Quick Key For A Site

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W5NNV

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I am a 536HP owner for a couple of years and it's just a great radio. No major operating problems at all and mine has been used in the car every day here in Minnesota, which is a very "signal rich" area.

But I am still a bit mystified by the apparent choice of using either a DEPT quick key or a SITE quick key, since you cannot use both at same time (?). In Sentinel software, which is what I use exclusively to program my scanner, you will find the option to choose a Quick Key for a given SITE when designing some given favorite list to be downloaded to your scanner. What is the SITE quick key option all about ? Obviously, it is about switching off the scanner's access to some particular site's control channel and its operating frequencies, but It seems to me that if you wish to "Navigate By Quick Keys" (pages 53-54 of the 536 manual) via punching in a FL quick key value, then a SYS quick key value, and then a DEPT quick key value/ or SITE quick key value (?), there would have been a better explanation. Perhaps help was appended in the Sentinel software online manual (November 2016 the latest version) but I will be darned if I could find an explanation there either. I am nearly cross-eyed from reading the poorly written Uniden manual anyway, which in places has some very inartfully phrased directions/advice. It is maybe revealing that on pages 53-54 of the 536 operator's manual there is not found a single peep about SITE quick keys even though the section is entitled Selecting Quick Keys. Hmmmmmm.

Then, here's the direct quote from the Sentinel online manual in a section entitled "Understanding Quick Keys"

"Organizing your Quick Keys will be part of the planning. You will have to figure out which QK's to assign to your Favorites Lists, Systems, Departments, and Sites so you can scan them without a table of contents and with some sort of logic you can remember."

Then, further down the page, we find this verbiage under "Advice"

"Assigning a QK to a FL is a good idea but don't go overboard and assign QK's to all your 40 Systems, 125 Departments, and 300 Sites if you don't need to. Only assign QK's to what you may want to turn on of off."

That sentence obfuscates matters greatly, implying that you CAN pick both a DEPT and a SITE quick key.
In what scenario would an operator use one or the other type of quick key ? Something in the back of my brain tells me this has something to do with programming conventional frequencies vs programming in some trunked system, but I cannot dredge up where I read or heard this.
 

UPMan

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You can use both a DEPT and SITE QK. As you noted above SITE QK will turn on/off tower sites, which might be desirable due to being able to receive particular sites better at different locations. DEPT QK will turn on/off the channels that are monitored on the enabled sites. DEPT and SITE QK reside at the same "level" and share the same 100 QK values (example: Assign a DEPT to QK 4 and a SITE to QK 74: FF.SS.04 will enable/disable the department; FF.SS.74 will enable/disable the site).
 

W5NNV

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Thanks

Thanks to everybody for the tips and explanatory responses.


Neither the Sentinel software nor the Uniden manual makes anything clear about the difference(s) between a Quick Key for DEPT and a Quick Key for SITE.

Now I understand. Thanks again.

NN5SS
 
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