Railfan Technology > where to buy non discriminator scanner?

Is there any place online that sells non discriminator scanners at a fair price?  I am looking for one to tether to my laptop for mobile ATCS access.  (not sure how I will do that part of it yet, but I'll try to figure it out when I get there)

thanks, Ed

Edwin O'Connor
Brashear, MO

what you need is a discriminator tap, which allows you to feed your soundcard.
the Kenwood D700 transceiver features a din out that can easily be wired for discriminator output without any radio mods, perhaps you might find it online though not sure the going prices.  

Only one that know of that comes ready is the Whistler WS1080. But cost are around 400. I have and use one but for local FD & PD radio system haven't tried the output. There is another but cant recall the name but want say it upwards of 700-800 bucks.

If your handy with soldering you can pick up cheap scanners on ebay and install the needed tap. I did this with older radio shack pro-90's and works great. If you goes this route need to make sure the scanner can cover the frequency range. Regular ATCS is in the 800 range and then you have some UP ATCS Genisys that's up into 928 and 952 range.

Might try asking on the ATCS group and see if anyone has more info to help.

 

I use modified RadioShack Pro-97 scanners to run ATCS. They were modified by a friend with the discriminator tap, maybe someone in the ATCS_Monitor forum would be willing to do that for you.
From the Pro-97, I use a mono cable into the iMic. USB into the PC.
You can find Pro-97s on ebay for $60 to $90. I use them for the 928-952 MHz range that is used by UP in my area.

For dedicated use (like on a server where you want to monitor 24/7 on a single frequency), there are commercial radios that can be found inexpensively on ebay.

Ryan Wilkerson
Fair Oaks, CA

I use two iCom scanners with iMic's to connect to laptop.  Aside from ocassional frequency drift, they work fine.  Unfortunately, ATCS is becoming non-existent in CSX territory.