Programming - grouping channels by function across systems

[kc2kth]

I'm wondering if anyone has tried to group channels for multiple systems and if so how that can be accomplished without duplicating systems (presumably impacting scan speed). Here's my example.

I'm in NJ. The trunked systems I monitor - portions of them at least - are the NJSP, NJICS and Ocean County systems. I also monitor quite a few simplex systems including Ocean County, Toms River and others. I've always simply selected these in Sentinel and added each to it's own FL.

I created an additional FL called "medevac". The intent was to easily select this to monitor the local, county and state medevac channels without monitoring all of the TGs in each system. In all there are probably a half dozen medevac TG/frequencies in all across multiple systems including NJICS, NJSP, Ocean County trunked, and a few simplex. By doing this I have duplicated the trunked systems. I've done something similar to break up county fire from EMS since I tend to listen to fire, but not EMS as much.

After reading through some of the threads here on using quick keys to accomplish some of what I today use FL for I'm rethinking how I do things. With my programming as is, I've never had a need for quick keys. However I've also never been happy with scan speed and I'm thinking duplicating systems had some impact on that.

So the question is if I program each system once, is there a way with quick keys to group channels from multiple systems? Since QK are tied to the system (the same QK can be used for different systems) I don't see a way to accomplish this.

 

[troymail]

I'm pretty sure that in Sentinel, you can assign the same quick key to more than one system in a favorites list (even though I believe that if you try to do that on the radio directly, the firmware complains/blocks it).

The only thing I am aware of that you can "group" under a quick key are systems at the favorites list level. Below that, they are all independent.

However, as far as I know from trying to make a x36 "group" things to try to mimic the flexibility of allowing each talkgroup exist in multiple scanlists on my Whistlers, I think the only option on the x36 is to scan the system(s) multiple times (i.e. split/duplicate the systems/sites/talkgroups into separate systems). Even if all you wanted to do is assign a specific subset of talkgroups that are not already in their own "department", you still need to cut and paste them into a different "department" in order to assign a separate department quick key.

 

[jonwienke]

I'm wondering if anyone has tried to group channels for multiple systems and if so how that can be accomplished without duplicating systems (presumably impacting scan speed).

For trunked system talkgroups, no. You can put all of the systems containing the talkgroups of interest in a single Favorite List, but you can't just scan particular talkgroups, because talkgroups are never scanned. Only sites are scanned, and the talkgroup information is irrelevant until a transmission is detected, and the scanner tries to identify it and decide what to do with it.

You don't want to program multiple iterations of the same trunked system, because scan time increases in direct proportion to the number of times each system is programmed, and you are guaranteed to miss more traffic.

What you CAN do is assign all the conventional channels and trunked talkgroups you want to group together to one of the Custom Service types (e.g. set all medevac conventional channels and trunked talkgroups to Custom 1) so you can toggle them all on and off together by enabling or disabling that Service Type in the scanner menu, while only scanning one instance of each trunked system. So you get the fastest possible scan speed and a simple way to toggle each type of traffic. You just have to remember what Service Type you're using for each category of channels.

 

[kc2kth]

I appreciate the replies. It sounds like I'm not missing some key aspect of QK here. I do like the idea of using the custom service types as a workaround. Jon, your comments regarding scanning the site from another thread regarding bcdx36 scan speed are what got me thinking about how to do this better. That thread was from almost exactly a year ago, so I appreciate you revisiting the topic!