Drgrant,
Good luck getting one that isn't blocked.
It's not THAT hard. Yeah, you're not going to be able to
go down to your local radio shack and pick up an unblocked
scanner, but they're still pretty easy to get.
FCC part 15 compliance requires it, and marketing non-compliant equipment is a federal felony.
I don't know if it's an f-bomb, but I know they used to hit the
domestic marketers with fines, etc, civil forfeitures. Most of
them just paid up and moved on with their business sans the
"illegal" product.
IIRC, selling a "preban" unit or an individual sale of such a device
is still allowed. There doesn't appear to be any individual penalty
against "possession" but does appear to be one against modification.
(never seen it enforced, though, except against
people distributing such devices publicly). I know there are
stiff penalties against recording transmissions your not supposed to
and divulging the content, but that's a whole nother ball of wax
by itself.
On the newer radios most of the time a huge part of 800 is still
missing and is often not unblocked by a mere resistor or diode.
This is the case more often than not, and additionally, the FCC
has often forced manufacturers to cripple the shit out of other
parts of their receivers so they won't even get cell phone images
by accident. This means other RX ranges get blocked out or
detuned, which sucks, although the manufacturers have been
pretty creative about fixing that problem while still being able to
satisfy the whims of the FCC.
I've done plenty of unblock mods back in the day (there was this
period before the ban where companies were doing a Colt-style
voluntary blocking scheme to try to get the FCC to go away, but it
didn't work) and even currently, although on transcievers its
mainly to enable out of band transmit and receive. I don't even
put a radio into use until it's been fully modified- the reason why
is because if you want to mod it down the road then you lose all
the memories, etc, which sucks. (most require a hardware reset).
Strangely enough I like ARS and band edge beeps and all that
crazy crap to be gone. It just gets in the way.
If you want the full coverage it's easier to not buy something
thats blocked to begin with.
Agreed, and those that know where to look, or that buy "preban"
scanners can get around the problem. I just don't like
paying big money for crippled equipment.
-Mike