so you want to listen to the police?

Sounds very exciting doesnt it?
listening to all the car chases and and all the other weekend excitement from the comfort of your own home, well all you need is a digital scanner. Right? Wrong, hmmm lets see now the police use radios so you would need a radio reciver or scanner of some sort to tune into the right frequencie, simple enough and very cheap to get hold of so no problem there then, but you need to know where to look or where to tune your newly purchased reciever/scanner to. Again simple to do if you buy an email catalogue of radio frequencies for a couple of quid. Sorted. so now you know where to tune your reciever/scanner you have new batterys in it and its time to listen, so for example you tune to a police channel in the 150 mhz range and set the radio to nfm as it says in the catalogue that you have just printed out and you wait with baited breath to listen to all the exciting things that are about to happen and you get..............

nothing

but the sound of pops whistless and sqeels just like listeng to a dial up internet connection when you picked up the phone and where still connected.

DISSAPOINTED?

SO what has happened what has gone wrong or maybe you havnt set something right? No NO NO and thrice NO you see what has happend is this the police use the radio to communicate and being abit nosey you decide to listen in, the police dont want you or anyone else listening into there little chitcha, no not even the criminals, to stop this they whent out and spent a shed load of our money on a radio system called TETRA now this uses good old fashioned radio waves that you and i can pick up very easily so how do they stop you listening then? well remeber that noise you heard? no? well turn it back on and tune it in again and listen to what it sounds like. just like a modem right? Right, so the police have tacken the voice channels and run them through the little computer in there handset and encoded the signal, just like SKY or NTL you need a clever box at the other end to decode the signal and turn it back to voice or as with SKY/NTL sound and pictures alas it isnt that simple they also employ codes to unlock the equipment so that they can use the system them selves , so if you get hold of a real police radio, the ones that loolike mobile phones , once they change the codes it woulndt pick up anything.

If you live live in the good old USA then there is a system that they use called APCO now with this system you can decode it and listen to what is going onbut you need a scanner or reciver that that can decode this type of signal sound good doesnt it? pity it doesnt work here in the uk though.

to sum up then

you cannot listen to the police on tetra you can still find some police that havnt converted but they are getting less and less

an airband cb/fire/police/ambulance/taxi scanner as sold here on ebay is not a scanner and is not digital and is not worth the money you will regret paying for it

if you want to listen to the police you cant but you can still listen to ambulance and fire and taxi's and local authoritys security nightclubs asda greeters and baby monitors cordless phones

not mobile phones

have fun listern a lot if the price sounds to good then it possibly could be rip of buy from a recognised brand if your reading this then google/yahoo the item you want to buy and read up on it you will quickly be able to tell if it is worth the money/hassel from the wife/sleeping on the sofa

have fun