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I studied for my license once but didn't follow through. I was studying due to necessity, the same reason I got involved in scanners. This was before the cell grid was really up and going. I have a situation where my wife needs to reach me 24/7. I bought a scanner to monitor public service namely paramedics etc. Then I bought a pager running in the 462 MHZ range. Worked great except sometimes it took me a while to get to a phone {if I was fishing on rare occasion} and I also used the scanner to see if I was still in tower range.

I finally began fooling around with a make shift outdoor antenna system on at my home. A purist would cringe but it's highly functional :>} A fringe area TV antenna elements mounted inverted so they point up and down. Next came the TV signal amp with 20 db gain. I run two scanners on it and use a splitter to stop feedback issues. That ones my toy but I keep the locals on a discone also running two scanners same type hookup.

One of the funnies things I heard happened one August on the 45MHZ Public Safety band. Skip rolled in and I heard "This is a nation wide alert" followed by a B.O.L.O. describing a lady then in the middle it stopped. A small nearby town from me had two on duty cops. They were accusing each other of playing a prank. I finally called them and told the guy in the office it was Skip that did it. He asked Who's he? LOL

A purist would cringe....

Ahhhh, whaddya they know? You made a horizontal into a vertical and saved a lot of bucks. Bob Grove (of Monitoring Times) has been selling converted TV antennas for years.

I can believe them not knowing who "Skip" is. Last night amid all the storm traffic I couldn't help but again marvel at so many so-called professionals who began talking before keying the mic, and had to repeat themselves, and more than once (and it's in general, not in excited moments).