How do you scan?

[Tryton]

I have 5 systems, pasco county were I live I have the sheriff's dept, the fire dept, as well as two other city's in my county.. I also have Pinellas county in there as have the local Pd's 3 of them. sometimes its hard to follow along because it stops on different systems etc.. but how do you guys do it? is there any "Advantage" form one way to the other.. thanks for any suggestions!

[W4KRR]

Originally Posted by Tryton

I have 5 systems, pasco county were I live I have the sheriff's dept, the fire dept, as well as two other city's in my county.. I also have Pinellas county in there as have the local Pd's 3 of them. sometimes its hard to follow along because it stops on different systems etc.. but how do you guys do it? is there any "Advantage" form one way to the other.. thanks for any suggestions!

Does your scanner have the ability to assign a text label to every talkgroup or frequency? If so, you should definitely do it. That's how I know what agency/talkgroup/system I'm monitoring.

That is, if I understand your question correctly.

[Tryton]

yes, i have the 996t.. What I'm asking is.. do you listen to just your local pd for awhile, then maybe some fd or do you scan all your channels and hit hold on something.. ect

[W4KRR]

Originally Posted by Tryton

yes, i have the 996t.. What I'm asking is.. do you listen to just your local pd for awhile, then maybe some fd or do you scan all your channels and hit hold on something.. ect

I usually just scan everything, until I hear something of interest going down, then I may hit "hold" to monitor it, or even turn on a second or third scanner to catch everything.

[Tryton]

got ya.. yeah I just spent 500 + on this.. my wife would kill me if i bought another lol..

BTW, is this a good scanner compaired to the new GRE's comming out?

[BaLa]

on the system here, I just try to listen to the local stuff..

or separate it, so if something interesting does go down , you can turn everything else off.

[cellblock776]

Luckily everything here hasn't made the switch to digital so I would set up 5 different scanners. One for each system.
For instance- I keep my Pro-2034 on the local Fire Dispatch. My BC-780 monitors the fire department trunked talk channels. My old but trusty Pro-91 is set up just for local PD and SO trunked stuff. My Pro-2016 follows the neighboring parish fire dispatches and Acadian Ambulance freqs. My BC-245 is just for following talkgroups used by Fire and EMS in nearby Baton Rouge. My Pro-93 is my carry around and take in the car scanner for a little of everything.
It all depends on what's happening or what I feel like listening to which determines which, if any, scanners get turned on. Mainly I listen for local FD tone outs (Pro-2034) and then I will turn on the BC-780 to hear trucks enroute and whats happening. If it's something other than a medical call I'll sometimes turn on the Pro-91 to hear the police discussing shutting down roads or other such stuff. So while I may have 5 or more scanners each set up for different tasks it's rare that more than a couple will be on and scanning at any one time.

[Viper43]

I will have anywhere from 1 to 8 scanners going. Some are set up for fire or police and I switch to whichever has the best stuff going on. One has nothing but Indiana SafeT and I can monitor about half the state with it, some of it is simulcast from VHF so I sometimes get multiple scanners getting the same stuff.

The next trick will be adding a board to run the audio to different areas such as the kitchen or back yard, garage where ever I am at around the place. Just hit a switch and send the audio where I want it. That ought to drive the neighbor crazy

V

[Slyster]

I use the banks like this... and do a lot of turning banks off and on.. if I don't want much traffic at all.. I just turn on 0.

Bank 0- Local PD (P25)
Bank 1- Local F/EMS (P25)
Bank 2- St. Paul PD (P25/FM)
Bank 3- St. Paul F/EMS (P25/FM)
Bank 4- MPLS PD (P25)
Bank 5- MPLS F/EMS (P25)
Bank 6- AIR/MOA/MTC (Mall of America, airport, busses AM/FM/P25)
Bank 7- All State Patrol (P25)
Bank 8- empty
Bank 9- empty

[GemmaKnight]

I mostly listen to my local PD as well plus the neighboring cities. Also listen to whatever else I can pick up with my trusty little bc72xlt.

