Help just bought PRO 135!!!!!!!

[NaeAtWork]

Yesterday I went to radio shack and bought a Pro-135 and I need help?? I went on line and I am prigramming the codes i got on line for my area and I get nothing...... am i doing something wrong? PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!!!!

 

[KC5EIB]

Question number 1, what is your area?

Question number 2, what do you want to listen to in your area?

 

[Evert]

Question number 3, what are the details of how you are programming the codes.

Question number 4, Clarify "get nothing" - do you not see the frequency numbers that you put in, hear nothing, or what?

 

[NaeAtWork]

Thank you for getting back to me. I am in the Rancho Cucamonga, CA area and I would like to hear it all Police, Fire, Air. Can you help me?

 

[NaeAtWork]

Q's 3 & 4:
I hear things but like 50 miles away and mostly trucker conversation, some police but nothing that i can program. I went program crazy one night and programmed everything i heard but have heard nothing since on those channels, it is wierd! When i am in scan mode I hear police calls but breif like less than 15 sec and then nothing so i hit scan again until i hear something else. When i hear something clear hit pause and wait to see if it is something in my area so i can program it, but usually pretty far.

 

[Evert]

I don’t know much about your area but a quick look indicates most of the radio activity in your area is in the 800 MHz frequency range and most of the public safety groups use trunked systems, neither of which your scanner can handle.

Maybe someone in your area can help you find something you can listen to but it looks to me like you are whistling Dixie as far as ‘listening to it all” with the Pro-135 is concerned.

 

[N8IAA]

Without having a scanner that does 800Mhz, you will not be listening to your county FD and SO. They are on 800Mhz repeaters, not trunked. But, your county does have a trunked system. Maybe you can take the scanner back and get one of the analog trunktrackers that are on sale
Also, posting in the California forum might get you some good advice as well.
Larry

 

[nanZor]

Q's 3 & 4:When i am in scan mode I hear police calls but breif like less than 15 sec and then nothing so i hit scan again until i hear something else. When i hear something clear hit pause and wait to see if it is something in my area so i can program it, but usually pretty far.

Sounds like you are listening to a uhf trunking system for sure, but the 135 won't really handle it. Take a look at the database and see how much trunking is active in Rancho Cucamonga, and decide if you need to upgrade to a scanner capable of tracking it.

Having said that - if you want to have some fun you can do what we did in the old days with a conventional scanner trying to track an analog trunk system:

(With the Pro-135, you'll be limited to 450mhz trunked systems, so anything 800mhz can be ignored)

Find all the trunking frequencies for the system of interest and program them all into a bank. TURN OFF THE DELAY on each of the channels you program. Now just scan the bank (or banks if you have to use more than one) The key issue here is speed. So if the system you are trying to track only has 8 frequencies, just program those 8 into a bank and either delete or lock out the rest you might have in there. It wastes a lot of memory locking out the other usable memories, like 9-20 (assuming a 20 channel per bank scanner), but that's the way to do it.

If the traffic is light, you might be able to make out quite a bit of it. You'll need to lock out the control channel, and since this sometimes changes every day or so, when you track the system the next day, you'll want to review your lockout to see if you can put it back into the scan rotation if you no longer hear the control signals. You'll jump around day to day locking and unlocking the control channel.

If the load is very light, perhaps late at night, you might find yourself constantly landing on the same frequency over and over and be tempted to just plug that into a memory like a conventional single-channel system. However, when the trunking system gets a little bit of a load, the channels all spread out again, so it is best not to put a trunking channel into its own memory on another bank with other conventional single-channel systems.

In the end, the extras tones, codes, and other trunking noise might drive you crazy even if you are able to track the system somewhat. But what the heck - give it a shot!

Pulling off a trick like this on a non-trunking scanner is a blast on lightly loaded systems.