Welcome to NCTX-Scanner!

Scanning the Texoma region and North Central Texas since 2010 NCTX-Scanner is the website for the Texoma Radio Scanner hobbyist! If frequencies are what you want, we got em! If your looking for information about communications in the area, we got it too. We also keep up with major events and news stories affecting Texomans. Our live scanner feed will keep you up to speed with the latest breaking action between crime and Police, Weather and injury and Emergency Medical services.

What we don’t do at NCTX-Scanner is tweet or operate a facebook page! Were also not running around taking pictures of wrecks and fires. We are scanner folks, we scan to hear what is going on and when one story or event folds up another develops and we listen to it. The frequencies we research and identify, we add to the scan list and have one more item to listen to. We might share what we have heard, but well after the event has closed – we share frequency information, but only to broaden what we want to listen to. We might whoop out the camera for a new picture of a car, ambulance or aftermath of a fire but we don’t go running into harms way to obtain it.

When we release a story about something we have heard while scanning, we verify the facts before publishing the story. We do not publish gossip! We do not encourage our friends and followers to obtain information from an incident scene, we are not firefighters or Police officers. We may ask some of our friends in First response to send us incident scene photos but we do not go out in search of them. If you are a first responder and wish to send us a pic from the scene you can email us with it and we will post it with your credentials.

Scanning the Texoma Region is always fun, Texoma is not as dull as many people think. We have shootings, chases, serious Motor vehicle accidents and a ton of Texas DPS action which will make a impact on anyone who listens to a radio scanner. But, the effectively hear Texoma, you really need a Digital scanner.

So much of Texoma operate on P25 digital, especially the good stuff such as Sherman and Denison Police, Grayson Co. Sheriff, Bonham Police and Texas DPS. However, most fire departments remain in analog with little more than CTCSS privacy codes in use. Scanning in Digital is expensive, about $399 to $500 dollars will get you a good scanner capable of digital scanning. Currently only Radio Shack and Uniden offer digital scanners. Both the PRO-106 and PRO-197 by Radio Shack are really good, high end scanners built on the design of the ill fated GRE PSR-500 and PSR-600. By Uniden comes the BCD396XT, BCD996XT and Home Patrol-I. Uniden scanners are a little more pricy than the Radio Shack units but are loaded with features and well worth the money. The Home Patrol-I is the next generation of both digital scanners and scanning in general.

All of the Law Enforcement in Grayson and Cooke counties are full time P25 Digital users. Law Enforcement agencies in Fannin county use both Analog and digital and the Texas department of Public safety (TXDPS) are fully digital except for the Dallas Tollway channel. TABC and State Game Wardens are making the push to digital and Today I got word that the Collin Co. 800 Mhz. Trunked radio system which dispatches the Collin Co. Sheriff’s office, Constables and most rural fire departments will be switching over to Digital trunking soon. In Hunt county, Greenville Police and Fire operate in Digital, Greenville Police with heavy Digital Encryption.

By 2020 the State of Texas has required all Police, Fire and EMS agencies across Texas to be fully compliant with P25 Digital radio systems or forfeit their State issued Communications grant money. Several large State funded Digital radio systems are being designed and built then linked to each other allowing the State of Texas to become a gigantic Digital Trunked radio network.

In Southern Oklahoma the push to P25 is not as fierce, but just as present. The Oklahoma Wireless Information network (OKWIN) is a Statewide digital trunked radio system being installed in all area’s of the state. Durant is expected to be installed soon and will move just about all State operations such as Highway Patrol to the Digital network. OHP DPS Ardmore already operate on the system.

So the time to buy a digital scanner has arrived if you wish to listen to the area.

Fry’s Electronic’s in Plano carry Uniden products and if you shop online, Amazon, Scanner Master and Universal radio all carry Uniden Digital scanners but in my opinion, Scanner Master has the best deals. Radio Shack will only be carrying the PRO-106 & 197 for a little longer but because they are not being produced any more they will disappear as the inventory vanishes. After then, you will only be able to buy Uniden scanners which Radio Shack will carry, but at a marked up price.

 About Our Live Scanner feed

 **Streaming P25 Digital with Text Tags Fulltime**

The NCTX-Scanner Live audio feed can be found on radio reference, broadcastify and on the TuneIn radio app for smart phones. Any smartphone can access the feed directly or by third party applications such as Scanner Radio and Scanner911. Most of these are free to the user but you can upgrade to a paid version for more features.

So now you know how to hear it, The following is what you’ll hear. The scanner is a GRE PSR-600 Mobile Digital scanner. Digital meaning it hear’s P25 digital radio system just fine. The antenna is in South Bonham about 20 feet in the air, this will be raised to 30 feet later this spring. Our target area is Cooke, Fannin & Grayson counties in North Texas and Atoka, Bryan, Carter, Johnston Love & Marshall counties in Southern Oklahoma. However, at this time the best we get is Grayson, Fannin and Bryan counties. We carry Texas DPS Sherman and Dallas (Paris) Repeaters as well as Air-Evac Sherman and Greenville repeaters. Below is an accurate list of what you will hear most of the time Day and Night:

• Fannin Co. Sheriff (Analog & Digital)
• Fannin Co. Fire (North Tower)
• Bonham Police Dept. (Analog & Digital)
• Bonham Fire Rescue
• Grayson Co. Fire
• Grayson Co. Sheriff
• Denison Police & Fire
• Sherman Police & Fire
• Whitesboro Police & Fire
• Small fire departments in Grayson Co.
• Air-Evac (Sherman & Greenville)
• PHI Med-2 (McKinney)
• Texas DPS Sherman & Dallas
• Durant Police & Fire
• Calera Police & Fire
• Colbert Police & Fire

There are a few other stations that come in but due to the noise of the weak signals I have temporarily removed them. When the antenna is raised another ten to fifteen feet, I will return much of Southern Oklahoma to the scanner feed. Many of our listeners are Police officers themselves (Thanks Guys) who use the feed to listen to surrounding agencies while their car radios are on their assigned dispatch channels. Most of them don’t care too much for far away stations but are only concerned with closer stations (Such as Grayson Co. for our Fannin County Law Enforcement friends) because of this I won’t load the scanner down with God and everyone else. At some point I want to have a wide area multi-agency feed, but reception will have to be drastically improved for this to work. Enjoy the feed!

Listening to our Live Police Scanner is easy and free. There are several ways you can access the feeds. On your laptop or desktop computer simply by clicking  NCTX-Scanner on Broadcastify. If you have an android smartphone you can download Scanner Radio from Google Play or Emergency Radio for your iPhone at the iTunes store. Newer smart phones can just go to broadcastify.com and navigate the site as you would on your PC.

While I have little experience with the iPhone I do have significant experience with Android phones and tablets. Scanner Pro is a great app. It is free but you can purchase an upgrade that gives you extra features such as chat. Our feed broadcast channel text tags and these do show up on scanner radio and make listening much easier. Additionally if you use Winamp on your desktop you can open our feed in it and also utilize the text tag feature. Another app we are looking at is the Tine In app. Tune In is an internet based music, news, talk radio streaming service similar to broadcastify. Tune In streams several hundred scanner feeds live which the user can listen to online via desktop, laptop, tablet and even phone. Tune In is free but has a paid app with no advertising and a few added features. I have the Tune In app on my phone and am very pleased with it. In the event broadcastify becomes too congested and begins dropping feed streams we have a back up audio server we can route to. Again, smartphone’s, PC’s and tablets can access the back up feed using the XiiaLive app.

One of the NEW Texas DPS Chargers replacing the Crown Victoria.

Our Live Scanner on Broadcastify