New ideas for system programming?

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W2IRT

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Mar 24, 2003
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370
Location
West Caldwell, NJ
Long-time scannist here from back in the late-70s xtal days, now using a pair of 996p2s, 996XT and my trusty 780XLT. What I'm asking for here is maybe a new take on how I should consider organizing my systems and talkgroups in the P2 scanners, perhaps to make more logical sense. What I have now works pretty well for me, and I'm not saying a change is needed, but maybe some of y'all are doing things differently and in a way I'd never have thought useful.

A bit of background on what I'm dealing with. I'm located in New Jersey, where every local town and village has its own PD, FD and often EMS (or shares with one or two other nearby towns). Until recently each had their own self-contained radio system (low, high, UHF, 800-analog). Many of these small towns in northern NJ have joined a 700 MHz statewide digital system called NJICS that uses P1 and P2, greatly simplifying what/how to program (some have taken the opportunity to encrypt as well, but so it goes). The state PD is on 800 MHz analog trunking, and a good handful of municipalities in my county (Essex) are still on Hi band and UHF conventional repeaters and simplex. The next county over has a separate county-wide P25 system. So with that said, here's my programming strategy:

Quick Keys 1-0
1-My town and any immediate surrounding towns that are still analog (different GQKs for each town)
2-Surrounding towns on the 700 MHz NJICS system (one site only, West Orange Simulcast)
3-next level of surrounding towns on NJICS
4-State PD highway patrol TG for my area
5-State PD for the Garden State Parkway
6-State PD for the NJ Turnpike
7-State PD patched to the 700 MHz system (better signals/audio)
8-State PD 800 MHz, all regional TGs
9-More surrounding towns in analog
0-Statewide tacticals (JEMS, SPEN, VTAC/UTAC, etc).

Then in 10 through 80 are surrounding counties (SQKs), and towns within the counties (GQKs), and for certain regular routes I drive that cross town and county borders. I don't really monitor the obscure stuff nor have I ever played with iCall. It's basically to know what's going on around me.

So based on what I've described, am I making the most of what I have or should I consider a different way of doing things? When everything is going, I have the 996XT on the local analog stuff, and one of the 996-P2s on the NJICS system quick-keys 2 and 3 (above), and the NJSP troopers patrolling I-80/280/287 on the BC-780.
 
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