187 - Scanner Radio Shortages

Free SDR Course! Our new free course will introduce you to Software Defined Radios. "The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Software Defined Radio: Everything you need to know to get started with SDR in an afternoon" is now open for enrollment.  Register now at https://courses.scannerschool.com --------------------------------------------------------------- In today’s episode, I will discuss shortages of scanner radios, which models of scanners may be out of stock, and why this could be.     What You Need To Know Brand new P25 style scanners have become hard to find in the last year and a half. This is especially true for the SDS100 and 200, as well as the TRX-1, and TRX-2. They seem to be out of stock from everywhere in the market. A partial and obvious reason for the shortage of P25 scanners is COVID. In this Pandemic situation majority of people were staying home or working remotely. Many of them come back into scanner radio hobby after being not involved for some time. During the pandemic, numerous people were introduced to scanner radio hobby or something they want to do, and now they are just picking on that hobby. It’s not only the scanner radio market with shortage issue; it’s also beyond the radio and communication market. In the shipping industry, we have a shortage of dock workers due to COVID, and they are not working in total capacity, which causes ships not to load and unload fast, and ships are queued for longer than their routine trip. Containers from the ship are unloaded on trains or trucks, but as the truck drivers are sick due to COVID, the movement, loading, and unloading of containers are significantly less, causing a shortage of containers to difficulty in moving inventory. Silicone issue or the microchip problem has been a global issue, and everyone is looking for these microchips. Demand for microchips is exceptionally high due to a surge in people wanting electronics equipment as they are stuck at home. It takes almost a year to get the chip designed and ready to be manufactured from start to finish, and these are built on wafers.  Everything is based on microchips and all these come from the part of the world where there is a shortage of workers due to another wave of coronavirus. If you are in the market for new scanner radio, put your name on any email list that you find by major scanner sellers like scanner master. Because of the shortage of new scanners, the used market for some of these hard to find scanners is very strong. eBay, Facebook, and the Radio Reference Classifieds are a great place to find scanners radios on the secondary market. All session notes with links to the items we talked about can be found on our website at https://www.scannerschool.com/session187 -------------------------------------------------------------- Would you like 1 on 1 help? If you need help with your scanner and are looking for some one on one tutoring, I'd love to help you out.  Visit http://www.scannerschool.com/consulting to book your one hour appointment today! --------------------------------------------------------------Help support Scanner School You can help support Scanner School by visiting our support page at http://www.scannerschool.com/support