Hi Bob...

FIRST, I would find an airband HT that I like and buy it. I had a
friend who lost comms in the pattern at TOL on his first solo; pulled
his HT out of his bag, and saved the situation. Point made...

I was an airband scanner listener for many years...that did help a
little for me.

In my experience, an airband HT will receive "as good as" and usually
much better than scanners. The scanners have more features conducive
to listening, tho; that's why I have both.

At your house, you should have heard the planes just fine. If not,
you might have a bad radio, or you had the squelch adjusted too tight.
It should be set to 'just quiet' the radio.

The ground station (ATC) is another story. VHF comms are 'line of
sight' and the antennas ATC use have little "downtilt"-they want to
talk to the sky, not the ground like a police or fire dispatch. Also,
the antennas are probably on 60-100' towers, not the several hundred
(or thousand) feet your local PD/FD may use; so the ground reception
range will be less.

You may be further from the ground station than you think. 2 miles
North of OKC airport, I could not hear the ground side on my HT. I
found out later that the transmitter site was well South of the
airfield.

A simple outdoor or even attic antenna for receiving will greatly
improve your reception. I would suggest a desktop style scanner for
home They are much more convenient to use.

--Don
Don Byrer
Electronics Technician/Friendly but Sarcastic Pilot
FAA Airways Facilites/Tech Ops, RADAR/Data/Comm @ CLE
Amateur Radio KJ5KB
Instrument Pilot Commercial Student
PP-ASEL 30 Jan 2005 "-IA" 25 Mar 2005