HP-1 - What's your strategy for favorites lists?

[daveharpe]

Hey everyone,

I've had the HP-1 for a few months now, and I love the radio. What I'm not totally sure about is the best way to use favorites lists.

Example - I generally listen to public safety in the city, but the "range" function really doesn't do a very good job excluding systems I'm not interested in (primarily due to some pretty large, multiagency trunk systems, among other things). So I have a basic favorites list I've created with the systems (and sites) that I'm interested in most of the time. Let's call that one "Normal". So far so good.

But then let's say I want to listen to road maintenance crews during a snow event. One way to do it would be to create a separate favorites list with just the road crews and add that into the scan. Another way would be to program the road crews into the "Normal" list and select/deselect the appropriate service type as desired. Not sure which one is best. Some of the crews share the same trunk system as some of the public safety, so that might make maintenance of the trunk system easier.

Another way to do it would be to do it mostly based on location. Create a favorites list with all of the systems in the area, set avoids on the sites/systems I'm generally not interested in or don't receive well, then use that to scan. But keeping track of the avoids could get tedious, and very hard to enable/disable groups of systems of similar service types.

Lots of different ways to ring the same bell, and I'm not sure I've found the best one.

So what's your strategy? I would love to hear how you're organizing your HP-1.

Thanks,

Dave

 

[captaincraig44]

Hey Dave. I'm in the Denver Metro area as well. I have about 25 favorite lists setup. I think it's easier overall to have a lot of specialized favorite lists that you can select on or off quickly. My primary list is called simply "Arvada area" and included APD/FD, aircraft overflight freqs, mutual aid TG's and some other assorted items of interest on a daily basis. Then, I have other lists such as a Metro Fire Comms list that should alert me to a noteworthy incident pretty quickly. From there, I have most of the counties on their own favorites list, Arapahoe, Douglas, etc which include municipalities in each county. For each list, I have edited down the sites so only the ones that are strong from my house and carry the agency I am interested in are programmed for a given favorite list.

It's really just a try it and see what you think kind of process. I hadn't thought about programming everything and just selecting various services off when you didn't need them. That could have some merit. . .

 

[t_shuffle]

I think of favorites lists the way I've always thought of banks, only now there are as many available as you want, not just ten, or twenty five, or even 100. It's rad. I've always done mine by service type and location. Makes it easy to pick out exactly what you want to hear without having to hit lockout (avoid).

 

[NWI_Scanner_Guy]

For my favorites lists, I have them set up as scan lists. In fact, I pretty much copied the format from my 106. I have a list for all the local PDs/FDs, Chicago PD, Chicago FD, local trunk systems, some Indiana agencies for when I visit my family, and one list I call "MISC Frequencies." That's where I've been tossing stuff like taxi and bus companies. Also have a list for local 2mtr and 70cm repeaters.

The HP-1 is an awesome scanner, and I'm sure I've only yet scratched the surface of what it can do.