If you are wanting to just stay in touch with your local family or possibly your neighborhood, FRS/GMRS small hand held radios are a good choice. They are fairly inexspencive and can be found at Wallyworld and other stores like that. Usually sold in pairs for around 40 bux. Some will say 16 mile coverage even seen some that say 32 miles but my experiance is that a couple miles is about it depending on the terrain. Most are 22 channel but lately been seeing some with 32 channels. I might buy a pair of those because the added channels might have less traffic than the older models. FRS stands for family radio service but not sure what GMRS stands for. Just did a search on ebay for GMRS and found lots of these radios for cheap. These radios usually put out 1 watt on some channels and a half watt on others. If you want to cover a little larger area a CB radio might be a good choice. Legal power is 4 watts and 5 to 20 miles would be a good range although under the right conditions you can talk many states away (rare). Amatuer Radio "ham radio" is an excellant choice. Worldwide communication is possible with good reliable local coverage too. With local repeaters you can use a hand held radio with only a watt or two and cover say 25 to 50 miles or more with a perfectly clear FM signal. A couple of my radios are also general coverage radios. They will only transmit on the ham bands they were intended for but they recieve everything from AM to FM bands to shortwave to national weather service. As far as scanners go, I wouldn't buy an older used model if you are wanting to listen to the police or emergency medical service. Almost all of those have gone to some kind of new digital service. The new scanners will pick up some of that but not all and they are a bit pricey. You might consider getting your ham license. It's not hard to do. The technitian license is the entry level and the test is only 30 multiple choice questions. You don't need to learn the morse code anymore. Hope this helps.
