Just got a BCD996XT and used FreeScan to program it. So far I really like this scanner, vast improvement over my Home Patrol 1 and I only paid $200 for it. Sold the Home Patrol for $250, so there ya go.
Anyway, on some of the channels I have entered it just shows the ID tag and not the name when someone is transmitting. IE - it will show ID 1828 instead of USFS CH16. Is there a simple way to enter text on that particular channel to name it?
Thanks.
Jim,
From what you asking about, it appears that you may be talking about the statewide
DTRS system. If that is correct, then it sounds like you created the system and it is set to ID Search. If you imported, then you may have selected specific services to download, but left the system set in ID Search mode.
In
ID Scan mode, your scanner will only stop on the talkgroup ID's that are programmed, and those TGID's are not locked out and are not in a group that is locked out.
In
ID Search mode, the scanner will stop on
any active talkgroup, providing that it is not locked out, and is not in a group that has been locked out.
If the talkgroup is programmed, with a text tag, you will see the text tag.
If it is not programmed, you will will only see the talkgroup ID displayed. If you recognize the usage on the TGID, you can either press the Enter (".") key, which takes you to the Edit mode where you can store the ID, and add a text tag for it, or press the lockout key, so that the scanner will no longer stop on that TGID. One press of the lockout is only a temporary lockout, and the ID would be unlocked after the next power cycle (power down, then start back up). Pressing the Function key,
then the lockout, makes it a permanent lockout. You would no long hear any traffic on that ID until you manually unlocked it.
Note that if you manually entered a text tag, or locked it out, you should either "read" your scanner back into the software used, or add the TGID to the system, then either entering the text tag, or locking it out. Otherwise, next time you loaded a programming file, you'd be back to the same thing popping up again.
If you have everything entered that is of interest, and these unknown ID's are ones that do not interest you, change the system in the scanner back to ID Scan mode. You can toggle between ID Scan and ID Search modes by pressing the Function key (press in on the scroll knob) then press the Scan/Search key while scanning the system you wish to change. You can tell the mode it's in by looking at the display when scanning. If you are in ID Scan mode, that text will stream across the display while scanning the trunked system. If, instead, you see ID Search streaming across, then you are in Search, not Scan mode.