I recently purchased a Vertex VX-150 radio transciever. It is a great tool for listening to the railroads. Since it is a transceiver, capable of transmitting as well as recieving it is a bit more sensitive than alot of scanners. The VX-150 does a good job of scanning, it is not as fast as most radio scanners. Also it only covers frequencies from 148-170mhz. It is setup so that you can not transmit on the railroad frequencies. However on the lower bands it could make a nice tool. Just to listen a ham license is not required, but if you want to use it as a transmitter a ham license would be necessary.
Another nice thing about the Vertex VX-150 is its size, it is quite compact, only standing about 5 inches tall, without an antenna. Also nice is the price, I got mine for about $110 online which is about the price of a radio scanner.
You are a fool to pay over $80 for a scanner that does vhf/uhf and low band.
All scanners are picking up the same waves, it makes no difference what kind of “gizmos” the guy at the store sold you----if the waves are weak getting to you, they are weak…and aside from putting a satilite dish on your tripod you cant magnify them.
The “range” and quality of the audio all depend on terrain,the transmitter, the wattage of the tranmitter and weather------not your scanner.
Scanners that get handeld will get broken at some point, dont invest more money than your willing to lose----also see rule 1.
Scanners are a great tool for finding trains, if you got a chatty crew and dispatcher. Some dispatchers just talk through signals though.
Remember KISS and also rule 1.
I have had a Radio Hack Pro-76 since 98 and it has served me well and has survived some pretty hard drops.
For Dave: I am aware of Scanner World, but I had a bad experience several years ago when they refused to let me return a defective Uniden BP 205 batttery pack within two weeks after I received it. Fortunately Uniden replaced it for free. I have also gone the route of having the cells in the case replaced, but that battery pack got too hot because the circuit board in the battery pack may have been defective.
For Larry: I understand FL, NY, KY, IN, MI, and MN require permits to operate a scanner (or any radio that can be tuned to police/public safety frequencies) in a car: KN and IN also forbid using scanners in public places - streets, parks, etc. I wonder what railfans in those states do about using their scanners in their cars , or as in the case of KY and IN, trackside?
My old faithful, a Regency 1000, is on its last legs. I’ve been looking at possible new scanners and have just about decided on a Yaesu 120, which has great sensitivity and 640 channels. It is light in weight and utilizes AAs, which are able to provide up to 20 hours of continuous listening. Anybody out there using one, and wi***o comment on it?
I have to disagree on item 2. A satellite dish on the tripod would not help, the dish is designed for different frequencies, however, a gain type rooftop antenna tuned to the railroad band will increase your reception range. A rooftop antenna mounted in the center of a metal roof is even better, you are now taking advantage of ground plane. If your antenna is matched to the wavelength then you will receive more of the wave hence a stronger signal. At home a yagi antenna can be used if you want to listen in one direction from your home, it will greatly increase your range in the one direction. If you add a rotor, as I have, you can change that single direction; really two directions because you will receive off the back of the yagi but not with the same gain as the front. I use all of these on a daily basis, you can improve your reception through good antenna engineering.
Yes, it’s all in the antennae.
I have a lot of antennae building experience. When it comes to railroad frequencys it depends on what your after. For mobile ants. your best bet is a cut freq. vertical whip like the magnetic rooftop type. Your options are kind of limited with mobile. You can improve reception in the city by using a band pass filter to reject unwanted signals. Out in the sticks you can use a pre-amp to get additional gain. Or you can use a combination of both.
For home use there are a lot more options. But when you get into elaborate antennaes you generaly have to go with a directional setup. The easiest and most accessable setup is to go to Radio Shack and get a vhf broadband(un-cut) antennae and mount it on a mast (the higher the better). But don’t mount it horizontaly, mount it verticaly. A pre-amp (tv type) will help, but if you live next to any transmitters a pre-amp will likly suffer from cross modulation interferance unless you use a band pass filter in front of it. This setup will be directional to some degree, But vertical antennea are a lot less directional than there equivilant horizontals would be. I used this setup when I lived in the San Fernando Valley. I could get transmissions in the basin with that setup. With the rubber duckie I barely got reception in the valley.
The best setup I ever built was like this: I used a cut channel 5 (tv) halfwave yagi (equal to full wave @160MHz). I mounted it vertically on a 30’ mast. I built my own pre-amp , but a Radio Shack type would work almost as good. Then I used high quality RG-6 coaxial cable to deliver the signal to my cheap Radio Shack scanner. With this setup I could receive trackside detectors up to 70 miles away. Vs. 10 miles tops with the rubber duckie.
I don’t know about all that… You would be hard pressed to find any radio that does multi mode, changeable spacing, or more than a couple hundred mems, for $80. And none of those things are trivial to have, so I wouldn’t consider somebody who wants them to be foolish. Radios do have a different level of receive ability as well. That’s why so many guys go with the ham stuff instead of the scanners… The receive is often better.