248 - How to Set Up Your Scanner Listening Room with Jim Heinrich

Today we welcome Jim Heinrich. Jim is here to share how he built his radio room.   We will cover how his old gaming room slowly became a listening post. We’ll also cover some of the equipment you can find on his desk as well as some other resources Jim uses beyond radio hardware. What You Need to Know Jim started off as a teenager, almost 40 years ago, listening just to his local police department on VHF. His listening habits have changed over the years, covering Public Safety to Aviation. It doesn't take a lot of money to get started building your listening post. Jim says almost half of his shack are scanners that are older and would be considered obsolete. Anybody could start building their command posts, or their radio room, or their radio shack. It takes one radio and a desk to get started. When you decide what the theme is in the direction you want to take your shack in, Jim have found that having a small laptop and a monitor really enhances the experience. To listen public safety with the digital series scanners you really don't have to have an outdoor antenna because they are high-powered repeated systems and reach out everywhere, says Jim. Recently Jim has purchased it DPD production aviation antenna that specifically tuned for VHF and UHF military. Some of Jim’s equipment includes three BC780XLT’s, an old RadioShack PRO-2030, and he has a BCT15 and a BCT15X. Having multiple radios allows you to dedicate radios to certain listening tasks. Jim's old PRO-2030 is setup to listen to the local railroads. His HP1 and the 396 are setup to scan small lists like the crash rescue talk group at the Dayton International Airport with an alert built in. Jim has plans to program BCT15 series radios to do all the aviation monitoring because he had heard that they do well. Jim also uses Flightradar24 on an oversized monitor in the middle of my desk Also in use are Software Defined Radios and Unication Pagers. Jim wants to stress that his setup wasn’t purchased or completed overnight. This is years of buying and collecting radios that eventually allowed him to have this setup.   ==================================== 🎙 Join our new Scanner Radio Community ==================================== Join our FREE Discord server and connect with other Scanner Radio Users! By using Discord, a free, multi-platform community portal, you can now be part of the Scanner Radio Discussion! Chat real time, share photos, ask questions, and give feedback to other's in chat. 🔗 https://www.scannerschool.com/discord   ==================================== 🎓 Check out our online courses ==================================== Our free Software Defined Radio course will have you up and running with a SDR in a weekend. Upgrade to our Advanced Course, and learn how to setup SDR Software like a pro. 🔗 https://www.courses.scannerschool.com   ==================================== ⚠️ I want to answer your questions ==================================== I am always looking to answer your scanner radio question. If you have a question you'd like answered, please leave me a voicemail with your question: 📞 516-308-2885 🔗 https://www.scannerschool.com/ask   ==================================== 🏆 Thank you Patreon Supporters ==================================== Thank you to all monthly Patreon Supporters. Supporting the podcast can be done for as little as $1 per month. Supporters at the $3 and $5 level will receive the podcast without the middle commercial break. Supporters at the $5 level not only receive the podcast early, but they also get access to discount codes, monthly zoom meetings, and Squelchy sticker packs. 🔗 Join our Patreon program at https://www.scannerschool.com/patreon   ==================================== 🎥 Subscribe to our growing YouTube Channel ==================================== We are live once a month on YouTube to answer your questions. 2022 will be the year of Video for Scanner School Be ready for the upcoming videos by subscribing now to our YouTube channel 🔗 https://www.scannerschool.com/youtube   ==================================== ➡️ Follow Scanner School on Social Media ==================================== ▶︎ Twitter - https://www.scannerschool.com/twitter ▶︎ Facebook Page - https://www.scannerschool.com/facebook  ▶︎ Facebook Community - https://www.scannerschool.com/faceboo... ▶︎ Instagram - https://www.scannerschool.com/instagram ▶︎ TikTok - https://www.scannerschool.com/tiktok    ==================================== All session notes with links to the items we talked about can be found on our website at https://www.scannerschool.com/session248 #podcast