A cheap scanner.

[Ed Fury]

I know a lot of the more serious rail fans have expensive, and extensive, collections of scanners and equipment to listen in to and monitor the rail roads.

I recently saw someone posting about an under forty dollar scanner and decided to purchase one myself with a fifty dollar rebate card I got from buying a new cell phone.

I've only had it two days and it seems to work fine for me. I can hear everything about 20 miles out in each direction which gives me more then enough time to get trackside from my living room couch.

I've seen numerous new railfans posting questions asking about scanners and then when they have recovered from the sticker shock since most of them are young kids with limited resources they tend to disappear.

Why not offer them an inexpensive solution and let them advance in the hobby as their income and interest grows?

I can't count how many times I have seen the question posted on other sites and the immediate reply is to buy a Yaesu FT‑270 for a hundred and fifty bucks or more.

Well here's one for under fifty bucks that might be a good alternative to include in the discussion. Usually this one is under forty dollars but right now it is above forty bucks. I've seen it as low as $36.99.

http://www.amazon.com/Baofeng-136-174-400-470MHz-Dual-Band-Display-Two-way/dp/B007UMQUPA/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

This radio is a little better and right now it's either the same price or cheaper.

http://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-UV-5R-136-174-400-480-Dual-Band/dp/B007H4VT7A/ref=pd_sim_e_5

I could see more parents buying these for their kids "hobby" then getting them the more expensive one and I can also see more people on the fence about getting a scanner buying something like this as they progress in the hobby versus shelling out more money on something they might not get that in to in the long run.

Just as a personal side note if I had known about this three years ago I would have bought one a long time ago. I mean you can get fifty bucks mowing a couple of lawns, selling plasma, or stealing your neighbors aluminum siding off their house when they go out of town.

The only CONS so far is the programming cable has a chinese clone chip and it does not work with the current windows driver. You have to use an OLD driver that doesn't detect the illegally cloned chip. Or spend a couple extra bucks and buy an american (kenwood) programming cable. This took all of thirty minute to find out on google and fix myself.

[WillD]

I think this is a great topic.  Being in college, I don't have much leisure money, but I have found myself covering more territory in my commute to the community college.

[JCagle]

I know this has been sitting for a while. I just kind of forgot to get back to it. I got a boefang to use at the race track. I didn't want to spend a ton of money on something to take to the track and I thought if it doesn't work well then I can send it back to amazon easily. It has pretty good reception. I wish it did have a few features like channel names and a scan function, but it would work well for railfan purposes. I actually take it with me when I travel some times. I have since started using it as an out of the truck radio. I do love the fact it has a built in fm radio and you can listen to it at the same time as the chanel you are monitoring from the memory. It can fight trackside boredom as you hang out in a spot to grab a pic.