I'm not an expert on radios and scanning by any means whatsoever. I have owned multiple scanners for 10+ years and used/use radios for my job so I know enough to get me in trouble.
Here is my .02.
If you can swing a digital scanner, absolutely get one. I recommend the GRE PSR-500, Radio Shack PRO-197 or Uniden BCD366XT. Yes all of those will cost you either side of $400. Except for Troop B in western MA, there is no widespread push to digital in MA however, its always possible. NH police both state, local and county are ALL digital so if you ever travel there, well worth it. CT State PD all digital and Maine is implementing a statewide digital trunking system for many agencies. In the long term for best preparedness, go digital. Sell that gun or 2 you are sick of if you have to but its a worthwhile investment.
Digital Scanner does not mean something with a screen and buttons as some have implied in some threads. It refers to the fact that it is capable of picking up a digital signal vs an analog signal. Cant stress this enough. Any digital is going to be north of $350. Quality analogs and even analog trunking scanners can be had for $100-$200
I heard alot of misconceptions about analog vs digital vs encryption vs scrambling, etc.
NOTHING during this SHTF event of any significance on the police side (excluding feds) was any kind of encrypted. Sometimes they moved to channels that whatever feed you happened to be listening to were not monitoring or were out of range due to being on a different system, patches, etc. The feds (excluding mil air stuff) have been heavily encrypted for quite a while.
Digital
DOES NOT equal encryption. A few tactical channels used during this are indeed digital but operate in the clear. One of the scanners mentioned above will pick them up. Digital audio is generally better than analog and very little static, its an "on or off" situation. Digital signal fade sounds kind of like digital encryption, kind of like nails on chalkboard combinded with birds chirping if you ask me. Generally though, digital audio is awesome, you either get nothing at all or it sounds like the person is sitting right next to you. Digital, however, does make encryption ALOT easier for the agency should they pay for the option. Analog encryption causes total loss of understanding by a scanner and a major degradation in the voice quality for even the people whos radios have the codes and are the intended recipients of the traffic. Hence the term "scrambled" it affects scanner world and the cops though scannerland is totally shut out. However, there are also ways around analog encryption if you care enough and want to buy the equipment. Digital encryption, you would need a very expensive radio and a supercomputer running for about a week to find the right code. When the code is rolling and can change every few hours, every day, etc, its an impossible endeavor.
In MA, that I know of, 2 towns run digital AND encrypted: Haverhill and Mansfield. So if you live there, fire only for the locals. Some towns are digital and in the clear but not sure which ones off hand. The State Police run a pretty nice statewide trunking system which I explain a little bit below. Many (all?) Cape Cod Police and Fire are also on the system. It covers all of MA except Berkshire County and some of Franklin but that is changing as we speak.
The vast majority of local PD, including the city of Boston are on conventional frequencies. Analog and unencrypted. 1 Frequency for each channel. Boston has many different channels (freqs) for different areas of the city as well as special events/operations/detectives. The only encrypted people in Boston are some detectives and a "command channel". Nothing of significance was put on those all week they seem to be more for drug raids/homicide detectives, etc.
Large scale events like we just saw tend to actually be not encrypted because the many agencies involved also rely on scanners or dont have radios capable of accepting the encryption keys.
Boston Police have a few repeaters but all are within the city limits. I believe the largest and most powerful is on top of Prudential. I dont have much luck picking them up directly outside 128. With a roof mounted antenna or even a mobile antenna on a vehicle, you could probably pull them in from about 60 and 35 miles out respectively in my experience. Range will depend on not only distance but the power level of the repeater and the elevation of the repeater and the terrain between you and the repeater. In heavily mountainous NH for example, its not abnormal to hear Troop F (northernmost Troop) booming in from just north of Boston. Ditto for most of their state police repeaters and large regional fire dispatch repeaters. They broadcast at very high power from high on mountain tops. In MA, everything is more local and covers smaller areas so the repeaters tend to be at lower power and lower elevation.
So what was the most useful thing for this past week? By far, the MA State Police Trunked System. A basic description of trunking: you have multiple sites (repeaters) in a linked system (microwave or VOIP backbone, usually). In MA they have zones and multiple repeaters make up a zone. These repeaters share a pool of frequencies and a control channel. A user in the system has a radio tuned to a certain virtual channel called a "talkgroup". When they key up, the system know what channel they are on and the control channel (operated by a computer) picks out a frequency. All radios that are on that talkgroup automatically go to that freq that the computer selected. Benefits of the system are many but you ultimately use less RF spectrum because you dont have an entire frequency just for something like DPW that hardly ever uses it. The number of frequencies allocated to a zone depends on how busy and how much traffic that zone carries. Head spinning yet? Probably not, alot of smart people here and many IT types. Its all pretty easy once you understand it.
So for metro Boston, its Zone 5 and Zone 1. Zone 1 is really just inside Boston proper. However, Zone 5 has multiple linked repeaters from Brockton up to NH border and inside 495. A huge chunk of eastern MA. All Boston traffic is carried on Zone 5. Thats a huge group of people that can now hear Troop H which covers Boston (the talkgroup is H Patrol 1). From there, there were multiple spec ops "SOPS" talkgroups being used and carried on Zone 5. Patches were being run from these State Police SOPS channels to the active channels from Boston PD, Cambridge PD and Watertown PD, among others. There was a unified command post "UCC" and every agency had a channel on their radio that they could turn to that was patched into it. Basically if you could hear H Patrol 1 and all the SOPS Talkgroups you were golden all week. You knew everything outside agencies, Boston and State were doing. We and certainly I can be very critical of the police on here and often times, rightfully so. However, we should not let that detract from the fact that the coordination of this event from a communications and logistics standpoint was nothing short of spectacular. I should note as a frequent listener, it is ALWAYS this way for any big event. They use the technology they have extremely well. They take complete advantage of the state police system and use it to its full potential. People are usually very calm and command and control in hostile, chaotic environments is and was top notch. Trust me, there are plenty of places in this country who would not have had a clue what to do from a command/comms perspective, big cities included. So many places would just be total radio chaos, comms breakdown and no unified response. The coordination here between literally hundreds of agencies was remarkable. For all the bad they are capable of, the cops still deserve a huge pat on the back for at the very least the command/control/comms aspect of this entire week. Leaving the debate over other decisions/actions for another thread(s) ...
