-100s or maybe similar Bearcats. Both are early 1970s tech, and use crystals to set each frequency. Neither of the radios in the scene appear to be receiving anything, though, since the red LEDs on the front panel continue to track and don’t stop on a channel. The other radio is hard to make out, but might be a higher-end communications receiver or all-mode amateur radio transceiver. It appears to display something like 145.890 Mhz, which is an amateur radio frequency, not a police frequency.

Some movies try harder than others, while some, like the big-budget, action-packed Die Hard, don't. The scanners in this shot look like the first thing the props department came across the had flashing lights on them. I guess we're lucky they weren't CB radios. — Some movies try harder than others, while some, like the big-budget, action-packed Die Hard, don’t. The scanners in this shot look like the first thing the props department came across the had flashing lights on them. I guess we’re lucky they weren’t CB radios.

Update, summer 2024: apparently, movie studios with multi-million-dollar budgets can only afford to buy a few scanners, because as I was watching a YouTube item about The Fast and the Furious, I saw the same 10-channel, crystal-controlled Radio Shack police scanner of 1970s vintage.

I sign in exasperated disbelief that movie producers think this scanner is a thing in the 1990s.

Also, the characters repeatedly interrupt each other while talking on two-way radios, which we all know is impossible since you can either receive or transmit, not both at the same time.

For what it’s worth, the movie with the most accurate and believable radio communications that I’ve seen is End of Watch. Jake Gyllenhaal clearly studied and practices with real police and how they use radios for this film. Props.

Why Would This Be Fun?

December 1, 2022 / Richard R. Barron

Should I cut the red wire or the blue wire?

I did some man-caving in the garage tonight. After walking the dogs and taking trash to the curb, I set out to see if an old 23-channel citizen’s band (CB) radio was working. When I discovered it was not, I decided, quite organically, to take it apart. Part of me says I was scavenging for parts, but the other part was just having fun learning about how radios were put together in the 1970s.

As an aside: one thing I explored on my recent drive to Kansas City for Thanksgiving: where is the CB radio scene these days? I deployed a magnetic-mount antenna connected to my Uniden Pro501HH. I didn’t really expect to hear anything, but was surprised that the chatter was almost continuous through my whole drive, and I discovered that CB radio is mostly populated by noisy, inarticulate, lonely people who are on the verge of mental illness. How much of this parallels the real world and/or the comments section of pretty much any hot internet topic I don’t know, but it was unsettling to say the least.

Most two-way radios, including CB radios, can be modified or programmed to transmit a “key up” tone, which is sent at the beginning of a transmission. At the beginning of this clip, you can hear the “key up” tone is a screaming child…

But back to tonight: one oddly satisfying thing in my disassembly is trying to unscrew stubborn screws. When they don’t budge, I lean into the handle of the screwdriver, push and turn. When I finally get that little “pop,” as the screw unseats, it’s like a tiny victory.

In the end, I have little to show for my effort except the fun of piddling and a pile of parts.

This is the fruit of my labor: a proud pile of junk.

Returned to the Fold

August 3, 2022 / Richard R. Barron

Decades ago I was a member of the Ada Amateur Radio Club, listed as Ada ARC. I let my membership lapse about 20 years ago during a time when the club fell into neglect.

This is a snapshot of me at a meeting of the Ada Amateur Radio Club. In my right hand is my first dual-band handheld transceiver, the Kenwood TH-79A, with a long BNC-whip antenna a fellow member was letting me try. The phone on my belt was my first cell phone, which I got in January 1997, and which only lasted a couple of years, so this photo was from that era.

Yesterday I was listening to a local amateur radio repeater, one I use and monitor all the time, and heard several “hams” mention that their meeting would take place at 6:30 at the college, and that the parking lot construction was finished, so parking wouldn’t be a problem.

“I should go to that meeting,” I thought to myself, “and join the club.”

Ada ARC has long since been replaced by the Pontotoc County Amateur Radio Association (PCARA), and though I have been a licensed amateur radio operator since 1996 (callsign KC5TFZ), I have never been a PCARA member, so I applied and was accepted last night.

I bought the Icom 2350H in the late 1990s when it was discontinued, and have found it to be one of the most robust and reliable electronic devices I have ever owned.

In the same way that photographers like to ask you about your cameras, and shooters like to ask about your guns, ham radio operators like to ask about your radios, which, last night, they did. I told them that I have two dual band Icom radios in my Nissan Juke. The 2820H below the climate/audio panel is set up as a scanner on the left side, and my primary transceiver on the right side, while the 2350 in the center console is set up like a VHF scanner on the left, and a UHF scanner on the right, programmed to monitor police, fire, EMS and storm spotters around the area. The Icom IC-V8000 is a high-power 2-meter transceiver in my Nissan Frontier 4×4.

They all informed me I should have bigger antennas, but my current setup is about right-sized, since they all seem to have solid signals while being short enough they don’t bang on the garage door frame when I pull into the garage.

At the end of the meeting, I invited anyone who was interested to join me as my guest Friday morning at 6:45 at the Aldridge for Ada Sunrise Rotary. Some of them seemed surprised to learn that there is a 6:45 in the morning.

