SDS100/SDS200: Removing sites from Favorites List

[kirklandc1057]

I just received my STS 100 yesterday. Love it BTW. I've set up a few Favorite Lists in Sentinel for my area. I live in NW Houston, TX (Harris County). My problem is that when I set up a FL with the Talk Group I want from the TxWARN system, Sentinel not only loads the talk group in my list but it also loads all of the sites that are a part of TxWARN. There are approximately 80 sites on this system and when I download the FL to my scanner, it scans all these department/sites as well. This seems to slow the scanner down until it hits one of the sites for my FL.

I tried to delete all the non-desired sites from my Favorite lists, but then I get a message on the scanner after downloading that there is nothing to scan.

I've run out of options, if there are any.
Thanks for any help you can give..

 

[Ubbe]

Set the unwanted sites to avoid.

But the scanner only stops and decode the data on sites if it have a signal opens squelch, so shouldn't actually slow down much when it scans those 80 control channels in one second. Have you set the squelch level too low?

/Ubbe

 

[mule1075]

Go into sentinel an remove the unwanted sites. And upload the appended favorites list to the scanner.

 

[UPMan]

Or, leave the FL alone (other than enabling location control) and just set your location with a range of 0 and the scanner will not scan sites when you are outside of their defined range.

 

[RRR]

Most aggravating way ever to program a scanner. "Dumbed down" so much it's plain crazy.

Miss the way it was with the 996XX series were setup. More like programming a two-way radio.

All this "Law talk" and "multi tac" and such is plain ridiculous.

 

[ofd8001]

Setting the Favorites List to Location Control On is your very easiest and best option. If you travel around the area, you can change the zip code accordingly and the sites appropriate to that new area are "activated" and sites beyond range are "deactivated".

Avoiding the sites as mentioned above is another way, though unavoiding them when necessary is tedious keypad work.

A third option would be to set Department/Site Quick Keys. Set those sites closest to you for one Department/Site Quick Key and the "away" sites to a different Department/Site Quick Key. Then when at home, turn the "away" Department/Site Quick Key off.

New users do have a learning curve on Quick Keys and it takes time.

Just wanted to mention all your options. A lot of ways to accomplish a given task.

 

[K4EET]

kirklandc1057,

Just wanted to jump in here and say... Welcome to Radio Reference!

Cheers! Dave

 

[kirklandc1057]

Thanks for all the advice. It is a pretty large learning curve especially for someone with no prior radio experience. I do, however, love a challenge...

 

[ofd8001]

Thanks for all the advice. It is a pretty large learning curve especially for someone with no prior radio experience. I do, however, love a challenge...

Other than the folks who engineered this stuff, everyone started out knowing nothing. So just be patient and practice along with giving yourself permission to make mistakes. You'll get there!

 

[TailGator911]

Other than the folks who engineered this stuff, everyone started out knowing nothing. So just be patient and practice along with giving yourself permission to make mistakes. You'll get there!

Perfect advice there. The key word being 'patience'. When I got my 436 a while back I had no patience to learn it. Too much going on. After a couple weeks I got frustrated and sent it back to Scanner Masters for a refund. Kicked myself for a while then decided to give it a whirl again and went all out. Bought the Whistler TRX-1, the BCD536HP, and the Whistler WS-1065 all at the same time. Talk about a challenge! But this old fogey was determined. Thanks to a very kind and helpful (patient!) man here named Troymail (rip), who spent the better part of 2 weeks working with me emailing configuration files and directives, calling me with explanations, I learned the scanners and how to program them. Hey if I can do it, anybody can! Since then I have acquired the SDS100, and the programming is so much easier for me.

So as the previous poster advised, be patient and practice along and don't worry about making mistakes. That's how you learn. Have fun with it!

JD
kf4anc