BCD436HP/BCD536HP: Quick Key Issue

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BlueMoon2

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So I usually listen to Fire/Rescue during the day that is in Quick Key Department 0 in System 0, of favorite list 0. So in other words, 0.0.0. At night, I like to listen to just the police. So I want to turn off Fire/Rescue. Here's the problem. When I turn off Fire Rescue by hitting, 0.0.0, my scanner says 'scan mode, nothing to scan", even though everything else in that system is still enabled. ACPD is in dept 3 (enabled), City police is in dept 4 (enabled) and university police is in dept 5 (enabled). NONE of the police are in Dept 0 where fire/rescue is. I'm about to pull my hair out with this issue. I hate the idea of favorites lists.

I have three systems in this favorites list including the system I want to listen to. I always disable the other two systems (Conventional and Virginia STARS). Here's the thing, when I manually go into Fire/Rescue Dept 0 and tell it to permanently avoid this dept and hit system to scan the whole system, I don't get the "Scan Mode Nothing to Scan' message. What's going on?
 

BlueMoon2

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In addition, I have checked that all the 'service types' are on and correct and they are.


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Dbubs

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Sounds like PD and fire are both in favorite list 0? If so create another favorite list with just PD in favorite list 1. Remove PD from favorite list 0. Now at night just hitting 0 will turn off fire. No need for 0.0.0. Hitting just 1 will turn on police.


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N5XTC

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yes, great FD and PD in diff fav lists. 0 for fd and 1 for pd. i use many many fav lists with all kinds of variations i use. so easy to turn on and off. i dont like hitting 1.1.1 or whatever. if i want to turn off a dept in the fav list, i wait til it stops on that dept, hit the dept key to hold it, then hit avoid. works for me and it is only a temp avoid til i turn the scanner off and back on.
 

ofd8001

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I suspect there is something amiss in how your Departments are programmed with respect to their Quick Keys, Avoid or if used, Location Control settings.

Start Sentinel and edit the Favorites List. Click on the System. You can see whether the police Departments have been set to Avoid.

Next look at the right pane and you'll see a "Dept/Site Quick Keys Status tab. Look at that tab and confirm the boxes are checked for the Department Quick Keys you have assigned for police Departments. (If unchecked, that's the same as having the Deqpartment Quick Key off).

Lastly, if you use Location Control for the Favorites List, confirm you have the correct lat/long for the Department. If a Department is created from "scratch" with Sentinel, it will assign 0/0 as the lat/long for the location. When the scanner is operating, it will turn off the Department because it is not in Range due to the 0/0 location.

Another thing to try if the above isn't helpful:

Just for diagnostic purposes, use your Sentinel to copy and paste some of your more active police talkgroups into Fire/Rescue Department. Then program to scanner and begin monitoring (turning the Fire/Rescue Department Quick Key back on).

If you receive police transmissions, that will confirm programming for police is correct and you don't have any Service Type issues, etc.
 

rwier

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yes, great FD and PD in diff fav lists. 0 for fd and 1 for pd. i use many many fav lists with all kinds of variations i use. so easy to turn on and off. i dont like hitting 1.1.1 or whatever...................

Amen, and pass the biscuits, lol. Make many, many, FLs and assign them only the FIRST QK number (The FL itself). I never hit the decimal point/period key at all.
 

ScanRite

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I noticed this a few months ago and it bugs the crap out of me. I want Department 0, but in a certain location I don't want Site 0. So I would turn off Site 0. Unfortunately it turns off Department 0 too. Took me a bit to realize why nothing was being received.

You cannot have a Department and a Site assigned to the same Quick Key, otherwise you turn off both.

So I went through and reassigned all of my Sites to start at 90, or on one, 80 due to the number of sites.

What would be nice is if Sites could be 3 digits instead of limited to two. Big system with a 100 departments kills it.
 

BlueMoon2

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Scan rite, you may be onto something. I too have the simulcast site quick key set to 0 as well as my system quick key and dept quick key. Hmm


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ScanRite

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Attached is how I've been doing my systems now.

I preface the names with the FL#, DEPT # or SITE #. Sites also have a _ in front so they go to the bottom of the list. Makes it really easy to flip through the radio and find what I'm looking for. Don't need it for local stuff, but when I travel to other areas and can easily find what I need.

Note: Contrary to my previous post, this example site does not follow my 90+ site # rule. But it's my main local one and there's a reason the sites and departments are numbered as such.
 

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ofd8001

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Scan rite, you may be onto something. I too have the simulcast site quick key set to 0 as well as my system quick key and dept quick key. Hmm

That would most definitely cause your "Nothing to Scan" predicament. When you press 0.0.0 E yes, you are toggling both a Department and a Site, since they have the same Department Quick Key. Then, with there being no active sites, you get the "Nothing to Scan".

I concur with the above - assign site(s) to a different Quick Key than what is used for Department(s).

On the other suggestion of Department Quick Keys > 99, part of me wants to say there is merit to that. Then there is another part of me that says in large area systems, Location Control may be better for managing what comes on/goes off, rather using Quick Keys.
 

ScanRite

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On the other suggestion of Department Quick Keys > 99, part of me wants to say there is merit to that. Then there is another part of me that says in large area systems, Location Control may be better for managing what comes on/goes off, rather using Quick Keys.

