My first radio scanner

My dad's dad gave me my first scanning radio receiver (aka radio scanner aka police scanner) when I
was about 10 years old.  Oh man, I was so seriously off to the races when I got that first scanner.

It was a Realistic PRO-47 Patrolman VHF/UHF Scanning Receiver from Radio Shack.  It was "crystal-operated"
(more on that below) and could receive on up to 10 different frequencies of your choosing.  It had 10 buttons
and 10 LEDs on the front and the LEDs would strobe across kind of like Knight Rider's car as it scanned its
10 channels for radio activity, which was very bad ass to me as a kid.

The 10 LEDs and buttons on the front represented the 10 different frequencies that the scanner could receive.
The buttons could be used to scan or skip each frequency ("I only want to listen to the fire department's
frequencies right now, so I'll turn off all of the police frequencies for the time being").

Now, you can easily program in new frequencies on a modern scanner anytime you want using the built-in
numeric keypad.  Not so with crystal radios.  For these, you actually had to acquire a specific little
"crystal" for each frequency that you wanted to be able to receive.

Obligatory ASCII radio crystal (154.600 MHz):

   |-------|  ~ 1/2"

    _______   _
   |       |  |
   |  154  |  |
   |  600  |  |
   |       |  |  ~ 3/4"
   ---------  |
     |   |    |
     |   |    -
              
And just to be extra clear, this is how frequencies and crystals worked:

In your area, you might have had different frequencies in use such as these:

City police west dispatch    154.600 MHz
City police east dispatch    154.700 MHz
City police car-to-car       155.200 MHz
Sheriff north district       450.100 MHz
Sheriff central district     450.150 MHz
Sheriff south district       450.200 MHz
Fire department dispatch     155.800 MHz
Fire department tactical     155.900 MHz
NOAA Weather 24/7 broadcast  162.475 MHZ

[How would you get that list of local frequencies in the first place?  I plan to write another
entry under 1990s experiences about the updated frequency directory books that you'd buy from
Radio Shack every year.]

Now, these would be most if not all of the frequencies that you would want to be able to listen to.
So, you'd need to find a crystal for each one of these frequencies.  You'd need a 154.600 MHz crystal
and a 154.700 MHz crystal and so on.  This was where the hunting part came in.  As a kid, I was always
hunting around for new crystals at various pawn shops and at all of the different local Radio Shacks.

You might call up a local Radio Shack and ask, "Hey, have you gotten any of those 450.150 MHz crystals
back in stock yet?"

They sold for like $5-$10 each but to me they were worth their weight in gold.  Getting a new crystal
meant getting in on a whole new slice of what was out there in "radio land."  Just imagine having only
had the crystal for the west side of your local police department and then finally getting your hands
on the crystal for the east side of your city.

[I plan to write much more about radio scanners.  I think I will also write about my experiences with
pawn shops as a kid.]

CREATED 2020-04-02