What is Radio Band Monitoring

Radio scanning is the activity of listening to a wide range of radio frequencies in search of interesting signals or conversations. Using a radio scanner, which can tune across different bands and frequencies, users can monitor various forms of communication, including:

- Public Safety Communications: Police, fire departments, EMS, and other emergency services often use specific frequencies that can be monitored, though some are now encrypted for privacy.
- Aircraft and Marine Communications: Frequencies used by pilots, air traffic controllers, ships, and harbors can be fascinating, offering insight into real-time events in the sky or at sea.
- Amateur Radio: Licensed amateur radio operators communicate on designated frequencies. Scanning lets listeners tune into local or long-distance "hams" chatting about topics like weather, news, or technical projects.
- Utility and Business Communications: Some businesses and utilities use two-way radio systems for operational needs, like dispatching vehicles or coordinating logistics.

Most radio scanners automatically "scan" or jump between channels on preset frequencies, pausing briefly if a signal is detected. This helps users identify active channels without having to manually search each frequency. Today, scanners are available in handheld, desktop, or software-based formats (software-defined radio, or SDR), with advanced models offering trunking and digital modes to follow more complex systems.

Radio band monitoring is an exciting subset of the radio scanning, radio monitoring and amateur radio hobbies. Just like some photographers might focus on macro photography or a person who plays video games might focus on 1st person shooters or sports games, my focus in on monitoring the VHF and UHF bands for all radio signals, this includes voice traffic, DMR, NXDN and Apco25 digital, data links, telemetry and all radios signals, no matter the type or purpose.

This hobby takes the best from the radio scanning hobby and combines elements of dxing and contesting which are key elements of the radio amateur hobby.

In our case the idea of this hobby is to monitor the entire VHF and UHF band between 25 megahertz and 956 megahertz and log any and all signals that are received. We are not interested in the content of the communication except to the point that it is to identification of the user, this means that we can log any signal such as normal FM analogue voice,  P25 digital, DMR which is used by some business and amateur radio operators and things like data signals which can be used for things like water monitoring and so on. This means that the hobby can be undertaking in a wider variety of locations and you're not limited to monitoring signals which are normally active during the business day.

I've personally always found the more technical side of the radio monitoring hobby to be interesting and this is why I've developed the band monitoring blog and program.

Finally a large part of the VHF / UHF band monitoring hobby will be about out and about monitoring, as I'll be regularly undertaking portable VHF / UHF band monitoring at places like parks and shopping centres and other high value radio targets with the goal to log as many active radio uses as possible.