The Early Days
I
got started with public safety radio monitoring when I was sixteen and had just become a volunteer firefighter. They issued us radio receivers called Plectrons 
that were analogous to modern-day pagers but were the size of toasters, and just about as hot with all the vacuum tubes inside. When there was a fire the Plectrons would beep, and we would all race down to the fire station.
Not content to listen in just when there was a fire, I took mine apart and modified it so I could listen to the fire frequency anytime. Soon everyone in the department wanted me to modify theirs, and I did most of them. Plectron, however, soon recognized the desire of firefighters to listen in, and came out with a model that would let you monitor whenever you wanted without modification. The one pictured is the first Plectron "Chief" which let you listen in like you would today with a scanner. I've been listening to public safety radio ever since those days.
The Modern Times
Now I have seven scanners. (in addition to all my ham radios) Scanners let you listen to not just one frequency (as with the earlier Plectrons) but to hundreds of frequencies at once. The scanner rapidly samples the frequencies you have programmed waiting for someone to talk, and then tunes in on that frequency. I listen mostly to police, fire, and medical frequencies including the state and federal agencies. I occasionally listen to air traffic, marine, and railroads for novelty, but these get boring quickly.
The fun of scanning is not all in the listening. A large part of it is ferreting out the right frequencies, and then learning how to understand what is going on once you have found them. A new frequency is like a new Web site -- a new place to explore and understand.
Scanning Resources
Most of the content of our scanning section is the files in our FTP library files. I have written many short articles over the years which I have recently gathered into the library. Please visit it and check them out:
For more general information about scanning, here are some other Internet resources:
Irving Family Web Pages
Don Irving ([email protected])
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