Two Ways/Scanners

i own a Two Way and a radio scanner. comes in handy sometimes

how much would a basic two way be to tune into to talk to truckies and other chasers?

depends where you go. DSE will sell them for from $50

i would be staying around my local area so i need a range of 100km?

then you will need to go to Ebay and get a ham and a licence to operate

well what range does a basic one cover?

the public Uhf 3 to 5 km if you get onto a repeater whatever range it is set to most of them about 50 to a 100

what exactly is a repeater?

another radio that rebroadcasts what you say at a higher watt then you. for example a Police Officer makes a radio call in the Gold Coast on his radio and Someone in Brisbane is able to hear it due to a close repeater where the officer has originally broadcasted

ah ok so it picks up far away signals and make it clearer so you can hear it?

thanks for all the help can i ask you how to use it better when i get it in this thread?

I have a uhf base and mobile and getting a pair of handhelds soon would probably be ok for local work few kms .But the phone would be more reliable for rounding up every one .Uhf would go a long way on repeaters but there is too much crap on them . On a similar subject there used to be a storm tracking net on 2 metre vhf armature radio that i used to listen to on a scanner don't know if that is still going i will check next time also you can listen to the ses state emergency service to call outs and where the damage is .Just a few ideas here . Doug

good ideas doug

is a repeater also known as a microwave?

They can transmit any freq they are designed for some do and some don't , most are uhf .Similar to a cell phone tower or like on top of the hospital .microwave use a dish or square reflector . sorry forgot to answer the question no a repeater and microwave are not the same .a repeater retransmits the transmission so it goes further ,and microwave is just frequencies above above roughly 1200 mhz. Hope that helps .

Good topic!

I have an interest and some knowledge in these matters. I've had scanners and 2-way radios of various sorts in the past and was an avid frequency collector. I still have my privately constructed database. I must peruse it for weather related frequencies.

Coastguard and aircraft tower frequencies is all I can think of at the moment. Local one (VMR I think) here at Loders creek Southport, and the tower at Coolangatta airport with some weather reports come to mind.

As an aside, I used a program to decode pagers (pocsag) from the discriminator circuit of the radio scanner (simple $5 modification to allow digital signal decoding via cable and PC software from most commercially available scanners). Which I might add, increases the Ebay auction price of your scanner by about $100

Mainly used only for Fire services and similar while I was working for a monitoring service recently. I can't recall if much weather related info came through it, but perhaps some SES during events.

Do a net search for further info. Here is a good start. Link---> Scanner software downloads.

You can also decode satellite weather pictures as well with a bit of software and the correct frequencies on your scanner.

It may be useful for enthusiasts, also have a look at the neat PC card scanners available. Bit pricey, but would be real nice for the dedicated. Link---> Winradio. Nice pieces of kit

Regards
southie

southie go to http://brisbanescan.com/site/

Hadn't seen that one zacaroo. Thanks!

Been a while since I've updated my info. I'm looking at my database now. Many years of collecting

no problems south p hope it helps you in one way or another