My Icom 2820H is shown configured for split uses. The left side of the radio is set up to scan my most important public safety frequencies, and the right side of the radio is set up to operate in the amateur band.

Bringing Dead Tech Back to Life

July 18, 2022 / Richard R. Barron / 1 Comment

This is an array of some of the old garage sale/thrift store/Ebay handheld scanners I have around the house. About half of them work, but getting the other ones to work is an intriguing rainy-day project idea.

In a household clean-out that seems never-ending, today I reached down under a 14-hole cubby cabinet in the sewing room to find a plastic cube bin that appeared to contain something technological. After carefully vacuuming the spiders and other sketchy-looking stuff from it, I started pulling things out. Included were…

A Sony FM/casette Walkman
A Coby MP3 player
Three unused wired earbuds
Two well-used wired earbuds with earhooks

This is the Sony cassette Walkman at pretty much the pinnacle of development. I think it's a very neat-looking piece of hardware. — This is the Sony cassette Walkman at pretty much the pinnacle of development. I think it’s a very neat-looking piece of hardware.

I don’t know anything about the cassette player, except that it’s nice-looking, like a stylish piece of tech from the 1990s near the peak of its evolution. But I do recall the Coby MP3 player, which Abby used for years at work, mostly to listen to audio books while she worked. Before that, she used various CD MP3 players, and after that, until she retired, she used her smartphones.

I turned on the Coby, and it seems to be working fine. It plugs directly into USB, so I put it in my laptop and saw it contained one of the books Abby was hearing right around the time she retired.

When you turn off the Coby MP3 player, it’s display says, “Bye Bye!!”

This Coby MP3 player of maybe 2005 vintage still works just fine, and will hold 1GB of music. I also found its teensie plug-in boombox, which only needed a new AA battery.

Collecting and playing with aging technology is one of my interests, though I don’t exactly know why. It’s very fun for me, but to what end? Part of me thinks it has to do with the galling idea that capitalism/mercantilism is selling us the same thing over and over, with the entirely hollow and somewhat immoral idea of taking our money.

You own a VHS video cassette of Gone with the Wind. Then you own the DVD of Gone with the Wind. Then you own the Blu-Ray of Gone with the Wind. Then you own the rights to stream Gone with the Wind. You have basically bought the same product four times.

Another area of old tech I think is fun to collect is old police scanners, shortwave receivers, and amateur radio transceivers. Some of them work, and some of them don’t, and some of them are becoming less useful as communications becomes more integrated with digital communications and the internet. But there are still some neat radios out there to collect, try to make work, and even use while I still can. And one of the best things about that is that they cost nothing: you can sometimes get this stuff for $5 at a yard sale.

In their heyday, these two scanners, the Radio Shack Pro-2004 (bottom) and the Radio Shack Pro-2006 (top) were the best you could buy, costing nearly $1000 new. I was able to fix the 2006, but the internet informs me that the 2004 is a hopeless case due to bad soldering during its production run. Too bad I wasted $15 on it on Ebay.

The Comfort of Chatter

March 8, 2022 / Richard R. Barron / 2 Comments

Most of the people I’ve known over the years have had the habit of having a television on from the moment they get up or the moment they get home from work. My wife always does, but when asked why, she only ever said, “It’s background noise.”

I kind of piled an odd collection of old and new handheld radios together recently to remind me to charge all their batteries in advance of storm spotting season.

I find the chatter of television utterly distracting and irritating. Never mind that the actual content is usually insulting to our intelligence, the side-chatter it produces when you are not watching it is almost unbearable.

One of the real evils of television is the way advertising it produced and presented to be louder and more attention-getting than content. In the broadcast world, this is equivalent to having a huge red banner flapping in the breeze above a car dealer’s lot, or a brightly-flashing sign by the highway at the casino.

The result, for me, is distraction driven close to madness. I hate that chatter.

This is the barely-working Realistic Pro-2020, a 20-channel analog scanner from the early 1980s, which I bought a couple of years ago on Ebay for about $10. I like old scanners.

I also know tons of people who keep broadcast radio on at all times in their cars, regardless of content, usually at levels too low to actually hear and enjoy the content, but too loud to converse over. I despise that as well.

But I’m not necessarily pure. There is one form of chatter that I enjoy and appreciate, though many, like my wife, hate it.

American 689, level at two five zero, light chop.

I’m 10-8, 10-19.

2224 is 1 and 2 to Mercy.

Engine 680 is on the scene. 501 is command.

KC5TFZ monitoring.

Even if none of this chatter yields a news story or other amazing tale, I still find myself digesting and processing all the things I hear on my boxes: crimes, flights, fires, cures, lives saved, persons jailed, information traded; people touched in one way or another.

I have storm-spotted, both as an emergency operations volunteer, and as an amateur radio operator. I have had many discussions with air traffic controllers about this altitude and that waypoint. So once in a while, if you are lucky, you might hear my voice in the chatter.

Though we have a P-25 compatible digital scanner at our newspaper, I am still able to monitor many important public safety communications using older analog radios.

Behold a Giant Muh

Category: Amateur Radio and Scanning