[xpawel15x]

99% of my area is all conventional. The 2 scanners I have in my signature are all I need. But I am saving money for that digital scanner for when my area changes.

95% of the time I monitor my town's PD and FD
the other 5% I listen to my County PD, and few surrounding towns

[hoser147]

With the digital I use to monitor the state MARCS system. Monitor conventional channels on the PRO 95 with some trunking systems. The 2052 I have running trunk systems and conventional but on outside antenna for more range. The RS83 is basically search scanner. Pro 62 conventional Local stuff for anyone in the household to use, and the 210Xl is usually locked on County Fire band with Local Pd set in priority so it bumps up the volume and kinda sorts out the local traffic from the distant traffic. Just mess around and see what you want as far as priority and Att and so on as each scanner has different tools to use and You can just figure out what suits you well. Good Scannin Hoser147

[mike_webb59]

My solution seems to very 'spensive. I keep on buying the latest scanners, but I find that one single scanner just doesn't seem to "do it all." For example, I still use my trusty Pro-95 for all EDACS Systems, I use the BC796D to catch anything APCO-25, and the BC246T because it's a rebander and it does PL Tones. I even have an auction MPD that does some specific local VHF and a hamflashed MPA for scanning HAM. I sorta lent the Pro-96 away so it isn't on the ScanShelf, but I would highly recommend something like that.

When I use just one scanner, I learned how to hold TGIDs and Channels pretty quickly. Also, setting the delay time per bank sometimes helps keeping the scanner in one bank for a longer/shorter period of time.

HTH, Mike

[kc8zdf]

I split up pd and fd. For example I listen to livingston co police and there all in a bank. Now the way my county works is all the citys and twp in livingston county all talk into that pd or fd dispatch so.... I program in the central pd dispatch along with with city and twp private channels on the same bank. Now most of the time you dont really here the guys talking much on there private channels atleast not for emergency calls so you will here emergency calls on the dispatch. Now all that is in a bank by itself. So the same for fire. Now being that the fd and pd are split into two different banks I have a choice up just listing to fire or police. Or if there is really nothing going on i will turn both banks on to listen to. So another words spliting the fd and pd lets you here more of one. Now I live in livingston county and when im here i only listen to the police and fire. I also have washanaw county in my scanner on banks 1 and 2. 1 being sheriff and the other being say like ann arbor city so once again being split up lets say i take the scanner with my in my vehical i can switch to wash cty stuff and listen and not miss anything. Then turn livingston banks stuff off. Cause I dont really care whats going on in the boarding counties because you will here something on your own dispatch if there happens to be a really big mutral ad thing going. So thats how i scan and i here a lot more. One other quick thing I have livingston ems programmed into my scanner on bank 8 but dont really ever have that bank on becasue most of the i have fire and police on and you will here dispatch say to police were sending ems here or fire dispatch says ems needs help with lift or what ever so you know if there is something big going on.. Hope that gives you somethnig to try. If you dont understand what im saying i have my file win96 file i can email to you and you can look at it on win96 to better see how i have it set up.

[mikeydcg2003]

It depends on where i am at. At home i have less freqs programmed in so i hear all of my local stuff plus stuff on the west side of DSM such as Clive. My Handheld 396 i have a lot more programmed into it.. I do find i miss things every once in awhile. Having the Dsm pd channel only active when i am in dsm itself helps a lot cause a lot of the west side channels and other channels aren't as chatty as dsm is.

[EFjohnsonVHF]

How I scan usually depends on what's going on, I have 3 scanners, One for digital/trunked, One for Non digital trunked, and 1 for conventional, Not to mention a minitor pager for local Volunteer FD, So I usually just leave all my radios in scan mode, But if something big is going on, then maybe I will rest all my radios on a different channel. It also depends on where I am.