996XT Display Color Functionality

[bwhite]

I'm just curious, I've used alternate colors to indicate which frequency/talkgroup is being received. Green being the default, red for fire, blue for police. When the police or fire key up the display will go red or blue at the beginning of the transmission but after a few seconds while the speaker continues to talk the color will flip back to green.
I had thought that the red or blue would remain until the 996 had moved
back to the scan mode or another transmission. Is this the norm?
No big deal, as I said, just curious.
[Many of the choices including blue and red make the display very hard to
read so I may go back to one of the more legible colors for everything.]

 

[oracavon]

Yeah, that's normal. Same for selecting a flashing alert color. After a few seconds, it returns to the standard backlight color. It would be nice to make that user-selectable, but it isn't.

 

[bwhite]

Thanx for the reply. I kinda wish they had made provisions to make the display characters more ledgible when the darker colors like blue and red are used but no big deal.

 

[oracavon]

I noticed that, too. Weird that they would make it so hard to read with certain backlight colors. There is a contrast adjustment, but it doesn't seem help much with that issue.

Actually, I do get a good display with red as a constant backlight color, especially at night. Maybe you could try adjusting the contrast for red. Blue seems pretty much hopeless, though.

 

[bwhite]

If you largely use your 96 in a darkened environment red would be the choice as you can get your eyes accustomed to it and not blow them out as they look at other things. Red is probably still the night time lighting of choice in cockpits; I see it more on cars the last 10 or so years. I can tell you that in the crew portion of the engines I ride there is red and white lighting. The driver and officer up front do NOT like the white light(s) on. Apparently the red doesn't bounce around as much and destroy night vision.
My 96 is on during various lighting conditions so I'm SOL.
Fortunately I recognize the voices and can tell by the content
most of the time.

 

[AE7Q]

It would also be nice, when using colors, for the entire lighting (including buttons) of the 996XT not to flash as the color goes back to the default after five seconds (probably a bug).

 

[bwhite]

I have noticed the flash but I doubt a fix will get fix-it attention. Kinda strange though.
Since I'm usually across or not even in the room just seeing the color gives me a visual clue as-to who is transmitting if I can see the radio. As I mentioned earlier, the content of the conversation usually gives away the transmitting agency.