Cell phones

[74IN]

What emission is used?

I'm bidding on a dual band that might get them.

 

[W5LZ]

74IN, No idea what you are bidding on but don't take for granted that it'll pick up Cell phones even if modified. Cell phones are digitized (mostly), the older analogue type cell phones are almost never used/supported anymore. That 'digitalization' is proprietary, each company has their own, sort of, kinda. If you should by chance have a program that will decode those type transmissions, 'we' could make a fortune with it! (We'd also have Uncle Sam looking for us, but I'd blame you for it so I'd get off. Sort of? ) It's certainly possible, but not with anything made for USA sales in the last 5 - 10 years or so... rats! - 'Doc [Who? Me? I ain't never! Besides, it gets boring after a while.]

 

[Moleculo]

Like 'Doc said...forget about it. Everything is digital with encryption now. I used to have a scanner that could listen in on the analog cells when those were around. It could also get the old 47mhz and 900mhz analog phones. I listened in about 5 times before I realized that old ladies' conversations were not really very interesting.

 

[Sonwatcher]

Something interesting about picking up cell phone conversations happened to me about 15 years ago. I had an old console TV and was punching the button on the remote around channel 90 and found cell phone conversations over the television. I never knew you could do that before.

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

Sonwatcher,when cell phones first came out they deleted the higher off air television UHF channels from about ch 63 or so up to channel 81 and reassigned those freqs. to the cellular service.With an old TV set with the tunable UHF channel knob you could tune into analog cellular phones quite easily.

 

[park]

10 to 15 years ago I heard my first cell phone's in the 800 mhz band, heard a drug deal being made, a couple breaking up,,, creepy, never listened again.

 

[SR385]

10 to 15 years ago I heard my first cell phone's in the 800 mhz band, heard a drug deal being made, a couple breaking up,,, creepy, never listened again.

When I was a kid, I made a full wave loop for 47Mhz cordless phones and could hear neighbors up to a couple blocks radius from me. You hear things you would never have expected...and you then have a hard time looking some people in the eye again heh.

I had an Icom R-1 and a Radio Shack 2600 both capable of 800Mhz. The most amusing time to listen was Friday evening. Here near NYC, lots of broker types would call home to say they were 'working late' , then if you kept hopping around, you could hear the same guy call another woman and plan dinner out....It was tedious chasing the conversations as they hopped around the system.

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

When I was a kid, I made a full wave loop for 47Mhz cordless phones and could hear neighbors up to a couple blocks radius from me. You hear things you would never have expected...and you then have a hard time looking some people in the eye again heh.

Try that some time with a home brew, gain optimised, six element 6m beam at 45 feet and see what you can hear. Oh yeah, it works quite well on those sporadic E openings too.