Some tips for easier scanning

[twobytwo]

What is your favorite tips for easier scanning?

Some of mine are:

Display on scanner
-If a freq is on a repeater I use all capital letters. Example-"TOWN POLICE
-If a freq is Base and mobile I start with a capital .Ex-"Town Police"
-If a freq is mobile only I use small letters . Ex-"town police"

Many agencies in my area use both their own freq and also utilize an area trunking system .
I will use abbreviations or complete words to distiguish the radio they are using
If the agency is using the freq assigned to the I will spell out the word
Ex -"Town Police" ( note Base & Mobile)
-"TOWN FIRE" (note repeater)
If the agency is using the trunking system I will use shorter names
Ex-"TOWN PD"
-"TOWN FD

PRIORITY
I use a prioritizing system for agency or service with 2 main listsUBLIC SAFETY & PUBLIC SERVICE
Public Safety consists of Law Encforcement,Fire EMS,EOC,
Public service consists of water dept, airports,jails,etc
A third lists includes hospital,schools,electric co


USAGE OF CHANNELS. This is used for how much a channel is used
0- Never used
1-Have heard at least 1 transmission
2-Ocassional use (usually a secondary ch)
3-Disaster/Special Events
4-Mostly weekdays 8-5
5-Constantly used
6-Data,pagers, etc unable to monitor

When I leave town I will make a spreadsheet fom the FCC site of the area Im going to(all freqs may not be listed on RR or not have acess to the internet) and a map showing towns and roads of the area.

Using BANKS in scanner
I have a dedicated bank for diaster channels, that way they are ready if need be.
I have a bank that I have not EVER heard anything that way it doesnt slow the scanning rate down and can monitor them if need be
I have a bank for state government freq not used in my area. So if I travel I can unlock them (Texas has a lot )

 

[teufler]

For most of the county, we are not using "banks" anymore and the scanner, digital ones, don't function as banks storing.. For most of us, we download information from RR though your ideas can be employed somewhat. I do create files for different parts of the country though. Spreadsheets of information are kind of hard to use with Dynamic Memory assignments. I do take county information, ham frequencies and rather than import to the county , I import to a specific ham system. So I pick and choose somewhat. Your naming sequence makes sense though when importing, I would have to retype all or most of the descriptions. With the newer digital scanner, you can load in several states then turn on or off states you don't want.5000 to 10,000 frequencies are not uncommon though the scanner do slow down scan rate

 

[Drafin]

For most of the county, we are not using "banks" anymore and the scanner, digital ones, don't function as banks storing..

(SNIP)

I think it's pretty safe to assume that the original poster was using the term "Banks" to refer to scan lists, favorites list or whatever term your scanner manufacturer uses to break down the plethora of information into usable sections.

As for my tips, I always have one scan list dedicated to my home scanning, one that includes my county and the surrounding counties and then I break it out into service types. That way if there is an event going on I can isolate that event service type (IE if there is a major fire in a neighboring county, I can monitor just fire service from that county).

Draf

 

[Voyager]

What is your favorite tips for easier scanning?

Some of mine are:

Display on scanner
-If a freq is on a repeater I use all capital letters. Example-"TOWN POLICE
-If a freq is Base and mobile I start with a capital .Ex-"Town Police"
-If a freq is mobile only I use small letters . Ex-"town police"

Many agencies in my area use both their own freq and also utilize an area trunking system .
I will use abbreviations or complete words to distiguish the radio they are using
If the agency is using the freq assigned to the I will spell out the word
Ex -"Town Police" ( note Base & Mobile)
-"TOWN FIRE" (note repeater)
If the agency is using the trunking system I will use shorter names
Ex-"TOWN PD"
-"TOWN FD

PRIORITY
I use a prioritizing system for agency or service with 2 main listsUBLIC SAFETY & PUBLIC SERVICE
Public Safety consists of Law Encforcement,Fire EMS,EOC,
Public service consists of water dept, airports,jails,etc
A third lists includes hospital,schools,electric co


USAGE OF CHANNELS. This is used for how much a channel is used
0- Never used
1-Have heard at least 1 transmission
2-Ocassional use (usually a secondary ch)
3-Disaster/Special Events
4-Mostly weekdays 8-5
5-Constantly used
6-Data,pagers, etc unable to monitor

When I leave town I will make a spreadsheet fom the FCC site of the area Im going to(all freqs may not be listed on RR or not have acess to the internet) and a map showing towns and roads of the area.

Using BANKS in scanner
I have a dedicated bank for diaster channels, that way they are ready if need be.
I have a bank that I have not EVER heard anything that way it doesnt slow the scanning rate down and can monitor them if need be
I have a bank for state government freq not used in my area. So if I travel I can unlock them (Texas has a lot )

All very interesting and innovative. I use caps for readability, but might modify my scheme to incorporate some of your ideas. I usually just add RPT or REPEATER to repeated conventional channels. If a system is being used for activity confirmation, I add a * to the tag.

How do your 0-6 usage numbers come into play? Are they prefixes for the channel tags?

I've mentioned my general scheme before, but it is:

FLs are regional - usually consisting of about 9 counties. I currently have FLs covering 3 states. The first digit of the FL is the "super-region" - which is defined as a group of 9 FLs, and the second is map-based (get to that in a moment). I also have some FLs that are service-based, such as FLs 91-99 which are for Hospitals, Utilities, Schools, Services (ITINERANT, FM, MURS, CB, Air, RR, Ham, Marine, STORES, MALLS, ROAD CREWS, TOWING, NEWS, SECURITY, AIRSHOWS, Etc.)

