Phone Losers of America Scanner Page

Using Your Scanner For Fun & Profit

So many people own these really nice scanner set-ups with 20 foot antennas in their back yards and $700 worth of equipment and they seem to think all this is good for is listening to the police activity on the weekends. Hopefully this page will teach you otherwise and you'll become a total scanner junkie and just sit and scan all day. It's a nice life - I know. If you'd like to read letters from other people who have visited this page, click here.

FREQUENCIES

Cordless Telephones

Below is a listing of the basic 10 & 25 channel (non-900 MHz) phones. There is a frequency for both the base and the handset of the phone but you should only need to program in the base since that picks up both sides. If you program in the handset, usually you'll only hear one side of the conversation but sometimes when they're finished with their call, you can still hear what's going on inside their house. The sound quality of this sucks, though. Channels 1 through 25 are the 25 channel phone freqs (of course) and channels 16 through 25 are the 10 channel freqs. If you only have a ten channel scanner then program in the base sides of 16 through 25.

Channel   Base     Handset
-------   ----     -------
   1      43.720   48.760
   2      43.740   48.840
   3      43.820   48.860
   4      43.840   48.920
   5      43.920   49.000
   6      43.960   49.080
   7      44.120   49.100
   8      44.160   49.160
   9      44.180   49.200
  10      44.200   49.240
  11      44.320   49.280
  12      44.360   49.360
  13      44.400   49.400
  14      44.460   49.480
  15      44.480   49.500
  16      46.610   49.670
  17      46.630   49.845
  18      46.670   49.860
  19      46.710   49.770
  20      46.730   49.875
  21      46.770   49.830
  22      46.830   49.890
  23      46.870   49.930
  24      46.930   49.990
  25      46.970   49.970

CB Radio

Want to listen to the local hicks talk on their CB's even though you don't own one? Now you can! Some area taxi cabs also use the CB radios for their communication.

01 - 26.965        21 - 27.215
02 - 26.975        22 - 27.225
03 - 26.985        23 - 27.255
04 - 27.005        24 - 27.235
05 - 27.015        25 - 27.245
06 - 27.025        26 - 27.265
07 - 27.035        27 - 27.275
08 - 27.055        28 - 27.285
09 - 27.065        29 - 27.295
10 - 27.075        30 - 27.305
11 - 27.085        31 - 27.315
12 - 27.105        32 - 27.325
13 - 27.115        33 - 27.335
14 - 27.125        34 - 27.345
15 - 27.135        35 - 27.355
16 - 27.155        36 - 27.365
17 - 27.165        37 - 27.375
18 - 27.175        38 - 27.385
19 - 27.185        39 - 27.395
20 - 27.205        40 - 27.405

Television

Too lazy to get out of your scanning chair to go turn on the TV? Well, now you don't have to! Just tune 'em in.

 2 -  59.75 MHz      3 -  65.75 MHz
 4 -  71.75 MHz      5 -  81.75 MHz
 6 -  87.75 MHz      7 - 179.75 MHz
 8 - 185.75 MHz      9 - 191.75 MHz
10 - 197.75 MHz     11 - 203.75 MHz
12 - 209.75 MHz     13 - 215.75 MHz
14 - 475.75 MHz     15 - 481.75 MHz
16 - 487.75 MHz     17 - 493.75 MHz
18 - 499.75 MHz     19 - 505.75 MHz
20 - 511.75 MHz     21 - 517.75 MHz
22 - 523.75 MHz     23 - 529.75 MHz
24 - 535.75 MHz     25 - 541.75 MHz
26 - 547.75 MHz     27 - 553.75 MHz
28 - 559.75 MHz     29 - 565.75 MHz
30 - 571.75 MHz     31 - 577.75 MHz
32 - 583.75 MHz     33 - 589.75 MHz
34 - 595.75 MHz     35 - 601.75 MHz
36 - 607.75 MHz     37 - 613.75 MHz
38 - 619.75 MHz     39 - 625.75 MHz
40 - 631.75 MHz     41 - 637.75 MHz
42 - 643.75 MHz     43 - 649.75 MHz
44 - 655.75 MHz     45 - 661.75 MHz
46 - 667.75 MHz     47 - 673.75 MHz
48 - 679.75 MHz     49 - 685.75 MHz
50 - 691.75 MHz     51 - 697.75 MHz
52 - 703.75 MHz     53 - 709.75 MHz
54 - 715.75 MHz     55 - 721.75 MHz
56 - 727.75 MHz     57 - 733.75 MHz
58 - 739.75 MHz     59 - 745.75 MHz
60 - 751.75 MHz     61 - 757.75 MHz
62 - 763.75 MHz     63 - 769.75 MHz
64 - 775.75 MHz     65 - 781.75 MHz
66 - 787.75 MHz     67 - 793.75 MHz
68 - 799.75 MHz     69 - 805.75 MHz
70 - 811.75 MHz     71 - 817.75 MHz
72 - 823.75 MHz     73 - 829.75 MHz
74 - 835.75 MHz     75 - 841.75 MHz
76 - 847.75 MHz     77 - 853.75 MHz
78 - 859.75 MHz     79 - 865.75 MHz
80 - 871.75 MHz     81 - 877.75 MHz
82 - 883.75 MHz     83 - 889.75 MHz
84 - 895.75 MHz

SEARCH FOR LOCAL FREQUENCIES

The following search form, provided by PerCon Corp will give you a listing of frequencies in your city, bigger than anything you'll find in a frequency guide at Radio Shack. It's a little slow so you might have to wait a minute or two. The results are worth it.

