User:Normschrein/sandbox

Mr. Scanner
Mr. Scanner is a name associated with databases for scanner radio frequencies. It is available in a hard copy (paper) format by county or city name, a digital format by county or city name, a CD Rom that covers the entire USA, or an on-line search that can be done by city/state or frequency/state. It is compiled by Norm Schrein, who has had involvement with scanner radios since the late 1960s.

Early History
Early scanner radios had the channels that they could to listen to set by crystals. In the 1970s manufacturers such as Electra Bearcat and Regency began to make scanner radios that could be programmed by the use of a keypad. While radio scanner owners needed to know a few frequencies for their local police and fire departments as their radio scanners could only hold a few crystals to set the channels, the newer technology made it possible to hold hundreds of channels. Thus the programmable radio scanners opened up a wide variety of things that its owner could hear.

As the programmable scanners became more and more popular there was a demand for more information on how to find out what frequencies to listen to. Norm Schrein began his research by compiling a small booklet of frequencies for the Dayton and Montgomery Counties of Ohio in the late 1970's. Eventually that booklet morphed into several editions of Schrein's scanner radio listings for areas such as Cincinnati/Dayton, Toledo, and Tampa Florida.

In the early 1980s Schrein was approached by Fox Marketing to produce frequency guides for their scanner, the BMP1060. The local directories expanded to other areas, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Indianapolis, Toronto, Detroit, Minneapolis/Saint Paul and others. It was while at Fox Marketing he was given the nick name of Mr. Scanner because of all his involvement with their scanner and the frequency guides.

By the mid 1980s it was evident that producing many localized directories was becoming an ever time consuming task and that using microfiche supplied by the FCC and manually entering the frequencies into a computer would not work. At that time it was decided to make a National Police Directory because what most users were asking for were frequencies for their local police Departments.

Eventually as Fox Marketing was starting to wind down their scanner business, Schrein was approached by Uniden. He was asked to make his National Police Directory into a volume for the Uniden/Bearcat scanners as well as roll over the localized directories into a new Betty Bearcat Frequency guide. When Uniden also purchased the scanner line from Regency, the localized directories were also done under the Regency name.

Schrein worked with Uniden America Corporation for 18 years. During that time in addition to creating the Betty Bearcat Frequency Directories, he introduced the first computerized frequency databases for release to the public. These databases were provided with a program on a 3 1/2 floppy diskette. They were done by state. At the same time he began the Bearcat Radio Club and added a club newsletter which was first introduced as Scanning Confidential, then changed names two more times to National Scanning Report and then to National Communications.

Recent History
At the end of his time with Uniden, Schrein kept publishing National Communications until his retirement from that project in June of 2014. Since then Schrein has kept his hand in programming scanners and continues to work in partnership with Jim Springer of Communications Electronics in producing the Mr. Scanner CD Rom. Additionally he offers single state versions of the program as well as frequency lists by county and city. In 2017 he re-introduced the Mr. Scanner on-line frequency lookup.