Hello:

I think this is my first foray into this forum... Maybe a little OT, but I thought some of you might like to see the very cute little 'police/weather' band (152 to 174 MHz) Regency VHF monitor I found on the swap pile at the town dump last week. Sorry for the wide-angle distortion... I was too lazy to move away and use the zoom lens.

A beautiful little radio, IMO. Wish it had more interesting band coverage :-) Is there anything using this band any more (except for weather, of course)?

Haven't brought it up yet, but it sure looks like it ought to work.

...

I have the same model. I can't attach the Sams folder, since it's too big and in DjVu format, but email and I'll send it. tbavis(at)rochester(dot)rr(dot)com

Cool! Our local authorities still use those bands and at least for here, there's alot to listen to. (Certainly beats current AM!) :rolleyes:

Regency was a very good make of radios and even UHF television converters, but not TV sets themselves, in the '50s. Their model TR-1, introduced in 1954, was the first all-transistor radio to be manufactured and sold in this country. Their police band monitors were popular in the '50s as well. The company was based in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Regency's first VHF receivers were tunable with several switchable crystal-controlled channels, but they also had a line of automatic scanning receivers for VHF public service bands in the late '60s or seventies (crystal controlled; the company wasn't around long enough to see today's synthesized scanners).

They also had at least one scanning amateur radio transceiver (for 2 meters--146-148 MHz), which came out, IIRC, in the late '60s or early '70s. I am an amateur radio operator and saw several of these units advertised in ham publications of that era; I also once talked with an old-time ham who had a Regency base-station FM scanner transceiver (the first one of these I had ever heard of at the time). From what he told me, he liked the unit and used it for many years.

CELT, you are lucky to be living in an area where the police and fire departments are still using VHF communications systems, as most police/fire divisions in major cities (and even smaller towns, such as where I live) have converted to UHF (470-512 MHz). The public-transportation system in my small town has such a UHF communications system using hand-carried portables, IIRC; it would not surprise me if the local police and fire department's radio systems are now UHF as well.

However, I once read in an issue of Popular Electronics magazine from the mid-'60s of a way one could convert a low-band public-service receiver to receive the then-new UHF police band. The conversion involved the use of an old UHF television converter such as Blonder-Tongue's BT-99, et al.; I don't recall what modifications to the converter were required, but the important thing is the dodge worked. It was a cheap and dirty way to eavesdrop on your local police and fire departments if they had converted all their communications networks to UHF and you didn't want to go out and get a UHF police receiver (which were fairly rare in the '60s anyhow).

If you have an older TV set with a continuous UHF tuner (including varactor tuners with individually presettable channel positions) and you live in an area where the public service divisions all have UHF communications systems, you may be able to hear their transmissions between channels 14 and roughly 18 or 19. (You can also hear cellular telephone transmissions between channels 70 and 83.)

However, if you do monitor police transmissions or cellular telephone gab this way, bear in mind that it is strictly illegal to repeat to anyone what you hear. In the case of police and fire communications, these are not supposed to be overheard, but they are often eavesdropped on nevertheless because of the nature of continuous UHF TV tuners (which tune slightly above and below the UHF TV band, not to mention being able to tune 470-512 MHz directly as part of their intended tuning range) and, of course, receivers designed to tune these bands.

As far as cellular telephone talk goes, all new scanners which tune anywhere near 830-850 MHz are required by the FCC to be cellular blocked, i. e. made unable to receive transmissions in the part of the band allocated to cellular telephone services. In other words, if you purchase a new scanner receiver which has a tuning range of, for example, 0.5 to 2300 MHz, please be aware that there will be a gap in the coverage right around 830-850 MHz or thereabouts. This is to deter eavesdropping on cell phone conversations, and also why new TV sets' UHF coverage stops at channel 69 (channels 70 through 83 were reassigned to other services in 1970, decades before cell phones as we know them today became popular).

mhardy6647, I wouldn't worry about your post being off-topic here. The Regency Monitoradio series is probably just old enough now to be considered vintage, if not outright antique. The sets were made in the '50s through the '60s; the lettering on the dial scale is a dead giveaway to '50s vintage, as the "megacycles" designation at the right end of the scale is in large lowercase letters, as was popular in that era. Also, the use of the term "megacycles" rather than "megahertz" on the dials to designate frequency range tells us the radios were made before 1967 (the year the official switchover from megacycles to megahertz took place).

