And how exactly do you take a non-GPS scanner on a 10-state road trip without...spending a LOT of time creating a bunch of scanlists?
That's exactly what you do.
Some people would prefer to custom program just exactly what they want to hear, instead of letting a GPS pull everything from the DB, even if limited by service type.
If you know you're taking this trip well enough ahead of time, you take some time, spread out over several days if need be (an hour or two a day, on your days off maybe), and go through each states DB page, selecting what you want to hear based on your planned route.
You then program those into your scanner in a day-by-day format.
For example, if I were to drive from Phoenix to Jacksonville via I-10, on my PSR-500, I would program in AZ DPS, ADOT, NMSP, NMDOT, TX DPS, TXDOT, as well as the rural Sheriff's offices and the FD/EMS dispatch channels for the Phoenix-to-El Paso leg into V-Scanner 1, dividing the counties up into the various scan lists, which I would select and deselect at the county lines, if not sooner if I knew just what mile markers the county lines were close to. Smaller counties with little to listen to can be grouped together in 1 scanlist.
The El Paso-to-Beaumont, TX leg would be in V-Scanner 2.
Before I left the hotel in the morning, I would load up V-Scanner 2, and I'm good to go for that next leg.
Etcetera.
Yes, it takes some time to custom program, vs letting a GPS pull from the entire database. Yes, you may have to ask for some help or clarification in the appropriate state forum here on what towers can be heard along your planned route, or what the best talkgroups or conventional channels might be.
A detour might take you into another county, and maybe that means another highway patrol district, for a short while, but that's not a big deal. It would be a rare incidence where a detour would take you so far off your planned route that you'd have nothing to listen to. And in that case, I'd switch to doing a search of the Public Safety bands that are pre-loaded into the scanner until I got back on my planned route.
Granted, I haven't done this for a long multi-state trip, but I have done it for multi-county in-state, as well as short jaunts into NM and CA, day drives. (Phoenix to Las Cruces via US 60 & 70 instead of I-10, was one.) I use less than 1 V-Scanner for these trips.
If you prefer to just let your GPS pull from the entire DB, then that's your preferred method, and that's fine.
Others may prefer to take the time to custom program, and if it's a trip that's taken regularly, then once you do it the first time, a quick check of the DB each subsequent time to check for updates is all that is needed if you save your programming. And that's fine too.
We each have our preferred way to do things, and I don't think we should tell each other their way is wrong, or stupid or anything else. It's just a different way, and if you don't want to do it that way, that's fine.
John
Peoria, AZ