Radio Shack PRO-94

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verticle7

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Jan 1, 2014
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Sacramento, CA.
Hi Everyone,

I am new to trunking scanners and only have novice experience with analog scanners. I just picked up a Radio Shack PRO-94 Dual Trunking Scanner secondhand. I am having some trouble with it and was wondering if anyone could help me out or at least give me some insight on what might be wrong ( with my usage or the scanner).

So the things that came with the scanner include a a/c cord, a "National Public Safety Trunked System Frequency & Talk Group Guide" booklet, owner's manual, and the scanner itself.

I live in the Sacramento area (East) and am trying to program in the trunked system for Sacramento County Sheriff. I know that that currently they are using a Motorola Type ll Smartzone trunking system, Or so every resource has told me. The trunk frequencies I have found for them include 868.5375, 868.7375, 868.9625 and 868.9375. I have tried all of these frequencies and entered the trunk system type and cannot get anything at all. I can however pickup analog frequencies such as AMR (American Medical Response) and Eldorado County Sheriff.I have read through the owners manual 3 times and am still not sure what I am doing wrong or if it is me at all. Could someone please help me out with this.

Thank You and Happy New Year
 

Sac916

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Dec 19, 2002
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For starters - welcome to RR.com and welcome to scanning in the Sacramento area. There are a lot of helpful people in this community.

As sfdf mentioned via the link -- The Pro-94 will not work on the SRRCS.
A while back the radio system went through some technical changes, making several scanners incompatible.

Here is an "easier to read" manual for your scanner. -- Easier to Read Pro 94 Scanner Manual

Your scanner will not work with several systems in the region, but there are still plenty of things to monitor outside of SRRCS. Here is the Sac County link Sacramento County, California (CA) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

If you do want to monitor SRRCS, you'll need a different scanner. Doesn't have to be super brand new scanner, but I do recommend a Digital scanner if you want to monitor SRRCS.

Browse through ScannerMaster.com to get an idea of what is out there and the cost. Scanner Master - Police Scanners by Uniden Bearcat, AOR and Radio Shack.

Also browse through the Sacramento Valley forum, there are YEARS worth of posts with a great deal of information for this region.

My personal favorite scanners are the Uniden BCD396XT and BCD996XT
(PS new Uniden scanners are coming out early this year)


Finally, here are some basics on understanding Trunked Radio Systems

basics
Trunking Basics - The RadioReference Wiki
more basics
Trunked Radio Systems - The RadioReference Wiki
wiki
Trunked radio system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

gmclam

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Sep 15, 2006
Messages
6,333
Location
Fair Oaks, CA
Sacramento scanning

I live in the Sacramento area (East) and am trying to program in the trunked system for Sacramento County Sheriff. ... The trunk frequencies I have found for them include 868.5375, 868.7375, 868.9625 and 868.9375.
Those are OLD frequencies.

What others have said here is true. The PRO-94 can not "trunk track" the present Motorola systems in Sacramento county. It will work fine for CHP, VHF fire channels, state parks and most surrounding areas.

You can even make it pick up PARTIAL transmissions from Sacramento county, but you need to at least program in the present correct control channel frequencies. Once you have those in, what you'll see/hear is that you'll only get parts of some transmissions. The scanner will get lost as conversations 'jump' from frequency to frequency (an updated and properly programmed trunk-tracking scanner won't get lost).

Use: 853.68750, 853.80000 & 853.85000
 
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