When I’m trackside, I have trouble picking up radio signals. I have a 200 channel scanner. What type of radios work best and where can I find them?
Later,
A couple of possibilities:
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Railroads are changing to digital, narrow band as directed by the Federal Communications Commission. An older, broad-band scanner may not be able to lock onto narrow band frequencies.
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You might be out of range of the railroad’s network.
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Your scanner is not set to the proper frequency range.
Fr. Odo is still listening into BNSF here in North Dakota, but I have no idea what frequencies are in use.
The sad news for you is that everything is going digital, and from there encoding is just another 50c chip in what is a $4,000 radio. This is being done by the FCC to free up bandwidth for new applications.
You will recall that all TVs went digital recently, Our Fire and EMS radios have been changed, and so only a radio on the same frequency and with the same encoding protocol can communicate with each other.
That said, I’m not really a radio operator and do not have all of the details, but I do know that we had to buy all new radios for our ambulance service because of this change over, and I do know that encryption is in the future of these radios. If you have an analog radio, all you will hear is noise.
ROAR
I’m betting a significant part of the problem is your antenna. You’re probably using the rubber duck that came with the scanner.
There are bigger and better antennas, although I can’t cite specific models.
Narrowband will be here before the end of the year. All that means is that the “deviation” in the FM signal is smaller, which will mean lower volume. Unless you’re simultaneously scanning two railroads, only one of which has gone narrowband at this point, you just have to turn the volume up a bit.
New scanners should have no problem dealing with narrowband and the new RR frequencies, which are between the existing frequencies. Older scanners may have problems with the new frequencies and with bleedover.
Digital is coming, although at this point in the game, it’s not mandated. The next narrowbanding initiative, a few years down the road, will probably force users into digital. The problem for railfans may well be the digital technology they use and whether commonly available scanners will be able to handle it.
One potential problem with a narrowband scanner is that a wideband signal may get distorted due filter bandwidth being narrower than the signal bandwidth. OTOH, there might not be that many wideband signals left and it would be easy for the scanner to include switchable selectivity - communications receivers often can vary selectivity by a factor of 20 (e,g, 250 Hz for Morse Code, 6 kHz for AM reception).
And I agree with you on the antenna.
- Erik
Another possibility is you may be in hilly territory which degrades the signal transmitted from a train or a defect detector behind the hill. In some cases you might hear transmissions from dispatchers to trains but not the trains themselves because the dispatchers’ radios are more powerful and the trains or the defect detectors are out of range.
I saw an article in the September 2009 issue of Trains that recommends the "Icom IC-V8 radio. I went to Radio Shack but they don’t carry them, which stores carry those radios?
Thanks,
Bob
The article is on page 6 of the September 2009 issue of Trains. It recommends the Icom IC-V8 radio, but I need to know which stores carry them. Any help is appreciated.
I haven’t heard of that model but a common scanner like the Yaesu VX-170. Look for a Ham (Amateur) Radio shop if you are near a larger city. For example in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area
Google is your friend.