Sentinel Files for SLC Metro Area

[KD7DDC]

Looking to upgrade to an SDS100 in about a month. Does anyone have Sentinel files they might share? I have looked at the software a bit and started making my setup but seeing some others may give me some new thoughts on how to break away from my normal programming thinking. I mostly listen to SLC and County so AC33 & 7202. Even if your, not Salt Lake a Northern or Southern county should at least give me some ideas.

 

[kirkco]

I live in Tooele County, but am set up to monitor SL county/city too ( I use SDS200 now, but is the same files for SDS100). I'll share what I have - send me your contact.

 

[N7OLQ]

Sorry, most of my edits are for Utah County. My SL County looks pretty much the same as downloaded. Start by creating a SL Favorites list and pull everything from the radioreference 'tree' in Sentinel. Then Edit the Favorites list sites to Avoid the sites you don't want the scanner wasting time looking for (the ones you know you will never be near). For the "maybe sometimes" sites, don't avoid them. Assign a quick key to the sites you dont want to always Avoid, and then go over to the quick key status tab and either enable or disable the sites. I use QK numbers 20 and up, reserving below 20 for Departments. That way you have the option to toggle them on if you are in a different area. You can organize the Departments the way you want or leave them as-is. Once you figure out Sentinel, its kind of fun. You can scroll though this forum for comments about specific talkgroups that are not already in RR, and do the edits to your Departments. The nice thing about creating your own is that you can always keep customizing it to suite your needs.
...or someone may have some files to share, but where's the fun in that?

 

[522]

For me, being in Murray, all I really listen to is any PD and some FD/EMS on 7202 and AC33 within Salt Lake County.

I basically have each Jurisdiction in its own individual Favorites list. Then have and ALL PD on one separate Favorites list. Fire/EMS are the same idea. Then stuff like UDOT, Airport, Military, Hill AFB, some other random stuff.

Been thinking of overhauling everything to make Quick Keys easier, but so far this works good for me.

But thats the cool thing, is you can make it however works best for you.

 

[N7OLQ]

The reason I moved away from using lots of favorites lists is that each FL swtich causes the scanner to reacquire the control channel and start decoding the data stream, often the same control channel it was just reading from in the previous FL. For non-mobile scanning, I put as much as I might want to listen to at the same time into a single FL, to minimize missing traffic when the scanner has to reacquire. I have Utah county and SL county UCA in one FL divided into 20 different Department Quick Keys. In the FL I have 2-3 near sites, and the rest disabled. I have another FL that has SL departments, and sites that I can hear from here (mostly Nelson & SL Simo - I have mountains making SL Simo pretty weak for me even on a 13 element yagi).

 

[522]

How long does the scanner take to reacquire the control channel ?
I can't imagine it being more than a few seconds.

 

[N7OLQ]

Correct, but lets say you have 5 FL enabled and within each FL there are 3 sites its checking. And lets say it takes 1 second to acquire & decode. It will take the scanner 15 seconds (5x3x1) to make a full pass of your scanning targets. 15 seconds is a long time. Imagine if your 8 channel crystal scanner took 15 seconds to get back to channel 1. Put them all in one FL and you only have 3 seconds to cover the 3 sites.