Was a frequency "Tune" mode ever added to the Whistler TRX-1 or TRX-2?
EricCottrell put it very well in the Trx 1 and 2 first impressions thread:
I am 100% in agreement with Eric. I had been a loyal Radioshack/GRE customer for a decade through the GRE PSR-500 series, and I still recommend Whistler WS1040s to friends.
However the lack of a direct entry frequency tuning option, keypad and other historically normal user interface features of a handheld radio scanner prevented me from buying the GRE PSR-800, or the Whistler WS1080/1088 generation of scanners.
The scanning hobby for me isn't about being an end user, and programming my zip code and pressing the scan button. It's about using the scanner as a tool to figure out what's out there to listen to. To find new frequencies, digital modes and trunking formats. This led to an interest in control channel decoding of some lesser known trunking formats including LTR Passport (thanks to software EricCottrell himself wrote a decade ago), Motorola Capacity Plus and Connect Plus trunking, NEXEDGE and iDAS. I was fortunate to be part of some of the earliest discussions on radioreference to dissect how Capacity Plus and Connect Plus actually worked.
The radioreference database is a great resource for scanner manufacturers and opens the scanning hobby to a much broader consumer base, but it is also a double-edged sword.
It relies on people like me, Eric and thousands of others who have the curiosity to search for new frequencies and write submissions to keep it up to date. Failing to provide the user with all the tools to do something as fundamental as manually enter a frequency will only cause the database to stagnate, and hurt the scanner manufacturer in the long run when they can no longer provide an up to date database in their product. You will see this especially with new DMR and NXDN frequencies, which don't yet exist in the database and require users to search for and submit them.
Furthermore in the case of control channel and digital decoding, one must have a VFO or other manual way of directly entering the radio frequency into the scanner, to hold it on the control channel frequency of interest and monitor the PC/IF output or discriminator audio.
While I am excited by the new DMR conventional and MotoTRBO trunking functionality, and the announced future NXDN support, I cannot get over the lack of a feature as fundamental as a direct frequency tune mode in a consumer radio scanner. It's quite simply one of the most important things you need to be able to do, and has existed in radio scanners since as far back as the 1980s.
Can Whistler, or anyone who has recently purchased this scanner clarify this issue? Because without a simple way to directly navigate to a radio frequency, I'm afraid I'm going to have to vote with my feet on this one and refrain from buying this product.
EricCottrell put it very well in the Trx 1 and 2 first impressions thread:
EricCottrell said:
I am 100% in agreement with Eric. I had been a loyal Radioshack/GRE customer for a decade through the GRE PSR-500 series, and I still recommend Whistler WS1040s to friends.
However the lack of a direct entry frequency tuning option, keypad and other historically normal user interface features of a handheld radio scanner prevented me from buying the GRE PSR-800, or the Whistler WS1080/1088 generation of scanners.
The scanning hobby for me isn't about being an end user, and programming my zip code and pressing the scan button. It's about using the scanner as a tool to figure out what's out there to listen to. To find new frequencies, digital modes and trunking formats. This led to an interest in control channel decoding of some lesser known trunking formats including LTR Passport (thanks to software EricCottrell himself wrote a decade ago), Motorola Capacity Plus and Connect Plus trunking, NEXEDGE and iDAS. I was fortunate to be part of some of the earliest discussions on radioreference to dissect how Capacity Plus and Connect Plus actually worked.
The radioreference database is a great resource for scanner manufacturers and opens the scanning hobby to a much broader consumer base, but it is also a double-edged sword.
It relies on people like me, Eric and thousands of others who have the curiosity to search for new frequencies and write submissions to keep it up to date. Failing to provide the user with all the tools to do something as fundamental as manually enter a frequency will only cause the database to stagnate, and hurt the scanner manufacturer in the long run when they can no longer provide an up to date database in their product. You will see this especially with new DMR and NXDN frequencies, which don't yet exist in the database and require users to search for and submit them.
Furthermore in the case of control channel and digital decoding, one must have a VFO or other manual way of directly entering the radio frequency into the scanner, to hold it on the control channel frequency of interest and monitor the PC/IF output or discriminator audio.
While I am excited by the new DMR conventional and MotoTRBO trunking functionality, and the announced future NXDN support, I cannot get over the lack of a feature as fundamental as a direct frequency tune mode in a consumer radio scanner. It's quite simply one of the most important things you need to be able to do, and has existed in radio scanners since as far back as the 1980s.
Can Whistler, or anyone who has recently purchased this scanner clarify this issue? Because without a simple way to directly navigate to a radio frequency, I'm afraid I'm going to have to vote with my feet on this one and refrain from buying this product.