Great information Jeff, some of I was not aware of. Yep, the locals still run VHF and only scramble certain transmissions. However, the ol Celt managed to find his way around that little issue and can listen to it all with the push of a button! ;)

I'm nitpicking, but there were programmable Regency scanners, the first ones in the late 70s I think. They never seemed to have the quality of the Bearcats. Uniden bought them, in the late 80s I think, and phased them out. There was a line of scanners out a few years ago under the name of Relm, that were supposed to be made by the same company that used to be Regency. I have a few Regency scanners, both crystal & programmable, plus a tube type base station CB and several of the old Monitoradios. Why do I have them? Buying them just seemed like a good idea at the time! I think that the founder (or one of the founders) of Regency (and I would mispell his name so I won't try) is the same fellow who founded Antique Electronic Supply and while he sold that company he still dabbles in the business in one way or another.

Those frequencies are still in use and will be for a while. I had the same radio covering 30-50 mcs and that band is dying as more PD's move to higher ground as the skip will kill local comms. 150-174 is alive and well, although the channel spacing is changing from 15 khz separation to 12.5, then ultimately 6khz.
Your radio will still be able to tune those freq's albeit in metro areas splash could be a problem.
Mike (putting on my Police Comm Officers Hat!)

Mike in NY:

Your avatar is interesting to me... WJZ (TV) was and still is in Baltimore. When was there a WJZ TV in NYC?

Yes, there was.
Interesting history. At first NBC had 2 radio networks, the Red and the Blue. In NYC the Red was WEAF at 660, and the Blue was WJZ at 770. WJZ was one of the first stations in NY/NJ (1925) and was originally owned by Westinghouse.
In 1945 the FCC told NBC that they could only own one radio station in any market, (kind of like the Justice Department today going after Microsoft). NBC then sold off the less popular Blue network to William Noble who owned Life Savers. He started the "American Broadcasting Company" and WJZ NY was the flagship station. When TV came along, Channel 7 was owned by ABC and thus took the AM counterparts calls. I don't know how much, if any, programming went out over WJZ-7.
At that time the calls WABC were assigned to 880 for the CBS outlet in NY. In the late 1940's they got ahold of the calls WCBS and changed the AM stations calls, so WABC became available, and, naturally, ABC Network applied for, and received them. They also changed the TV calls to WABC. The station in Baltimore applied for them after that.
Interesting enough is that the WJZ 50kw tower was located in Bound Brook, NJ. (640 feet tall) It was dismantled and relocated to Lodi, NJ in the late 1940's and is still in use for the powerhouse WABC 770 in New York.
I chose the avatar because it kind of shows my two interests (read "loves", old radio and old TV!

I am not sure where some people get their information. Regency was not only around long enough to see production of synthesized scanners, they were the first company to produce one! This was the Touch 16....I have two and one original manual. The first electronic switching scanner was invented by Al Lovell at Electra Corporation (Bearcat). A friend of mine who is a retired engineer worked on this project with Al. The first VHF converter (from VHF) to a general broadcast radio was the "Little Tiger", also made at Electra.

Bret

I had the first Electra brand synthesized scanner from the 70's. I lent it out to a friend a few years ago and I guess he is still using it.

I almost forgot....while not mentioned as being one of the officially noted founders of I.D.E.A,Regency Electronics, George Fathauer was stated to be "the brains" behind the start-up of the company. This is according to Reba Weaver, wife of Regency founder Joe Weaver. I have also heard him labeled as the father of the monitoradio. He received a patent for chassis design that was probably used in the production of the monitoradio. he did own AES, but sold it and now buys and sells vacuum tubes. He also has his own website that helps to facilitate his business.

Bret

...And George is a stand-up guy, too. I bought some globe-style tubes from him, one was bad, he replaced it no problem. I think he was also the ramrod behind Dage Corp, one of the early pioneers in color TV. I think they made studio equipment, monitors & so on. Seems like I've seen a Dage monitor that looked like a CT-100 mounted in a grey metal box...-Sandy G.

George Fathauer is also credited (at least at AES) as having designed the little "S-5 electronics" PP 11BM8 (11MS8) tube amp kits (or close relatives thereof). http://www.s5electronics.com/gpage1.html


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