On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 14:10:13 -0700, George said
in rec.radio.scanner:

Thanks for the correction on the "few KC's off" line. What I should
have said is "five or ten KC"s off frequency". By "off frequency", the
scanner itself is unable to tune in finer steps, and only has "default"
steps, which get close but not right on the frequency I'm trying to
receive.

That's an older scanner that wasn't designed for current bandplans.
It's like an old scanner that can't tune to an 850 MHz frequency.
You're comparing apples to ducks, since there aren't any older tunable
scanners, unless you include ham gear.

While looking at just some the various scanners, I noticed that at
least one did not tune the UHF Ham repeater sub-band correctly, and I
was unable receive some of the repeaters in that portion. It would
only tune in 15KC increments.

At one time UHF equipment operated on 30 KHz channellization, so 15
KHz steps were just fine. (Actually, at one time, a mile was an
unreachable goal at 400 MHz. And frequency stability was so poor that
"frequency" was a courtesy, not a measurement. Look up "Vocaline" for
kicks, or look at
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5813581566&category=29 6.
Using that today would probably get you free room and board, but I
used a pair of them in the early 60s. Frequency? Around 465 MHz.
Counters were no good up there, so the best we could do was Lecher
lines, so we got the frequency accurate to about 1/4" of wavelength -
as long as it didn't drift to rapidly.)

In Northern California the UHF 440 - 450
repeater sub-band has 25KC spacing and in Southern California they use
20KC spacing. This is just one example.

And modern scanners allow 5 KHz steps.