PRO 197 Hoping made a good choice

[zk6216]

Dear Readers,
So I am new to the scanner world and have been involved with Fire for 6 years. Finally decided to get a scanner I got a PRO 197 for a good deal and I live in western PA in Westmoreland County with Phase I Trunking for fire , I hope I made a good choice and if I like it some day may upgrade my scanner. I also went with software and am currently learning about how to program it. Anyone have any luck with this model? Any good books to read on Radio Communication? I find this information very neat and interesting! Also is their a way to set up my scanner to lock onto a channel or Tac? When Scanning Thanks so much!



Happy New Year!

 

[gewecke]

Excellent choice! Enjoy.... 73, n9zas

 

[N5XTC]

Dear Readers,
So I am new to the scanner world and have been involved with Fire for 6 years. Finally decided to get a scanner I got a PRO 197 for a good deal and I live in western PA in Westmoreland County with Phase I Trunking for fire , I hope I made a good choice and if I like it some day may upgrade my scanner. I also went with software and am currently learning about how to program it. Anyone have any luck with this model? Any good books to read on Radio Communication? I find this information very neat and interesting! Also is their a way to set up my scanner to lock onto a channel or Tac? When Scanning Thanks so much!
Happy New Year!

I have a pro 197 and absolutely love the scanner. its a no frills screen compared to my uniden 996p2, but the pro 197 out performs the p2 as far as reception.

u can lock out the tac channel under that system by choosing the lockout feature when editing that talk group. i have no issues with this scanner at all. you will love this scanner once u get used to programming it. i do program it by hand, but have also used win500.

 

[fredva]

Not sure what you mean by programming the scanner to lock onto a TAC talkgroup, but I know you can either program it to listen for communications only on a particular talkgroup (such as by locking out all other talkgroups or just programming in only the desired talkgroup), or if you hear something interesting happening on a talkgroup, you can immediately push a button to hold it on that talkgroup instead of letting the scanner continue in scan mode.

 

[Swipesy]

Also is their a way to set up my scanner to lock onto a channel or Tac? When Scanning Thanks so much!
Happy New Year!

Look on Page 73 of your manual as to how to make Priority frequencies/Talkgroups. That should do it for you. Be aware though that when you use Priority the scanner will cut out momentarily as it checks for priority transmissions.

 

[N5XTC]

Not sure what you mean by programming the scanner to lock onto a TAC talkgroup, but I know you can either program it to listen for communications only on a particular talkgroup (such as by locking out all other talkgroups or just programming in only the desired talkgroup), or if you hear something interesting happening on a talkgroup, you can immediately push a button to hold it on that talkgroup instead of letting the scanner continue in scan mode.

will publish a step-by-step later today for that. busy right now but get to it later. its not difficult at all.

 

[zk6216]

Thanks

Thanks for all the help this is great !

 

[Swipesy]

Thanks for all the help this is great !

Also you may want to investigate using the "Favorites" option on the Scanner. You can assign Favorites to selected frequencies/Talkgroups. When you hear action on one of your Favorites you then can push the Favorites button on the scanner and the scanner will switch to those objects you have marked as Favorites and only scan those. When you are done with Favorites you push the Scan button and the scanner switches back to normal scanning. It is a great feature.

 

[shadcall]

Dear Readers,
So I am new to the scanner world and have been involved with Fire for 6 years. Finally decided to get a scanner I got a PRO 197 for a good deal and I live in western PA in Westmoreland County with Phase I Trunking for fire , I hope I made a good choice and if I like it some day may upgrade my scanner. I also went with software and am currently learning about how to program it. Anyone have any luck with this model? Any good books to read on Radio Communication? I find this information very neat and interesting! Also is their a way to set up my scanner to lock onto a channel or Tac? When Scanning Thanks so much!



Happy New Year!

I see that you are a premium member. If you get the programming cable from Radio Shack and the ARC 500 software from Butel you can program your scanner very easily using your computer. You get a 30 day free trial to try it out. There are other programs available but in my opinion ARC 500 is the best for this model of scanner.

 

[ka3jjz]

Yes ARC500 is one program that will handle this radio. The other 2 are Win500 and PSREdit500. Unfortunately there are no freeware programming solutions as there are with Uniden scanners.

This article from our wiki has links (always in blue) to lots of information - the Easier to Read manual, how to program manually, software, FAQ and several other things.

Getting Started with your GRE/RS Object Oriented Scanner - The RadioReference Wiki

Mike

 

[DJ11DLN]

They are great radios, I'm very fond of mine. Best audio and p.1 decode I've yet heard from any modern scanner I've been around. Enjoy.

 

[K5MPH]

The pro-197 is very fine radio scanner,its not hard to program it with the software a little harder by hand but can be done it just takes a little longer.

 

[markbart]

Great radio enjoy!

 

[flythunderbird]

You will enjoy your 197. I have two 197s, one for each of my feeds, and a 652(a Whistler-built 197). I use Win500 to program all of them ... great software!

 

[N1BHH]

It's pretty much intuitive on manual programming.

Easier to Read Pro-651/652/106/197 - WS1040/1065 - PSR 500/600 Digital Scanner Manual

 

[limartm]

I did not start this subject but I am very grateful for all your replies I was wondering myself, the same thing.

Also I hear a lot of systems are coming to face phase 2 in my area Hillsborough County Tampa Florida. What is a good desktop scanner for the phase 2?

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