What could be the issue?

I have a small gray radioshack scanner I got from a friend. It works very well picking up the NOAH weather radio, but it's only ever picked up amtrak once. i scan the 160.xxx spectrum while on the NEC and it finds nothing. Or if it does find something, it's so faint you can't hear it. Is this normal? I was in buisness class right next to the engine.

gprimr1 wrote:I have a small gray radioshack scanner I got from a friend. It works very well picking up the NOAH weather radio, but it's only ever picked up amtrak once. i scan the 160.* spectrum while on the NEC and it finds nothing. Or if it does find something, it's so faint you can't hear it. Is this normal? I was in buisness class right next to the engine.

Your train's crew would not have a reason to use the radio unless there was some sort of operating problem. Was the train running normally?

I thought I would be able to hear them talking to the dispatcher and such. Once in a while I could hear a faint sound, but it required turning the volume up so much that when the static came back on it hurt

Are you scanning the actual frequencies or are you using the search mode? If you are using the search mode, I am thinking you might not be on the exact frequency.

Are you sure your squelch isn't up too high?

Being that it's just a handheld scanner, it's not very powerful to begin with. And, on top of that, he's inside a metal car, which will undoubtedly interfere with reception. Heck, a lot of the time, I hear the Amtrak engineer relaying information from the dispatcher via radio to his conductor because the conductor can't hear the dispatcher talking at all while inside the passenger cars, and that's with a radio (a heck of a lot more powerful than a handheld scanner). And, since you're moving, the signal strength is changing constantly since the waves are bouncing off all sorts of nearby objects...the possibilities are really endless. Long story short though, I have a feeling it's because you're inside a metal passenger car. Try holding the scanner right up to the window and see if that makes a difference.

Conrail4evr wrote:Being that it's just a handheld scanner, it's not very powerful to begin with. And, on top of that, he's inside a metal car, which will undoubtedly interfere with reception. Heck, a lot of the time, I hear the Amtrak engineer relaying information from the dispatcher via radio to his conductor because the conductor can't hear the dispatcher talking at all while inside the passenger cars, and that's with a radio (a heck of a lot more powerful than a handheld scanner). And, since you're moving, the signal strength is changing constantly since the waves are bouncing off all sorts of nearby objects...the possibilities are really endless. Long story short though, I have a feeling it's because you're inside a metal passenger car. Try holding the scanner right up to the window and see if that makes a difference.

Scanners and handheld radios that the conductors use should be about the same in reception.. For that matter, a scanner held near the window might outperform the conductor's radio.

It's such a POS.

It has scan and search as functions.

If I do scan, it usually finds one frequency, 450mhz which sounds like a modem.

If I do search, it will find signals but after 2-5 minutes, it will switch and say "UHF Found" and change me to 800mhz which is static, so i have to hit buttons until it resets.

Then if I do scan and find something, it will always revert to 161mhz even if I hit hold.

I hate this dumb thing. It didn't come with a manual either.