20/20 hindsight

[whiskeytango]

got my scanner bout 2 months ago...now that i got it all figured out im itching to reorganize all banks. when i got it i stuffed it full of freq's just to get listening, so im all spread out...banks 1/2/7 are chp, 3/4/5 open, 6 norcal so's, 8 sac county trs, 9/10 open, 11-13 reno and nv, 14 sac air traffic. someday when i have some free time ill redo it, but goin at it old skooooooool without a pc program makes it a little daunting. how do u all have your banks set up

 

[Magnetsteve]

My Organization

RS Pro2096
Bank 0: Statewide P25 Trunked System
Bank 1: My local stuff (city/county)
Bank 2: Surrounding County 1
Bank 3: Surrounding County 2
Bank 4: Trunked System in Surrounding County 2
Bank 5: State Police Trunked System (part of the statewide system)
Bank 6: Taney County Missouri ( for when we travel to Branson, MO)
Bank 7: Surrounding County 3
Bank 8: Blank I think... Can't Remember
Bank 9: Pulaski County Trunked Systems (City/County/EMS)

The reason I have it set up this way, so when I travel to or thru certain areas, I can enable/disable the appropriate banks or listen to all at the same time, haha... But usually the only one enabled are 0,1,3,4,5,7... Wierd, I know. haha...

 

[newsphotog]

Because I traveled throughout the state frequently, I needed to have systems programmed in for the most populous areas “just in case” I am on a breaking news assignment in that area. This required a little bit better group management. GPS was not an option due to the processing time of positioning vs. frequencies, and also the fact that I didn’t have a spare GPS. This system is setup so that as I move into each “zone” I can unlock and lock systems as necessary. This is especially necessary for RACOM, as I have all of their Iowa towers programmed in (that’s a ton of sites!) with associated talkgroups. Zones are divided based on population density and geographic location. A small map is included below.

Each zone has its own quick key. Example: Zone 2 (Central Iowa) is quick key 2, Zone 3 (Northwest) is quick key 3. Note that zone 1 is Iowa Statewide (State Patrol, State Fire Marshal, interops, etc), 9 is Kansas City (including Missouri DPS), and 10 (quick key 0) is FRS/GMRS/CB. Zone 2 (Central Iowa) is also divided into 9 further sub-zones/sub-quick-key -- one for each county.

 

[gmclam]

Sacramento area scanning

BANK 0 - Conventional Fire (100 mile radius of Fair Oaks)
BANK 1 - CAL FIRE & NIFC (all freqs used by Cal Fire statewide)
BANK 2 - USFS, BLM & State Parks
BANK 3 - CHP (not the old state police channels)
BANK 4 - Sacramento City TRS & (Sacramento &San Francisco) Media Frequencies
BANK 5 - Sacramento County TRS & State LE freqs (CHP, CLEMARS, DOJ, etc)
BANK 6 - Roseville TRS & conventional LE north of hwy 50
BANK 7 - Conventional LE south of hwy 50 (San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Amador, Merced, etc)
BANK 8 - Marine & Amateur frequencies
BANK 9 - Aviation

The toughest part is selecting only 150 TGs for the Sac TRSs. I have to narrow that down further to 100 TGs for the PRO-95s.