Well, there goes another scanner source in Orange County. Sounds like OCFA finally made the switch, too.

Keep in mind that the authorities in many areas do not want the public at large knowing what is going on, and actively seek technologies such as data terminals and encryption to make it harder and harder for you to get real time information from any source.

Some of this is legit, but most of it is that they just don't want people knowing what is going on except for the official stories that are almost always useless for basing any kind of decisions on, and often times misleading, or downright false.

They even flat out lie on a regular basis to the press, who dutifully report such lies as facts.

As the complexity increases, the utility decreases. I know brain surgeons. They have trouble keeping up with brain surgery. The people who operate and maintain these radio systems are not brain surgeons. Nevertheless, I have digital scanners and use them to keep track of what's going on in the LA area, particularly my neighborhood. I just take everything I hear with a grain of salt. Mostly what you hear are a bunch of meaningless numbers, or messages, or things like "The 'package' is on the way....the 'package' is over Encino.....the 'package' has arrived." They called Michael Jackson's casket the "package" during his memorial services over at The Staples Center. Interestingly, you also heard people saying they weren't allowing Staples employees into the facility that day because no one had arranged for them to have security clearance.

Or, and this is the number one thing you generally hear on the scanner, "You have an open mic!" This is about the only time you actually hear something meaningful, when you hear part of a real-live conversation between the cop and his/her partner cuz his/her mic is open and he/she doesn't know it.

Oh, and in an area like LA, where you'll have hundreds of frequencies loaded on your scanner, even if you do catch something of interest, you'll rarely catch the follow-up messages because the scanner will have moved on to scanning the other frequencies, unless you have a certain frequency (such as for your local cops or fire department) set as a "Priority" channel, in which case then it will go to that channel whenever there's any activity on it, AND you'll then be missing out on any activity of potential interest on other channels programmed into the scanner.

Finally, by far the most interesting thing I've heard on my scanner, besides perhaps a lot of coordinated activity during the Malibu fires several years ago, was a sting operation at some Thai massage parlor in my area, perhaps the one just a few yards from my house. They were trying to pinch people involved in getting/giving special "massages" apparently. By the way, from my roof deck, I have observed that the female Thai masseuses drive by far the nicest cars in my part of town. They all have BMWs, Mercedes, Lexuses, etc etc and park them in front of my house. I guess business is always good.

my military time was with the now defunct USAF Security Service as a radio traffic analyst...and worked both Cold War and SEA targets..so had an interest in scanners when I separated... most interesting was when the Summit Venture smacked into the Skyway Bridge...

as a HS teacher I was on the emergency management committee following the active shooter incident at Colombine, Co and we reevaluated our emergency management plans...portable radios were always in short supply and high demand...if you have kids in school, check with your Parent/Student/Teacher assn, and see what kind of cell phone tree teachers have with the front office during building evacuations...and if teachers can use money allocated for classroom supplies to purchase FRS type radios so they can form a comm net, as an administrator with a radio might be a football field away if needed...(in my case a student had with bad allergies needed some benedryl)

we had a 3hr building evacuation, and as soon as the local TV helicopter did a live shot, our front office and local 911 center was flooded with calls from anxious parents, effectively shutting off our lines of communication

I remember a friend getting concerned about something he heard on his scanner and then finding out that he was listening to the wrong channel for emergency services and was getting one side of a conversation that was scene by scene discussion of an action movie.
For a few minutes it sounded like there was something major going on.

Pretty easy to combine the precautionary principle, a bit of latent paranoia, and some free-floating imagination and get yourself worked into a lather over nothing. Or be reassured that there is nothing to worry about because you don't hear alarm calls on your scanner.

Remember that HGWells announced many times during his radio play "War of the Worlds" that it was fiction but many people thought it was real. Raw broadcasts delivered in fractured form and out of context are devilishly hard to interpret.

Ex-292 here. 6818th Japan. 6924th Danang. Small world. Now it's known as the much sexier Air Intelligence Agency, or was. May have changed or realigned the command again.

xbanker...even smaller world...202 Dawg Flight 6918th (ZK) 71-till closing, Day shop 6922 Clark till end of air war...had orders to OLAA 6924 but red lined to Clark...

My old neighborhood we saw several police cars show up at the house across the street one day, I grabbed my scanner and turned it on and heard another responding to a code 51 (IIRC). So i quickly looked up 'xcity police codes" on the internet and found a code 51 was a stabbing. Later after the police cleared the scene the lady renting the house was escorted back to gather her stuff to leave as her baby daddy had found her and stabbed her in the neck. When police/fire/ems comes down your street its quite handy to get any information a to whats going on, if it would have been a gas leak or somehting like that we would have evacuated, but a stabbing we stay in and lock the doors (and grab the shotgun) as the suspect could have still been in the neighborhood.
We regularly have tornado warnings/watches here and I pull out the scanner and scna though the local news, weather, and skywatch channels to see stay one step ahead of the tv news.

BTW, there is a scanner app for iPhones. There coverage is spotty but might be handy where one lives or where one finds themselves during an emergency.

Les, you have PM.