396 Owners - SAFE-T Programming

[K9GTJ]

So a question for those of you with a 396 scanner (or I guess any portable digital scanner)...

How did you set up your scanner for such a large system? I have a BCD996T for my mobile and it works great with the large system and the GPS. Of course the GPS feature is not part of the 396 so what have you done?

Thanks for any tips/suggestions.

 

[GTO_04]

I give each tower it's own system then assign them to different quick keys so I can easily switch them in and out as I drive to work. I live in Hamilton Co. and work in Indianapolis so I have the Hortonville tower as one system and the Indy Dist. 52 tower in another system.

GTO_04

 

[kb9sxk]

I give each tower it's own system then assign them to different quick keys so I can easily switch them in and out as I drive to work. I live in Hamilton Co. and work in Indianapolis so I have the Hortonville tower as one system and the Indy Dist. 52 tower in another system.

GTO_04

Exactly, Each site gets a system.

 

[Viper43]

I have tried it both ways, and both ways work, it just takes longer to scan all the systems seperately but it does seem to work better.

V

 

[jerk]

So a question for those of you with a 396 scanner (or I guess any portable digital scanner)...

How did you set up your scanner for such a large system? I have a BCD996T for my mobile and it works great with the large system and the GPS. Of course the GPS feature is not part of the 396 so what have you done?

Thanks for any tips/suggestions.

I have each site in ISP District 42 as a site, Control Channel only, with Quick Key 25 turning all on and off. This works fine. I used to have each site's Control Channel listed in one system, and this also worked okay. But that way was specifically for traveling through the area in a car. I think a separate systems/sites is better when staying in an area, but again you could have many sites and one QK to turn on and off.

I'm thinking of doing the rest of Safe-T by ISP District's. For example QK 19 turns on and off District 43 sites. Next I'll revamp Johnson County and Include all of District 52 sites with one QK on and off. Before that I was thinking regions, Southeast, Southwest and so on, with all CC's for that area in one "system" The separate sites allows the scanner to work best. OHIO MARCS is still regions, My I-71 "system" is CC's for the whole route, I may change that to sites, but the current way works fine as I travel. It worked fine while staying in a city for a few days. Oh, Cincinnati and Hamilton County are two separate systems. Because it's so large I may split that up further into City-County police and Fire systems.

I guess the deciding factor is will you be traveling through or staying for a period of time. Traveling through both ways work fine. The other fits the design and requires groups to be duplicated.

AL

 

[PCPA]

On my trip through NE Indiana just after getting my 396 I was only going through 3 counties so I had the CC's for all three in one system. I set up a second conventional system for the fire dispatch and ISP simulcasts.

When I'm travelling rapidly through counties on an Interstate I'm mostly interested in Fire/EMS dispatch so those were all set as priority channels.

 

[ofd8001]

I've got my 396 programmed for each site to be its own system.

A while back Upman posted a thread that more or less said trying to put the whole shebang in as just one system may not work very well, particularly if you are where two towers can be heard. What happens, as I understand, is that the 396 stops on the first control channel it hears, listens and then moves on to another system (as compared to looking for another control channel).

So in my case, I can hear both Henryville and Floyd's Knobs. If I was to put them in as one system, I'll hear only one of the sites (the first one that has an active CC).

That "hiccup" is probably what they wanted to fix with the 996.