Scanners-what do you use when railfanning?

[The S.P. Caboose]

I use a PRO-76. 200 channels is more than enough for me.

[ironhorse1]

I use a Motorola Maxtrac (32 channel) in my truck and a Visar trackside. I also have a Kenwood TM-271A that pulls the stream.

[chrisjz]

When at work on the railroad (NS) I use a Kenwood TK-290 but when out foaming I use either my VHF Motorola Astro Saber or VHF GE MPA. Both have excellent receivers and work very well.

[ColonyLine]

I use 32 channel GE phoenix radios in the base and mobile. Base has an Icom multiband transmitable discone antenna. Moblile has a commercial Antenna Spec. 150-170mhz magmount antenna. The portable is an Icom H-16 16 channel with a stock rubber duck antenna. Backup scanners are a Regency MX7000 20 channel and a Rat Shack PRO-2020 20 channel. The mobile antenna provides superb reception distance and the base antenna is fair to good. Base antenna will be replaced with a commercial 150-170mhz base antenna as soon as I can find someone to climb a big pine tree.

Chris

[jmp883]

I wrote:

Trackside I use a Sony Wavehawk handheld. In the car I have a Bearcat BC-780. In the house I have a listening post comprised of another BC-780, 2 BC-895's, and a BC-890 that are run through an antenna amplifier to a roof-mounted antenna.

Things have changed slightly since I made that post. I now have my amateur radio license and no longer have the 780 in my vehicle. That has joined the other 780 in the home listening post. In my vehicle I now use a Kenwood 2m/70cm transceiver that also receives VHF-Hi/UHF. I've also parked the Sony Wavehawk handheld in favor of a Yaesu FT-60R 2m/70cm handheld transceiver with the same capabilities.

An advantage to using amateur radios for railfanning is if you have radios with 'dual-watch' capability you can monitor the railroad and still be able to talk with each other about where the best photo spot is, etc. Simply stated, dual-watch allows you to select one channel you want to monitor while operating on another. Pick your railroad channel, then pick a simplex frequency and you're good to go. Gonna be trying this out this weekend on a railfanning trip.

[tazman021706]

An old Pro-46, VX-150 (both to listen to railroad and tx on ham freq's) and a FT-90 in the car

[Antonio Luna]

Just picked up a PR0-91 150 Channel Scanner.

[alex45]

I dont use one when i railfan. But I do have a scanner radio in my house where I can listen to the trains

[danco]

Yaesu FT-8800R in the car, VX-7R on foot.

73 de Dan, KE7HLR

[Conrail4evr]

Kenwood TK-760G mobile, Motorola GP68 portable.

[izzy1975]

Uniden BCT - 8 , Uniden BCT-350C, and a Undien BC400XLT all are excellent scanners and set to different freqs. All three are hooked to a Workman discone Antenna when they are in the house and when they go mbile they all have there own antenna. Also i have Magnum S-9 Nitro Cb radiohooked to a Wilson 5k and texas Star sweet16

[Conrail1990]

I use a uniden 50 channel 800MHz radio scanner. Its easy to program train frequencies into it. Bad thing is that I lost the guide.

[hailster]

At home I use my IC-706mkiig, however I don't normally monitor rail frequencies at home since I use that radio for HF on the ham bands.
In the car I use my IC-207h. It's a dualband 2m/70cm ham radio.

And when I'm trackside or just out and about I use my IC-T90a.

-Tim
KC9FSH

[Aa3rt]

I use a uniden 50 channel 800MHz radio scanner. Its easy to program train frequencies into it. Bad thing is that I lost the guide.

Conrail1990-You don't mention which model you're using but you can go to the Uniden website and download or order the manual for your particular scanner. Try:

http://www.uniden.com/products/index.cfm?cat=scanners

[Conrail1990]

sorry. Its a Uniden BC80XLT. I bought it at a Nascar Nextel cup race.