396t scanning speed

[mattv]

Hi all! Have mercy, i'm a newbie getting back into radios after a few years away (still a youthful 24 years old...started scanning when i was a wee-tike, about 7 or 8 years old)..

Anywho--

Picked up a 396t about a month ago, finally got around to getting the usb cable and programming this beast with the RR webservice and butel software (amazing software!)

I've loaded up about 15% of the scanner's memory consisting of 8 "systems." 7 of the systems are all trunked groups and the 8th system is a conventional group.

Seems like the more freq's I put in, the sloooower it scans and i'm hearing less and less. I did some preliminary reading, and it seems I can change the hold time on specific systems and it's rather easy to lock out certain systems while i'm out of those areas....I did those things and it helped, but is do you gurus have any other tips to make it scan faster?

I did a search on this subject and didn't find anything on the subject, any pointers or links to manual pages would be excellent! This trunking stuff is kinda strange, i remember the good ol' days with my police call book entering numbers into my dad's scanner cause he would get mad and start cussing at it! My, how things have changed.

 

[oregontreehugger]

Your "system hold time" is the amount of time in seconds the scanner spends on each system checking for activity. For trunked systems a setting of "2" works well, for conventional systems I use "0".

Also make sure weather alert, close call, priority, etc. are all off to increase things a bit.

Check your "delay" settings for each system, too. I use a 1 or 2 second delay.

As for scan speed, Uniden's scanners are probably the fastest.

Be sure you're only entering the control channels for the trunked systems (Motorola Type II) and not all the system frequencies. Might speed things up.

Good luck!

 

[JGP]

Your "system hold time" is the amount of time in seconds the scanner spends on each system checking for activity. For trunked systems a setting of "2" works well, for conventional systems I use "0".

Also make sure weather alert, close call, priority, etc. are all off to increase things a bit.

Check your "delay" settings for each system, too. I use a 1 or 2 second delay.

As for scan speed, Uniden's scanners are probably the fastest.

Be sure you're only entering the control channels for the trunked systems (Motorola Type II) and not all the system frequencies. Might speed things up.

Good luck!

There are a few more things you can do to help speed the scan time--along with all the good pointers listed in oregontreehugger's post.

There are seven LTR systems in my area that use only one frequency each. Seven systems use seven seconds of scan time. The thing to do is to combine the seven and make one system out of them. This is one second of scan time for the seven. You gain six seconds of scan time.

Another thing to do with LTR systems is to take the three and five frequency systems from the same LTR provider (General Communications in my case) and make one system out of them. as long as they don't use the same LCNs. Group other providers (like Radiolink Corporation in my case) and make one more system out of them. Do this as much as possible, and it will speed things up a lot.

Joel

 

[Voyager]

Your "system hold time" is the amount of time in seconds the scanner spends on each system checking for activity. For trunked systems a setting of "2" works well, for conventional systems I use "0".

I've never found any issues using a hold time of 0 seconds on a trunked system. The scanner will still evaluate the control channel properly. Anything more than a setting of 0 seconds on a conventional system is a waste and will only serve to slow your scan speed. On conventional systems, even with a setting of 0 seconds every single frequency is still scanned once.

The hold time is most likely the cause of your slow scan speed.

Joe M.

 

[mattv]

I changed hold times and channel delay times both to 0 using arc396 and reloaded the scanner. It still scans slowly. My old scanner that i gave my dad is at least 10x faster scanning (though it is not a trunktracker)... It's so fast that I can't even read the numbers/tags on the display until it stops for traffic...and mine seems to crawl through the frequencies

 

[kma371]

Make sure your squelch setting isn't set to "zero"

 

[Voyager]

I changed hold times and channel delay times both to 0 using arc396 and reloaded the scanner. It still scans slowly. My old scanner that i gave my dad is at least 10x faster scanning (though it is not a trunktracker)... It's so fast that I can't even read the numbers/tags on the display until it stops for traffic...and mine seems to crawl through the frequencies

Are you scanning TRUNKED frequencies? They will scan slower than conventional frequencies since the scanner has to evaluate the trunked control channel data.

I would also try setting them in the scanner. ARC SW tends to be buggy and I've heard many people complain that settings were changed, but were not changed when written.

Joe M.

 

[mattv]

Are you scanning TRUNKED frequencies?

Some of both...even with trunked systems disabled the old scanner blew the 396t away

I would also try setting them in the scanner. ARC SW tends to be buggy and I've heard many people complain that settings were changed, but were not changed when written.

Yes, the arc software is quite buggy indeed....settings seem to be set to 0 on the few systems I checked.

 

[ofd8001]

Sounds like a call to Uniden customer service is in order. I improved my scan time setting system delays to 0 for both digital and trunked. If that's not helping, and your scanner and your dad's scanner are scanning identical systems and frequencies, etc., you might want to call them.

 

[Voyager]

Some of both...even with trunked systems disabled the old scanner blew the 396t away

I have some systems with a couple dozen frequencies in that I can't even SEE it scanning it flies through the system so fast. I know it's scanning it since it stops on frequencies in that system.

I would say it's time to post your files. If you can post them in UASD format, that may be more helpful.

Joe M.