Assistance is most welcomed

[LakesideCPU]

Hello everyone, My name is Tim.

I am employeed by a Franchise Radioshack to do mostly repairs on PCs but occasionally my boss, the owner, gets over ambitious and asks me to do work outside my experience.

My situation, of course as I'm asking here, is programing a scanner. The scanner in question is a radioshack Pro-197. I've tried to do as much research as I possibly can while still having to take care of my other duties and I'm afraid I'm just running into brick walls. My experience with scanners is null. I've never had any personal interest in them much less any experience programming them at any time.

Further background: The customer purchased this unit then promptly brought it back because 'it didn't work'. Of course he did not know how to program it. Apparently he had some old codes from the good 'ol days and had entered them in, but they were for putnam county and did not work. When he brought it back he asked for hancock county to be added as well. I looked up both putnam and hancock country off RR, and programmed them in using the radioshack programming cable and the trial software that comes with that programming cable. We told him it was ready, he came and picked it up and went on his merry way. About a week later he returns saying the hancock country never worked and he lives 'just down the street' from the sherriff's office. And of course his list of counties has grown since then to now include green, baldwin, and washington.

So my issues are now tripled. Why didn't hancock work for him, how do I make sure it does work before sending it back again, and how do I program digital frequencies.

First issue, why didn't hancock work for him. I've read a couple threads that have hinted that hancock has switched to digital as well. Can anyone confirm or deny this? I used the following codes from the RR database programmed under conventional using the Radioshack ARC500 programming software.
Can anyone verify this are correct and working?

154.19000 WQBK599 RM Fire Dispatch FM Fire Dispatch

155.34000 KWQ696 BM EMS FM EMS-Talk

154.98000 KNIM911 RM 173.8 PL Sheriff Dispatch FM Law Dispatch

154.90500 KNIM911 BM Sheriff FM Law Talk

154.93500 KNIM911 M Sheriff FM Law Talk

Also, this customer is using the default telescoping antenna that comes with the unit. I do not know his exact distance from the sherriffs office nor do I know what his house is like, property or any of that information. He could be burried in 2 acres of trees for all I know. Does anyone know what kind of range I can realisticly expect from the base telescoping antenna of the PRO-197?


2nd problem. Programming baldwin and Green. For green I used the 2 free downloads provided with the demo software to have RR database imported automatically. I can probably use that as a guide to figure out baldwin as well, putnam should still be conventional, as well as washington, can anyone confirm that for me as well?

3rd problem is my largest. Testing. Our shop is located on the border of green and putnam along highway 44. in the lake oconee area. My workspace is in the backroom of a metal building. I have no access to an external long range antenna. After I program everything in I never recieve any incoming signals. If I set the squelch low enough occasionally it'll break through but it's always just burps of static. Short of mounting this into my car and driving for hours to each of the individual counties is there any simplistic way to verify the programming of a scanner? I know my boss is already less then pleased at the time I've spent trying to educate myself and he will not approve the funds or the time to install a long range antenna.

Currently I have green county programmed using the import functionallity, and selecting only the frequencies listed as clear, and unencrypted. I also have hancock programmed under conventional. Of course neither one pick up from my shop.

So....with all this said. Thank you to anyone and everyone who can lend any advice to my plight. Hopefully I can get this figured out and working so I can keep both this customer and my boss happy.

 

[LakesideCPU]

Green county

I did read that green county is fully encrypted, and baldwin will be fully encrypted as well. So I'm not too overly concerned about those as they won't be accessible. Sorry about asking about them when both those counties were clearly stated to be unmonitorable via scanner.

 

[MeddleMan]

Soo much fun!

Makes a lot of people mad. Maybe I can help, by the weekend, as you are not that far away. Yet again, one of our neighbors may beat me to it!

 

[LakesideCPU]

Thank you for volunteering your assistance

Thank you for your interesting in helping me.

I can definitively state that my office is indeed a dead zome. Taking the pro-197 unit from my workbench to my car in the parking lot merely 100 feet away at most I could suddenly pick up Putnam countie's signals. They're still weak and come in soft and scratchy but they're there. So I do believe range is indeed the one true issue I need to overcome.

So short of taking a drive out to hancock county and sit outside of the police station in sparta what I need is a nice long range antenna array to hook the unit into and test. Of those two options the drive is far more likely to be the outcome. But once more the customer did state he lived 'just down the road' from the Sparta police station and never picked up a single transmission. Maybe the sherriffs out there sleep a lot? Of course there's washington county as well, which I can't pick up either from my location in putnam. Maybe what I need are some good suggestions as to some long range antenna's for scanners, both car and home, that I can pass along to the customer.

And once more green and baldwin are all encrypted so there's nothing to monitor leaving those two counties a mute point.