A Question for You GRE Users

[qlajlu]

We have all been dreading the day that "they throw the switch" on the rebanding thing and yet we have experienced several site change-overs this past little while with no ill effects. Our downtime has been equal to the amount of time it takes to discover the "old CC" has been replaced and sniff out the new CC. We have also confirmed that the new CCs are 15 MHz below the ones being replaced.

Would it be possible to "out maneuver" the UCAN Radio Engineers by programming anticipated CCs into our scanners 15 MHz below what is being used now on the sites we normally listen to and keep the current CCs in our scanners, too. Theoretically, when they throw the switch the scanner will simply grab the new CC and keep on scanning. The custom band plan tells the scanner how to handle the CCs. We would NOT experience any downtime.

My question: Would it be possible to do this with our PSR-500/600s? As long as you have room in your TSYS Frequency list to double up on the number of CC entries, it should work. The only unknown would be if they jump us with an off the wall CC.

 

[Grog]

On the pro97/2055 I can program multiple control channels for a given set of talkgroups (say when I know I only want to hear one site). Can't you do the same with the PSR?

When the time comes and the old channel goes silent, just lock that out and unlock the new frequency. The worst thing that happens is that the control channel is not there, then you just go about searching for it in whatever way you would do that.

 

[qlajlu]

When the time comes and the old channel goes silent, just lock that out and unlock the new frequency. The worst thing that happens is that the control channel is not there, then you just go about searching for it in whatever way you would do that.

That's the beauty of the PSRs. You shouldn't have to lock out any of the frequencies because the scanner, not receiving a data stream, will simply skip over them.

 

[Grog]

That's the beauty of the PSRs. You shouldn't have to lock out any of the frequencies because the scanner, not receiving a data stream, will simply skip over them.

I always lock out what I don't use out of habit even if I know I am out of range

 

[bneilson]

The GREs do not let you lockout Control Channels. This is one of the few negatives I have found in using mine. My Uniden could lock them out but it is just not available on the GRE.

But qlajlu is right, you really don't have to because the scanner will just skip the unused frequency. Ultimately you should just remove the frequency from the scanner as it will not be useful anymore.

We have all been dreading the day that "they throw the switch" on the rebanding thing and yet we have experienced several site change-overs this past little while with no ill effects. Our downtime has been equal to the amount of time it takes to discover the "old CC" has been replaced and sniff out the new CC....

Keep in mind this is only for the GRE and some Radio Shack users out there. I have several friends that are Uniden and they are dead in the water...

 

[bchris]

I agree with all previous posts (in this thread).

qlajlu - I think your idea is good. Like you said, UCAN is not required to place the new CC 15Mhz below the old CC, but they ARE required to use a frequency that they have a license for. We have noticed that they so far have mostly chosen to use the corresponding CC from the 'new set' of licensed freqs, the new set being 15 Mhz below the old, but they could use any of the new freqs for the CC.

If you really dont want to miss anything, you could enter all the new freqs as CC's, then like you said your scanner should just pick up on which ever one becomes active. This is the kind of stuff that promted me to start the [thread="116530"]UCAN Rebanding Patterns [/thread]thread.