So, yes, my channels are duplicated - I can access them by region or by service depending on what I want to monitor at the time. I can monitor all channels in an area, or all RR channels in many areas (basically all RR channels in range) to find new active channels.


The Systems in each FL are unique to each County, and have a map-based quick key (1=NW, 2=N, 3=NE, 4=W, 5=central, 6=E, 7=SW, 8=S, 9=SE, 0=regional). If an area has a trunked system and conventional channels, they are enabled/disabled with the same Quick Key.

I do have one county that is large enough to warrant a single FL, and in that case the 1-9 represents grids of that single county (NW, N, NE, W, central, E, SW, S, SE, regional).

My Departments (or Groups) are organized under each System as follows:

1 POLICE
2 FIRE
3 EMS
4 STATE
5 PW
6 HAZMAT
7 EMA
8 INTEROP
9 OTHER PS (SO / JAIL)
0 UNCONFIRMED PS
11 DEPARTMENT STORES
12 RESTERANTS
13 FAST FOOD
14 THEATERS
15 GROCERY STORES
16 MALL OPS
17 INDUSTRIAL
18 SECURITY
19 OTHER BIZ
10 UNCONFIRMED BIZ
21 MEDIA
22 AIR
23 RR
24 MARINE
25 TRANSPORTATION
26 ATTRACTIONS
27 COLLEGES
28 SCHOOLS
29 HOSPITALS
20 UNCONFIRMED SERVICES
31 UTILITIES - POWER
32 UTILITIES - GAS
33 UTILITIES - WATER
34 UTILITIES - CABLE
35 UTILITIES - TELEPHONE
36 FM
37 AM
38
39 HAM
30 UNCONFIRMED UTIL
41 FEDERAL
42 MILAIR
43 PARKS
44 VA
45 NATIONAL INTEROP
46 GMRS
47 FRS
48 MURS
49 CB
40 UNCONFIRMED FED

Quick Keys 51-99 are for Sites on Trunked Systems with smaller ones only using 91-99.

You may notice that like users are grouped together - 0-9 is PS, 10-19 is Business, 20-29 is Services, 30-39 is Utilities (with some others to fill the space), 40-49 is Federal with others to fill the space). Again, it's all about organization to help keep things easy to remember.

Obviously, some Departments are blank in many Systems, such as the CB list. I added it for completeness and expandability.

The number in front of the Department/Group tag is the Quick Key for reference. All my FLs, Systems, and Depts/Group use prepended Quick Key numbers. It helps remember what is what, and if I am using QK 44 and moving east, I know the next one to enable will be 45. If I were going south, the next one would have been 47. So, as long as you know the general direction you are going, remembering all those Quick Keys is trivial.

Obviously, this list is optimized for an x36 series scanner, but I do something similar with other scanners - both Uniden and GRE.

 

[pb_lonny]

My Scanning Tips

Below is a list of radio scanning related hints and tips. Some of these are my own, others are ones that have been shared with me over the years by other scanner users.

Carrying your gear:
There are a few different ways you can carry your gear around, a lot of this depends on how much radio “stuff” you need to carry and how you use your scanner.
Some people can just throw their handheld scanner in a pocket as they walk out the door while others might need a better way to carry gear.

I personally have used many different cases and bags over the years, at one stage I had two Pelican brand hard carry cases. I have recently moved across to a much smaller hard case, this holds my UBC126AT, aerial, batteries, charger and USB cable. I also have a much larger hard ABS case which holds my whole radio collection and accessories. If this is too much of an over kill I have seen people use digital camera bags which work well as they are well padded plus they don’t draw “unwanted” attention when out in public.

Head phones:
With the amount of people these days using iPods, iPhones and other music devices with head phones, it is possible to pick up some good headphones fairly cheap that make you blend in with other people. I have a set of white in ear headphones that look very much like iPod ones and when I wear these while walking around with my UBC126AT on my belt or in my pocket I don’t look out of place. People assume I am listening to music, I use this to my advantage.

Programming:
If you have more than one scanner / radio then try and keep them setup as close to the same as possible, for example if your handheld has bank / system 1 as the Fire Service then try and have your other radios with bank / system 1 as the fire service also, this makes things a lot easier when using different radios or trying to explain to somebody else how to use it if you’re driving or so on.

Before you start programming your scanner think about and plan what frequencies you want to program in and how you want to arrange them, some people like to group them based on service or coverage area where as others prefer in frequency order. My UBC126AT is programmed like this:
1 - 000 North (Fire, Ambulance, SES and common 000 frequencies)
2 – Air band / Amateur Radio
3 – UHF CB
4,5,6,7 – VHF / UHF Business band
8 - Services we don’t talk about
9 - Hobart / Devonport / Burnie Frequencies
0 – Scratch bank for temporary storage or when trying to ID frequencies in use

Data management:
The more you get in to the scanning hobby the more information you need to keep track of.
When I first started I had a sheet of paper with the 100 channels I had in my handheld. Over the years this increased to the stage where I had a folder on my computer full of many gigabytes of radio related information.