If you can’t afford or just don’t want to buy a digital radio scanner and have an old analogue scanner sitting in a drawer somewhere, with a few tricks you might be able to modify your old scanner to pick up digital signals. I spoke about this in a previous post that showed a discriminator tap fitted to an old Realistic Pro 50. The video below shows a discriminator tap fitted to an old Realistic Pro-37 picking up the LAPD Police in the USA. It works great at picking up digital signals like P25, NXDN and decoding them using a computer.

You will need some knowledge on electronics, and some bits and pieces. Including a soldering iron. You then need to connect the old analogue radio to a computer and run software capable of decoding unencrypted digital signals, such as DSDPlus. There is a little bit of work involved. But some people love messing around with old radios. If you are one of those people, you’ll be right at home with a mod like this. If not, it’s not that hard to fit a discriminator switch, and there are many guides online to help you through the process. Either way, it’s great to be able to turn your old scanning receiver into a radio capable of picking up digital signals. If you have an old scanner somewhere at home, save yourself some money and give this a go.