Transmitter City:  

Transmitter State: 

Radio Service:      (see codes below)

Examples of some Radio Service Codes are:

PP - Police
YP - Trunked Police
PF - Fire
YF - Trunked Fire
IB - Business
YB - Trunked Business
CE - Digital Electronic Message Service
CL - Cellular Telecommunications
IT - Telephone Maintenance
LX - Taxicab

THE LAW

As soon as I get around to doing a little research, I'll try to give you a vauge idea of what the regulations are concerning all types of scanning. For now, though, I'll just post my favorite law - "An individual may not have a scanner in their possesion while in the act of committing a crime." Yeah, like you're really going to pay attention to this law if you're busy breaking another one. If you have any comments or actually know something, please e-mail me.

CAUSING MAJOR TROUBLE WITH YOUR SCANNER

After your neighbor's place a pizza order and the pizza parlor has already called back to verifiy the order, call the pizza parlor back and make major changes to their order. Add a few dozen cans of coke, twisty bread and lots of sub sandwhiches. Then listen to the confusion when the customer gets their order and calls the pizza parlor back to yell at them.

Listen to the taxicab dispatcher and when they read off an address they're going to, call all the other competing cabs in the area and send them to the same address. Taxi companies have a problem with other taxis listening in to their frequencies and picking up their customers before they can so when they all meet at this address, they'll each assume that's what the other did and if you're lucky, a fist fight will errupt.

If your scanner is handheld, plug some headphones into it and take it with you on beige boxing expeditions. If someone calls the cops, you will know about it and can leave before they show up. Of course, if a cop is just patrolling and sees you clipping into a telco can, you are screwed anyway. (Submitted by Brian)

This is my favorite form of CHEAP entertainment with my scanner. I have one of those cool Radio Shack amplified all weather speakers in my car and I go to the drive through at the fast food restaurant. When the person in front of me places his order, I turn it on and his order is blasted all over the parking lot. The manager comes out to check what is wrong..It is LOTS of fun! Also, when I place my order i hold the speaker next to the Order microphone and it confuses the clerk taking the order! They ask me to repeat it, etc. This usually gets the attention of the store manager and he comes and inspects the equipment. I also take my handheld scanner into the dining room and connect to the external speaker and get weird looks from the customers and manager. (submitted by Sorrenti - daves@csnet.net)

I was listening to my scanner one day, and I started hearing this dial tone, so I whipped out the ole recorder. This guy was dialing his VMB number, and then the VMB asked for his name, so he dialed his name in (the name was probably numbers), and then it asked for his security code or something like that, and he dialed in about 5 digits, and then his VMB said he had no messages. Now, if this happens to you when scanning, you can record the tones and decode them to know what numbers they exactly are. Now that is a another way of "hacking" or getiing into someone's VMB machine. (submitted by American Anarchist)

Submit your scanner ideas to rbcp@phoneloser.net.

THIS IS COOL! WHERE DO I BUY A SCANNER?

Soon I'll have resources listed here to buy a cellular & 900 MHz capable scanners. You may think that cellular listening is the most important thing you'll need, but really any basic cheap scanner will pick up all the cordless phone frequencies and fast food drive-thrus. So don't spend a million dollars buying a scanner, just one that has an adequate amount of memory presets to store all your fun channels. I reccommend at least 50 channels, preferably more. Both Wal-Mart and Sears now have decent Uniden scanners you can buy for under $200. Also check out the links below:

Atlantic Ham Radio Home Page This place is rather expensive, but carries only scanners that are capable of picking up cellular phones without modification.
OTHER SCANNER LINKS
Stupid Scanner Tricks Awesome page! Mainly this is just a listing of every frequency you can imagine, separated into groups.
Lightening Leo's Wyoming Frequency Guide Even if you don't live in Wyoming, this is a great page, full of information and scanner links.
KC5KTO's Radio Page Lots of scanner info, mods and links. Also has frequency lists grouped by state.
PerCon Corporation Frequency database, callsign and city search. Their database is HUGE and these are the people who's search form we're using.
Scanning Reference Lists a few of the laws regarding scanner use.
Scanners This place sells scanners that pick up the cellular frequencies.