Scanners

When I was a kid, a favorite uncle gave me a police scanner radio for my birthday.

I grew up in a small town, and that radio gave me an audio window into the goings on in a lot of the towns around ours, as well as our own spread.

Crimes, traffic stops, fire calls, ambulance calls, and even a couple of security company radio centers provided hours of interest and fascination.

When I first got it, I couldn’t savvy much of what was being transmitted.

There were too many channels, too much radio traffic, and a lot of static to deal with, not to mention some kind of funny 10-codes they used to relay information.

Some channels were different towns, some were police, some were fire, some were both, depending on how their radio systems were set up.

It was just one big stew of audio, with no clear messages for me to hear.

To me, that radio was plenty good for makin' noise, just not so good for making sound.

A few weeks later, my uncle asked me how I was liking the radio, and since I was too young to understand “political correctness”, I honestly told him I couldn’t understand what all those transmissions were saying.

Fortunately, he understood my frustration, and spent some time teaching me how to use the controls on the scanner.

He showed me how I could listen to a variety of channels, or focus only on one or two, depending on what information I was trying to get.

He showed me that the most important control on the radio was something called the “squelch”.

The squelch could be adjusted to control the sensitivity of the reception of the radio.

Set it too low, and everything, including static and noise, was heard.

Set it higher, and weaker messages got missed.

Set it too high, and only the loudest messages got through.

As a citizen, you are a scanner that serves a vital and valuable purpose: to keep your ownself  in tune with the messages from your government and the media.

How many channels or sources do you monitor?

How often do you monitor new ones?

Who or what serves as your “squelch”?

How high do you have that squelch level set?

Are you listening to all the noise, or are you focusing on the most critical messages?

Are you filtering out all but the loudest, most powerful messages, and missing important but weaker ones?

Are you listening to all the available channels, or only a pre-selected few?

Scanners work best and provide the most information when they are not set the same way all the time.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion. --- Thomas Jefferson