Once you've experienced a race with a scanner, you
can't imagine watching one without the headphones on your ears. You are able to
listen to communication among the driver, his pit crew and spotter, as well as radio
broadcasts and track announcements, which are usually otherwise inaudible due to the race
noise.
Using a scanner helps you discover the race behind the
race, hearing differing pit strategies, learning how the cars are handling and discovering
who is mad at whom. Basically, you'll hear what these guys really want to say, but
can't in front of a television camera.
When I started scanning races, I used a cheap
200-channel scanner with a frequency range reaching 800Mhz, and two sets of inexpensive
headphones with a splitter. I bought it on sale in 1997, and the whole set-up cost
me around $200. It worked, but I have since learned that there are big differences with
scanners, headsets and even antennaes. In short, you can get by with less expensive
set-ups, but spending a few extra dollars will save some frustration with bleed-over and
lost reception at the track.
If you don't want to buy a scanner, you can rent them
at the track. The cost to rent one for the weekend is $55-60, so you can do the math
to see how quickly you can own one at those prices. Plus, I've seen the trackside rental
places run out of scanners, so you're definitely not guaranteed to get one.
Everyone has their own style with a scanner, but I
always program in almost all of the drivers by their car number and the racing network
carrying the race. Then, I either let the scanner roll through all of the
frequencies, stopping on the active ones, or I manually access the frequencies of drivers
involved in some sort of action.
Whatever you do, bring extra batteries and learn about
your scanner before the green flag drops. You don't want to be fighting with it and
missing the action.
-- Mitch Arnold
update
I've been getting a lot of e-mail
recently about the best place to find frequencies, and below is my response:
In the past, I have used frequencies I found on the Web;
however, I always seemed to miss a few, and that was incredibly frustrating during a race.
At Dover this year, I helped out at the Winston Cup Racing Wives Auxiliary trailer, and it
was there that I was turned on to the process of capturing the frequencies of race teams.
While many teams use the same primary frequency
consistently, a lot of other teams change frequencies, and even those use who consistently
use the same frequencies will sometimes move a primary frequency to secondary and
vice versa. The bottom line is that it is almost impossible to know for sure which team is
using which frequency.
The best way to counter this problem is to cough up the
$5 for an updated list from one of the trackside vendors, like the Winston Cup Racing
Wives Auxiliary. These frequency lists are updated weekly by professionals who sit in the
stands and do nothing but monitor frequencies. So now, instead of taking my chances with
something off the Web, I invest $5 in a sheet of paper that will more than pay for itself
in saved frustration.
If you insist on relying on the Web, I go to: http://motorsports.thepaddock.com/freqs/wc_freqs_01.html.
This story quoted in the Florida Times-Union!
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