Scanners (not the flying type)

[RADIOMAN015]

Well CAP buys professional DF gear for ground teams, so there's no need to fund radio scanners/receivers for that same frequency range -- ideally our squadron has ground DF equipment.  From a pratical standpoint the more "ears" you have in your squadron capable of monitoring 121.5 mhz  , after the SARSAT monitoring close down for 121.5 mhz in February, the better off you will be.  See the separate thread in the Emergency Service portion of this website on Alternate Method for DF'ings.   Key thing is to experiement before hand.  If you local airport has an ATIS or AWOS in use you can try DF'ing that with a scanner.
RM
     

One thing that has puzzled me from day one is why CAP buys radios that can't receive 121.5.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

[Eclipse]

A scanner is much easier to build to work on all those frequencies because it's just a receiver. Building a transceiver to do the same is very expensive.

Standards, regs, rules, etc., I get it, as to the expense, all I know is that I see these old-school HAMs with a cigarette-pack-sized transceiver in their pocket that lets them hunt ELT's, talk to mission base, and reshape trans-phasic inter-spatial distortions, and the $5000k of EFJ gear I was issued can't do the same thing (best I've been able to do with subspace is pickup local repeaters, direct never connnects).

[RADIOMAN015]

CAP has no control over the USAF's policy that all radios will meet the new narrowband technical standards for use on DOD/USAF frequencies UNLESS a waiver has been granted.  Hq CAP appears to have gotten a short term waiver for existing in service equipment, BUT at this point has not gone for a long term waiver on non compliant equipment new internal licensing.   

Agree, if you are a ham the Yaesu FT60 can be modified with one snip of a resistor to operate on transmitter ranges from 138-174, & 420-470 mhz (non compliant for CAP and "not authorized" other public safety use (except in a life/death emergency) or business band), BUT the receiver can receive from 108 to 824 mhz, 849 to 999.9 mhz. 

As a communicator I like to have the capability at least to trasmit on just about any frequency in case of an emergency and "all else fails", BUT also the capability to monitor a wide range of frequencies. 

RM

A scanner is much easier to build to work on all those frequencies because it's just a receiver. Building a transceiver to do the same is very expensive.

Standards, regs, rules, etc., I get it, as to the expense, all I know is that I see these old-school HAMs with a cigarette-pack-sized transceiver in their pocket that lets them hunt ELT's, talk to mission base, and reshape trans-phasic inter-spatial distortions, and the $5000k of EFJ gear I was issued can't do the same thing (best I've been able to do with subspace is pickup local repeaters, direct never connnects).