Everything you wanted to know and more about the state police trunking sytem. Click on zones to see maps of repeater sites, etc. Also shows which talkgroups are carried on which zones. Note the frequencies listed here might be out of date due to rebanding but the 2nd link is up to date. Talkgroups are still correct.
Mass State Police Statewide Trunking System
Everything that is known and that you would ever want to know about scanning in ALL of New England:
Scan New England Wiki
Forums at the above are great as well!
So, alot of NES'ers are still out of range of Boston directly or state police zones that will carry Boston traffic. Well obviously, your concern wont always be Boston but by virtue of the fact that its the major target around here, often when SHTF that will be ground zero. Whats the solution? I suggest that ALOT more NES'ers should be buying scanners. I already see that sentiment all over the place here and other threads this week. From there, we have plenty of tech types, we should set up some means of feeding our personal scanner audio online
TO THE NES COMMUNITY ONLY! Some kind of private, password site or green member area. These feeds can be active all the time or only when SHTF. It could even be as rudimentry as somebody skyping into some kind of live stream, etc. This does not have to be crazy technical like interfacing a scanner with a soundcard, etc. This way we would have a much more reliable way of keeping things up and running that only our community has access to. We would also have full control over what is broadcast. Plenty of the online feeds out there today, if you can even find them working, were still blasting out routine traffic stops far out on the pike for example. Thats the kind of stuff you can easily lock out if you have control over it. If they switch freqs/talkgroups, its easy enough to program em up on the fly once you know what you are doing or switch to a scan list/bank that has them. It all sounds complicated but if you can run a computer and post here, a scanner is childs play once you get the hang of it. The harder part, IMO, is understanding all the systems you are monitoring and what you need to do specific to them.
As for the future of scanning. Who knows when LE will go to much more sophisticated systems that either cant be monitored by scanner technology (Its already happening someplaces, see ProVoice however, linux decoders have been developed but its involved) or are intentionally encrypted. I think we are sitting pretty good in MA. Our newest and most expensive statewide trunking system is mostly in the clear and analog (western MA digital and in the clear). I dont think there is any appetite for changing it anytime soon. For once, slow change in this state is a good thing. Another encouraging sign is places like NH, entirely digital and have the option to easily encrypt everything at the push of a button. They dont!!! Hopefully more follow that lead and NH stays that way!!! Also another good thing, if you know anything about policing in MA, dispatch centers and even officers on the street trying to get a jump on mutual aid calls to other towns rely HEAVILY on scanners. In MA we are not regionalized with our dispatch centers so the easiest way to get info quickly is to scan many agencies directly as an avg joe or somebody involved in public safety.
My final thoughts for now: Base Scanner or Handheld, its all good. One will not pick up signals with stock antenna better than another all else equal. I suggest you have
at minimum a handheld and a base. I suggest having even more than 2. The more you have, the less you miss. If you can only get 1 though, get a good handheld with tons of extra batteries on hand. I had 3 scanners going during most of this and a few other portable radios I have capable of scanning. Even I was missing stuff. You will always want and be able to use more, just like guns or ammo. A handheld is always good for "bugging out". Who knows what will force you from your home, fire, evac, whatever. Its nice to be able to put one in your pocket and know what the hell is going on. Its alot harder to haul a desktop scanner out the door with you. A less expensive/involved way to extend range is to buy a quality magnetic mount vehicle antenna. The entire roof acts as a "ground plane" and helps pull in signals a little better. I find I can extend my receiving range by 10-30 miles when in the vehicle. If you wanna go all out, you are looking at lots of money for a good roof antenna and quality COAX cable plus time or money installing it/getting it installed + looking at an ugly antenna on your roof. The antenna on roof is generally overkill unless you are into HAM radio or a real scanner junkie. I'm not, I have too many other obligations and so does most everyone else. I think all our main thoughts are on SHTF/being able to get a jump on info to protect ourselves/families.
All that crap aside, ANYTHING is better than nothing. If you can afford just a $30 crappy used analog scanner, buy it!!! It would be worth its weight in gold if you lived in Watertown today. All transmissions would have been right on top of you and easily picked up. If you have no other options, you can always simply throw in all the trunked voice channels in your zone. You will hear everything and not be able to discriminate amongst talkgroups but you will get the gist of whats going on and then some. Also, even an unprogrammed scanner can be quite useful if shit is going down in your own neighborhood. Many have a "close call" feature that finds the strongest signal and broadcasts it every time.
So if you cant go all out, ANYTHING is better than nothing and could be extremely valuable.
My writing style is "all over the place" and not always concise in cause you guys have ever noticed so if you want clarification on anything, help programming a scanner, finding the right freqs/talkgroups or anything else, I will try to answer. You will never kick yourself for buying a scanner, ever. When you want them, you WANT them and you want them (and even NEED them) NOW!
Good Place to Window Shop or Buy:
http://www.scannermaster.com/
