Newbie needing some direction

[arcadefreaque]

I've never had a scanner before, but bought a pro-2052 yesterday. I'm kinda understanding trunking and such, but what I really need help with is understanding which frequencies are being used in my area, and what/how to program them. I read the frequency info at :
http://www.radioreference.com/modules.php?name=RR&ctid=846#cid-10458 for mahaska county and oskaloosa (the two areas I'm interested in), but I cannot understand whether these are trunked or not, and what frequencies are actually being used (since when you click on one of the entries, it gives you a whole other list of frequencies at the bottom of the page, what does all of this mean?)

Right now, I have no idear what I'm doing. I flopped the scanner on my desk right out of the box and have it scanning what appears to be some preprogrammed "police" service. I heard about 10 words uttered once, and that's it.

I have done some reading, downloaded and setup radio commander, and am still pretty lost. I feel like a fool thinking that it shouldn't be that hard to setup and listen to whats going on in my area. Heck, I'm a software engineer and do some compontent level electronics repair and robotics stuff in my spare time, but this dang scanner has be baffled!

any advice/direction/etc that can help me get on with my new scanning hobby would be greatly appreciated!

thx

 

[thehammer]

Im pretty new too, But it doesnt take long to figure out how your scanner works. my advice is to read your manual and just program 1 system step by step. At the end, if you dont hear anything, try again, and again.

When I first got my 396T in the mail It took me a couple of hours of reading and trial and error to get a good system going, and 3 months later there is still a lot to learn. Just be patient and ask questions when you have no other directions to go.

The trunked staions are under the map on your "link". (RACOM and Aliant) Everything underneath is conventional

 

[loumaag]

First welcome to scanning and the site.

Now to particulars, your area is mostly conventional and analog, so the scanner you have will make a great desktop scanner. I have one and love it in that role.

My suggestion would be to group things that you want to listen to in to unique clusters of channels, then enter these into individual banks to match the clusters you put together. For example you may commit bank 1 to the sheriffs office, bank 2 to the Oskaloosa PD, bank 3 to the Oskaloosa Fire Dept, etc. Then you toggle the banks on or off at will depending on what you want to listen to at the time. I noticed that the channels and layout of the county is somewhat confusing right now, but I am going over there and fix that as soon as I post this message.

You have only one Trunking system in the area, the RACOM system and I would recommend that you skip this for now as it is one of the most confusing systems in the Database and does not seem to be used much where you are.

 

[arcadefreaque]

Thanks for the help guys. I'll get this stuff figured out! Now that I know that trunking is not being used on these systems, it makes more sense. I'll probably key everything in tonight and get things setup to stream the stuff over the net in the next few days.. that way I can listen from work (I work 2 blocks from the fire dept, so it'll be interesting to see if I can pickup on what's going on everytime a truck goes whailing by!)

Thx