Scanner Listening without a Scanner

I’ve been a radio listener for most of my life, always fascinated with what I can hear, on any kind of radio I can get my hands on.  

I grew up in a time when the handheld AM transistor radio was the easiest way to take some music and news with you wherever you went.  Those small receivers certainly didn’t offer a lot of audio quality, but the portability couldn’t be beat! And, they were relatively inexpensive. A couple of weekends mowing the neighbors yards would provide the needed funds to buy an inexpensive receiver.

Today I still find myself searching the RF spectrum in search of radio signals. Most any kind will do for some entertainment. One of my favorite things to occasionally listen to my local public service frequencies.

Fire, Rescue, Police, etc., are interesting to listen to, but, depending on where you live, and the systems your local services are using, it is getting harder to do. Particularly if you don’t have an expensive “trunk – tracking”  scanner. It seems to me that most of these services have migrated to using more sophisticated radio systems that my 25 year old scanner just won’t keep up with.

 

There is the problem. My toy budget just doesn’t always meet the needs/desires of my hobbies. Replacing my old scanner with a new modern one is probably not going to happen right away, maybe ever.  A new scanner is pretty far down the list of new toys I want for my radio hobby.

So, I had to look for another solution. Enter, the internet! LOL like so many other aspects of our hobby today, the internet provides solutions of all kinds. Instant news, information, entertainment, and yes… the ability to listen to local scanner frequencies!  

If you haven’t tried this yet, you might be in for a real treat! I sure was! I came across this site while doing some research on scanner frequencies for another project.  I’m sure I have seen and used some of these “feeds” before, but it has been a long time.

Broadcastify bills themselves as the “Worlds largest source of Public Safety, Aircraft, Rail, and Marine live audio streams.”  They may be right. I don’t think I have seen any other single source with the variety of locations and content available here.

6945 live feeds available at the time of this writing! Wow, that’s a lot of content! If you want to find out what feeds are available from your local area, or another area of interest, start here >>> https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/

Just click the link, select your desired location and a list will be provided of the streaming content that is available for that area. There’s a good chance that you will find something of interest!

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