I'm a purest. I program in every talkgroup and block of channels available. I may lock a bunch out, but they're always in there in case I need it. I'll admit I have yet to use location based scanning so I can't speak to how accurate it is. I have a lot of mountains around me and I can hear sites that I may want to, while mobile, that wouldn't be "on" yet because they would be out of range. Make your range too far and it's pretty much pointless.

I much prefer locking in and out exactly what I want and not relying on my location to dictate what I'm listening to.
 
C

cebowman

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If the Departments were all Conventional this an wouldn't be issue but......

Unfortunately, it sounds as if your System is Digital and your turning the "Site" off with the DQK 0, DQK contain 2 things: both the Department Groups and the Department Sites, Change the Departments Site to a different DQK "." or #'s 5-99,

Press ..1 ..2 ..3 ..4 (..x) when in that just Favorite and in just that System, instead of 0.0.x, to turn Departments ON/OFF quickly

Half-way down
Uniden Multi-Site Trunking - The RadioReference Wiki
Uniden Scanners Systems, Sites and Groups - The RadioReference Wiki
 
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ofd8001

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I much prefer locking in and out exactly what I want and not relying on my location to dictate what I'm listening to.

If you are satisfied with this and suits your needs, all is good.

In the case of a large system (typically a statewide system) with dozens of sites, "listening" to all sites can be inefficient. The scanner goes through each frequency for a given site to check for control channel activity (until it finds control channel data). So for those too far away sites, some time is being consumed. For example, averaging 8 frequencies per site and 50 sites, you are looking at the same time it would take to scan 400 conventional frequencies or thereabouts to cycle through all sites.

That being said, I've seen posts where people configure site quick keys based on regions. Keeps from having to enter location data for those not having GPS devices.

Also when I'm creating Favorites Lists (and I'm using Location Control since I have a GPS device) I tend to bump up the Range for Departments. The database is set-up so that locations for Departments follow jurisdiction areas. My preference is to reach out a little more.
 

ScanRite

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If you are satisfied with this and suits your needs, all is good.

Yeah, I was satisfied until I realized I was locking out my departments at the same time as my sites. :)

But I've redone my settings to accommodate for this and all is well now. I just wish we could assign a 3 digit site #.
 

amcferrin90

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When you accidentally turn off your scan lists and you have the "nothing to scan", how do you go about turning that back on without using Sentinel? Stupid annoying to be on the road and mistakenly turning off all the sites or actually pretty certain two sites were active and turning one off they both turn off then not having access to software to fix it.

For instance in my case I assign systems as sites and are turning groups of sites on/off depending on where I am and what I want to hear. Where i'm at there could be five sites all in range and I want to control which sites I'm monitoring so i don't miss certain radio traffic. I personally am so frustrated at these quick key things because everywhere I've read or watched them being discussed it's like they're talking to people that have had scanners through all the iterations of equipment over the years.

[rant]
Quite frankly for the Uniden R&D people that read through here, while they have done a good job keeping up with technology I think the complication and frustration factor is overwhelming. To spend several hundred bucks on a scanner and spending months trying to figure out some functions makes the investment seem like a waste. This coming from a person who could sit down with the Motorola RSS or CPS and in an hour program up a radio and not have to mess with it again.
[/rant]
 

ofd8001

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Understandng Quick Keys has indeed gotten more complicated as scanners progress. Radio systems are more complex (I'm sure you've seen that in programming) and us scanner users have asked for scanners to be more flexible. That means programming scanners and understanding how they operate enlarges the learning curve.

But that's true for a lot of things electronic such as cameras, smart phones, computers and even televisions.

On to your situation - I'm presuming you have an x36 model scanner.

You say you have "Systems assigned as sites". That is a misunderstanding. Sites are components of systems.

Just as an overview, think of your scanner as a file room which may have a number of file cabinets. Each file cabinet would be a Favorites List. A drawer in the file cabinet would be a System. In that drawer you would have file folders. In a trunked system, each site would be a file folder with the pieces of paper being the control channel frequencies. In that drawer you may have other file folders where each folder would be a Department and the pieces of paper are the Talkgroup ID numbers or channels.

There are three different types of Quick Keys. One is the Favorites List Quick Key which unlocks the file cabinet. Another is a System Quick Key which opens the drawer. The last is a Department Quick Key, which is where you grab or replace the file folder.

The schema for toggling Quick Keys is FF.SS.DD Eyes. FF is the Favorites List Quick Key, SS is the System Quick Key and DD is the Department and Site (for trunked systems) Quick Key.

This is a progressive thing meaning that if you turn off a Favorites List Quick Key by press FF Eyes, you turn off everything within that Favorites List (Systems, Departments and Sites).

I have a multiple site trunked system I monitor in a Favorites List. I've assigned 1 as the Favorites List Quick Key. The System Quick Key is 0. There are several groups (technically Departments) of Talkgroup IDs (channels) and they have Department Quick Keys between 0 and 50. I configure Sites to have Department Quick Keys greater than 50. So Site 1 has DQK 51, Site 2 has DQK 52 and so on.

Yeah this system is complicated to grasp at first. But I think the more you mess with it, you'll become a lot more comfortable with it. If you can deal with Motorola programming software, you have the capacity to learn this. I too have dealt with RSS/CPS over the years. I'd rather program a scanner than a radio, particularly a trunked system radio.
 
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