During Kenosha’s riots the streaming scanner app I had used and relied on for years let me down when the person who was hosting the scanner stream for Kenosha Police & Fire apparently got banned for streaming Kenosha’s tactical police channels. Apparently this is a bannable offense, so the stream was permanently removed. I have no doubt the criminal element in Kenosha were using the same scanner stream (maybe even with a different scanner app–many scanner apps use the same streams from one very popular stream host.

So right in the middle of everything I was cut off, no longer able to listen the the local police and fire radio traffic. I grew up with scanners all my life. My dad got me into them when I was a kid. He bought many police scanners over the years and we listened to them constantly, learning the ’10’ codes and all the jargon, just as we did with CB Radios. Anyway, Kenosha Police went digital a while back and it was (and still is) very expensive to purchase a digital scanner, but awhile after they went digital, smart phones started to come out with “apps”, and that’s when I found a decent “scanner” app that streamed thousands of different scanner radios all around the world. It was an amazing option too, because even if you weren’t in a particular listening area you could still stream that scanner radio, since it streamed over the Internet. There just had to still be one person who could afford to own and stream their scanner to the scanner streaming service, then the various scanner apps would include it in their listings.

So this was great, and it actually lasted for years until they finally cracked down on the Kenosha scanner stream and had it removed and banned. I’m sure the authorities–maybe even the government, once they became involved with bringing in the National Guard–had a lot to do with the crack-down and getting it quickly removed.

I brooded for a few days, then decided I had to solve the problem once and for all and get a scanner again. A real scanner, not another streaming app. I knew only a real scanner would provide true scanning functionality that I had remembered, but I didn’t know much about the technology of it these days. I only knew that you still had to be within a short distance to be able to pick up radio signals from transmissions in your particular area.

I found out quickly that the technology had evolved far beyond what I had experienced as a kid. “Crystals” were a thing of the ancient past. These plug-in (solder-in if you’re really old-school) crystals were tuned in to one specific frequency–for example “Kenosha Police Channel 1”, so plugging that into a 16-channel scanner gave you access to listen to that channel whenever your scanner checked whatever crystal slot you had that crystal plugged into. Your 16-channel scanner could scan 16 different channels quickly, and stop when someone was talking on one of those channels. You’d have to purchase a crystal for each frequency you wanted to listed to.

As scanners evolved when I was young, they would release scanners with more and more channel slots and crystals evolved to be easier and cheaper to purchase, and eventually crystals became a thing of the past, and you could but scanners with 500 or even 1,000 channels in large groups or “banks” of channels in which you could simply enter a frequency you knew and save it in one of the channel slots that the scanner had. You could also “search” a frequency range to find a particular channel, then lock that into a channel slot, which made things a little easier than manually entering each channel frequency. You can imagine the kind of patience it took to program several hundred local channels into a scanner to be able to use it effectively. But that was the technology, so we did that. Or I should say “I” did that. For my dad, many times, on various scanners throughout the years. I found it fun, and fascinating.

That was probably roughly 30-35 years ago, so you can imagine how far things have evolved up to this point. So here we go. I knew I needed a digital scanner, but that’s about it. What type of digital scanner, I had no idea. So I researched it. The Internet provided everything I was looking for at a head-spinning pace, as usual. I narrowed my search down to a few scanners that most knowledgeable enthusiasts highly recommended, so I read the reviews and watched the videos on each of them. I then narrowed it down to one scanner that looked just amazing, but Amazon was sold out of them, so I tried Google to see if it was available elsewhere. I found a Ham Radio store with outlets nationwide that had plenty of them, and their Milwaukee store had them in stock, so I took a trip up there and grabbed one. The storefront wasn’t actually open, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but they offered customers the option to order products on their website or over the phone, then you could pick it your order at their warehouse entrance by driving up and calling them when you’re at the door. They bring your order right to your car (as long as you wear a mask), so you don’t even have to get out. I was there picking up my scanner about 90 minutes after I placed my order.

Right from the start I was floored. I purchased a hand-held scanner so I can listen to it anywhere. I always did love the handheld models when I was younger. Having watched the videos and read the reviews, I knew what I wanted to try instantly too, before even leaving the store’s parking lot–Location-Based Scanning. I installed the battery, attached the antenna and power it on. I went directly to “ZIP Services” and entered my zip code. It instantly started scanning every channel within my zip code that it had in its database–and it’s a huge database, updated online weekly with millions of frequencies for every state in the US and every area of Canada. (I also found out recently that you need an actual license/permit to own and use a scanner in Canada). After entering my ZIP code it immediately started scanning all Kenosha-area frequencies and picking up very clear broadcasts–from the Kenosha area–while I was still at the store in Milwaukee. I was amazed and drove home happy.

I quickly found a “Record” feature I didn’t realize it had, turned it on, and decided I’d just leave it on all the time. Why not record everything, so even if something happens and I miss it, I can go back and experience it again, from the recordings! It came with a 8GB microSD card, but can support up to a 32GB card, so I bought one of those and upgraded it within a couple days of purchasing it.

So that was just over a month ago, in the midst of all of Kenosha’s riots, looting and destruction. The other day I just learned that it has a limit of holding 1,000 “conversations” when I hit that limit and it displayed a message on its display telling me it is unable to record anything more, so recording has been disabled. I’m still trying to determine exactly what a “conversation” consists of.  It has exactly 1,000 folders, all with slightly different names, containing what seems to be a short period of time when the scanner was active, recording transmissions.  This includes multiple channels.  I guess it’s just whatever the scanner captured during that period of time.  So in those 1,000 folders there are a total of 97,892 recordings.  Some folders only have a few files while others have many files.  It varies quite a bit.  The total of all of those files in 5.04GB, so I guess 8GB of storage (the amount it comes with) probably would be plenty.  I guess this means I probably don’t really need the 32GB card I upgraded it to, unless it will allow me to store more database information in addition to the recordings, or maybe it will allow more recordings in the future with an update…?  There must be a reason they allow you to upgrade it to 32GB.

Those 97,892 recordings cover all of Kenosha’s channels that are in the scanner database, recorded 24/7, from 08/29/2020 to 09/23/2020 – Pretty close to a whole month.  I think that’s pretty good. I’ve been playing several of the recordings and groups of recordings in some of the folders. I’ll have to post some here when I find some really interesting ones.

One thing that impressed me was the use to Exif data in the scanner recording file details. Standard file detail fields such as “Title”, “Contributing Artists” and “Album” are filled to details like “Police Dispatch”, “Kenosha”, and “BCDx36HP” respectively. These are specific to the channel it recorded in that file, which can make it very each to locate a specific recording by its details, or it it can be very handy when playing back a list of files if you can display those details in whatever audio player you’re using.

In the end I must admit I’m impressed with how far scanner tech has come and I’m very happy I got back into it. I probably wouldn’t have taken the plunge if I hadn’t been pushed into it by the current state of affairs in Kenosha though.